Hotel Quartier Latin Montreal

... pessoas como Hugo Chavez, Lula, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad e Muammar Kadafi. Este último rasgou a Carta da ONU, discursando para uma platéia muito apropriada, recheada de ditadores. Lula é amigão de vários deles. Esta semana recebeu o presidente do Irã, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, em solo brasileiro. Já chamou Kadafi de cumpanhêro, assim como Hugo Chavez, Evo Morales e, é sempre bom lembrar, Dilma Roussef, vulgo cumpanhêra Estela, que integrou a VAR ...

After a journey that lasted 25 hours, of which over 18 were spent in the air (many kudos to Korean Airlines, they are absolutely great at customer service and their pilots are smoother than the skin on their flight attendants' faces), we came home and went directly to my Mom's to pick up our sweet little dog, who still remembers her parents. She is now a bit ...

... people going elsewhere. Street artists were showing seasonal paintings - snow covered spiral staircases, snow on the streets, snow on the roofs. We truly felt a snow anticipation in the air

Uphill from a plaza was Quartier Latin where we had an evening coffee. Waiters kept asking us in French and we could not shake off a feeling of being in a magnificently unreal place

Several times we saw signs "Come back in May". I wonder...

... different seasons so went in there for a couple of hours, cost $12 so not too bad. Caught the Metro to Mont Royal and wondered round the shops there which seems a more trendy area with less tourists than the centre. Got some Poutine for lunch which is a dish that is a specialty in Quebec, basically chips with lumps of cheese covered in hot gravy so the cheese melts. Thats a plain one but I opted to add Pepperoni, Salami, Beef etc, cant do these things by halfs ...

... between all the designer and department stores which you cannot find in Ottawa (like H&M) and Ontario we had a really great time. And as it seemed to be the time when everything is on sale we both found a bunch of things to our liking. Something else we don't have in Ottawa are a lot of different ice cream parlours - we have Baskin Robins and Dairy Queen, but that's about it. So we hit up Ben & Jerry's.

After we went back to the hotel to ...

... aux glissades. Moi j'attends d'avoir un pantalon imperméable...! Puis nous avons testé pour vous la Jesus Attitude: nous avons marché sur l'eau (gelée, ok!) du port de Verchères où il y avait des pécheurs a la glace. D'après l'un d'eux, il y avait environ 75cm de glace sous nos pieds... info ou intox, en tous cas, ca tenait! Ci-joint les photos et videos.... et quelques photos Fisheye, mon cadeau de noel! Enjoy! Bises à tous, et p'tit bisou spécial à Augustin né le mois dernier!

... and Belvedere, which afforded an amazing view of the Port area. From the crypt area, it is 293 steps to the top...my thighs have turned into Jello...but will soon be made of steel, with all the walking we've done. So in this museum we learned about Marguerite Bourgeoys, obviously, but I've never seen such an amazing presentation. They had one room dedicated to the story of her life. Here they had little "windows" with a ...

... tempor ac, sem. Duis faucibus. Donec sagittis erat vel elit. Proin nunc neque, vestibulum sit amet, faucibus blandit, vulputate ac, quam. Nam felis. Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, consectetuer adipiscing elit. Donec porttitor interdum massa. Fusce ac quam vel nisl elementum adipiscing. Morbi facilisis. Donec posuere mauris aliquam sapien. Maecenas luctus, nisi eu viverra tincidunt, urna nulla molestie tortor, quis iaculis erat justo id enim. Sed vel orci. Vivamus tincidunt egestas augue ...

... place, after many decades of openly hating the place, despite never having lived there...you know, the old tension between TO and MTL still rears its anglo/franco/multicultural head. These days, I like Toronto and have become just this side of fixated on dumping my (excellent) job here and starting over there. Anyway. This is enough of a start for this inaugural entry that surely no one will read.

... you must use FRESH white, cheddar cheese CURDS. OK so I can say I tried it... We watched World Cup soccer for a while, wander back to St Catherine street, picked up some souvenir then head back to the hotel... WOW full day... Tips - Bring an AM/FM radio and headphone to listen to the race commentary. Try to find a spot that you can see the big Video screen.