Montreal, Day 2

Just a bit of wrapping up from yesterday before starting on today. Despite a half-baked plan to attend a session at the conference, I realized while on the way down to the conference rooms that I really didn't want to be cooped up inside listening to philosophers for close to three hours, especially not ones that I could just email later and ask about the substance of their talks without having to go through that kind of fuss. Instead, I headed outside to explore a bit and find a good bookshop.

The exploring was somewhat curtailed by the rain and by the fact that, as I said before, the roads immediately surrounding the hotel are under construction. And by "under construction" I mean "completely closed and dug up down to the level of the water mains." Even still, I managed to gain a bit more confidence in my navigation abilities, and I was able to find both the road up to McGill University and the bookstore that I was looking for --- which was located inside a mall, as is everything else in this city. I don't know why I should find that fact so surprising and disappointing. I guess I'd expected Montreal to look a bit more like Philadelphia or New York or Boston, being, like those cities, a large city on the east coast of North America on a major river that had been settled starting in the eighteenth century. But it doesn't. The street life feels entirely different, because most of the shops don't have fronts on the street, and the sidewalks are dominated by advertising instead of awnings. Maybe I'm just not in the right part of the city?

I made some progress in finding the right part during our walk from the hotel to dinner, which took us into the area known as Old Montreal. That sounded much more promising, and it was. Once we'd crossed through Chinatown and over the highway, we were in the oldest part of the city --- cobbled streets, large stone-paved squares, and the steeple of Notre-Dame towering over the view. Unfortunately, it was still raining, which made the walk over the cobbles nothing short of perilous, but I could see that this area was much more my speed. The streets were lined with shops, bars, and restaurants, some of which were even advertising poutine with no visible irony. If the weather clears up a bit later today, I may have to return for a better look.

Dinner itself was lovely, too. We ate at Chez L'Épicier, which, true to its name, was selling fine foods from a small front shop in addition to serving delicious food. There was only one vegetarian main course on the menu, but at least there was one; I have a feeling that les Québécois are fond of their meat. But the veggie dishes were very well-prepared. We started with the cream of mushroom soup, which would be more accurately described as cream and mushroom soup, followed by squash presented three ways: spaghetti squash with porcini "bolognese", turban squash risotto topped with a poached quail egg, and a large slice of butternut squash with caramelized onion relish. I was relieved to see that even this professional kitchen hadn't managed to make the quail egg look any more presentable than I had. After all that, I had no room at all for dessert, but acquiesced to share a few spoonfuls of their medley of cremes brulees (chocolate, vanilla, lemon, and honey flavors).

After a rainy walk back to the hotel, we caught up with some friends at the bar and then finally turned in at around 1 am.

Michael was up early to attend the morning sessions; I'm not sure how he managed it, but more power to him. I paid down my sleep debt a little and then had a nice morning meeting at Le Café Starbucks with my collaborator about a paper we're writing.  Unfortunately, the presence of that meeting ruined our plans to visit the biodome, since by the time I was done, we didn't have quite enough time before the afternoon sessions started. We'll make it there tomorrow for certain, though. For today, we grabbed some lunch in the underground concourse and had a short walk before Michael needed to be back at the conference.

I should get some work done, but I'm probably going to head back down to the underground city (Le RÉSO) to do some more exploring. We chanced upon a map when we were down there --- I didn't quite realize the extent of it. Our hotel and the adjoining mall is only one teeny fraction of the 20 miles (!!) of underground tunnels that connect most of downtown Montreal. And since it's still too rainy to do any proper walking, I'm going to see how far I can get without going outside. I think seeing this as a challenge, rather than as a hindrance and a barrier to getting fresh air, is helping me deal with it a bit better. Besides, there's a chocolaterie on the first level that is calling my name.