Yesterday afternoon, the last day of the conference, was very pleasant. Michael and I escaped during the middle of the day and had lunch at Yuan, a vegetarian Japanese place on Saint-Denis, not far from where we ate last night. Then we caught the Metro out to the botanical gardens.
Our original plan, as you might recall, was to see the Biodome, a museum/zoo organized around several different ecosystems. This plan was complicated by the fact that (a) Montreal has both a Biodome and a Biosphere, both of which have nature museums inside but which are located in completely different places, and (b) the Biodome was closed for renovation. Could this get more confusing? Couldn't they have named one of them something a little more distinctive? Anyway, we ended up with a choice between going to the Biosphere or to the general vicinity of the closed Biodome to see the botanical gardens and the Insectarium, which is what we did. Mostly this was my doing --- I figured that if we couldn't see penguins, I should at least get to see something living. Plus, we didn't have a ton of time, and insects are small.
The Insectarium was very much designed for children, but like most science museums anywhere in the world except the US, the exhibits were very well-presented and contained quite a lot of interesting information even for adults. For example, did you know that there are several species of insects that live almost exclusively underwater? Yeah, me neither. But I got to see some of them in a special buggy aquarium display. Plus, as predicted, the museum was small, easily navigable, and full of terrariums which were full of creepy-crawlies: hissing cockroaches, several species of tarantulas, a black widow spider, a large exhibit of stick insects, the works. Very, very cool.
When we got back to the downtown area, Michael went to the conference's presidential address, and I met up with my friend from graduate school for afternoon tea at the Fairmount Queen Elizabeth Hotel. As the name suggests, it was indeed quite posh. We were first presented with a cart of teas to choose from, and then with a tray of still-warm scones with clotted cream, cucumber-and-egg finger sandwiches on white bread with the crusts cut off, and assorted dessert pastries. The food was delicious, and we spent a very pleasant two hours catching up and talking about the vagaries of our field.
Dinner last night was at La Paryse, which is (according to some reviews) the best burger place in Montreal. Michael and I were originally reluctant to join this particular food trip --- him since he was unsure whether there would be any veggie options for us, me because I was so full from my tea date that I really didn't want to eat anything besides maybe a salad. Luckily, we both fished our wish. La Paryse had not just one but three veggie-burger options as well as a fabulous composed salad for me. (Although, as one of my friends said, "That's not a salad, that's an architectural creation.") And it was quite reasonably priced and within easy walking distance of the hotel. Score!
It being the last night of the conference, there was a big semi-private send-off party hosted by two of our friends in their hotel suite. Since they were also officers of the society, their suite was actually the Vice-Presidential Suite at the hotel, and it had about three hundred rooms and an awesome view. Michael and I had brought a bottle of bourbon from Philadelphia, anticipating precisely this sort of situation, and I'm proud to say that it lasted barely an hour into the party, which itself lasted until about 3 am. This was actually 4 am, since it was the end of daylight savings time, giving us "an extra hour to get pissed" as one of our British friends so eloquently put it.
Today was certainly less eventful. We checked out of the hotel and said our final goodbyes in the mid-morning, then drove back to Fairmount Bagels to pick up a few dozen for the road before heading out of town. The trip back was a good bit more stressful than the trip up, though. We had to wait nearly forty minutes at the border crossing and then took the wrong highway and got snarled in traffic around New York City. It ended up taking about nine hours overall, which isn't terrible considering the distance, but it was a little more time than any of us wanted to spend in the car. We did stop twice, once at Lake George to stretch our legs, and one at the Vince Lombardi rest area to use the bathroom and dig some more bagels of of the trunk for a snack. Despite this lack of restraint with our precious imports, we still ended up with close to three dozen to consume and share as we see fit. Most of these are what the New York crowd would call "everything" bagels, but the Montreal establishments label them as "tout garni" or "all dressed." Isn't that cute?
In the end, I'm glad that I decided to go on this trip. I definitely would have gotten much more work done if I hadn't, but I would have been lonely and wouldn't have had nearly as much fun. I'm sure there's a lesson there about being spontaneous or something like that...but ask me about that tomorrow when I have to dig myself out from under a pile of neglected responsibilities.
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