Montreal Adventures - A Look Back At 2013

With the year winding down, it's a good time to reflect on adventures I wanted to have in Montreal in 2013. Most of the year was consumed with finishing and shipping Batman: Arkham Origins, but I still managed to get out and enjoy myself from time-to-time.

Embrace winter (if it ever comes)

Go skating, tobogganing, maybe even snowshoeing - at least once a week.  Find and enjoy more tea or hot chocolate.

We had a short, fairly mild winter again, so I only managed to go skating three times in January/February, but two of them were during winter festivals: Fête des Neiges and Winterlude. I hope we get the same ice skating path in Parc Jean-Drapeau this year! As for new tea places, we enjoyed tea at Maison du Macaron and at Birk's Cafe. Highly recommend both places!

Embrace summer (when it comes)

Find and enjoy new terrasses.  Eat outside on my own. Finally attend a show at the Just For Laughs festival.  Spend time at the Jazz Festival.  Have a picnic in a park.  Watch the fireworks from Jacques Cartier bridge.  Find and enjoy more shop-made ice cream.

D and I finally went to two Just For Laughs shows - one gala and one of the smaller shows at Club Soda. I also happened to be walking around Place des Arts at the time and enjoyed a bit of the street festival. A friend got some tickets to the Fantasia Film festival and invited me to a film from Taiwan made in the style of a 1950's American musical (but sung in Mandarin). In September, I spent four crazy days exploring Montreal with tourists from the USA and Europe during the MEETin Invasion. That was about it for this goal. Fortunately, many of the other goals are summer-related :)

Walk or ride my bike just for the fun of it. 

This was by far my most successful goal of the year. In the Spring, a friend at work got me to join him on his daily walks at lunch. We usually walk 30 to 45 minutes through either the Village or Old Montreal. Those walks have really helped maintain my sanity. In August, a friend and I started doing major cycling, with our longest ride being about 60km, taking us to and around Iles-de-Boucherville. 

More solo street photography (outside of my monthly MEETin photo walks)

I didn't do any solo photo walks outside of a brief wander around Queen's University campus after the ice storm this week. However, my lunchtime walking buddy found the Wiki Loves Monuments photo contest, so we spent September seeking out and photographing the monuments around work. It was a lot of fun and we discovered some places we didn't know were monuments.

Go to Jean Talon or Atwater market every week.

It wasn't every week, but I did go to the market regularly. As a result, I cooked and brought my lunch to work more regularly.

Go to the Botanical Gardens (my favorite) or some other park once a month.

With Mosaïcultures at the Botanical Gardens this year, the outdoor gardens did not have free admission for Access Montreal card holders from July through September. However, I did get to see the Mosaïcultures exhibit twice this year and it was spectacular! The bike rides usually went to a park, so there were still plenty of nature moments.

Visit museums.  

I took advantage of a web deal and became a member of the Musée des Beaux-Arts this year. So far, I have seen three of the temporary exhibits, my favourite of which was the glass art by Chihuly. I also thoroughly enjoyed my visit to the new planetarium and the Canadian Centre for Architecture. Both are worth visiting.

Explore more restaurants, especially in my own neighbourhood and around work.

Sadly, I didn't do much in this area. Most of the new restaurant experiences came from travelling, rather than around Montreal. However, I did finally get to try Les Filles du Roy during MTL à Table. The food is delicious and the historic setting is worth experiencing.

Wear fashionable clothes.  

My wardrobe continues to evolve. I have been investing in some items from Katrin Leblond, a local designer who has a boutique in my neighbourhood. I love shopping there and always leave feeling fabulous!

Do more travelling.

Almost all of my travel was work related, none of which I would have predicted at the beginning of the year. I went to Frankfurt in May, Los Angeles (with a day trip to San Diego) in June, and New Orleans for the annual PMI Leadership Institute Meeting in October. The only vacation travel was spending a week at the same cottage where we spent our honeymoon and a Thanksgiving weekend roadtrip to Bois-Franc and Arbraska tree-top adventures in Rigaud.

Update this blog once a month.

This will be the 15th post on this blog this year. It wasn't exactly a monthly schedule, but I'm still happy with the amount of content I posted. I also wanted to make this blog more interesting. I didn't do anything special for that, so I don't think I made much progress on that goal. My weekend at Blissdom got me thinking about what I could potentially do with this blog. I'll do some more thinking this week and include any new goals with my 2014 goals.

As for my 2014 goals... I will be publishing them in the first days of January. If you have any suggestions on adventures in Montreal I should try, please let me know in the comments! I would also love to hear about any of your most memorable adventures this past year.

I hope everyone had a great 2013 and hope you enjoy the rest of the holiday season!

Summer?

It feels like we're living in the tropics. Almost every day starts out sunny and then winds up raining in the afternoon or evening. Despite the wet weather, I still managed to have some summer fun in Montreal. I can't believe September is around the corner already.

I was too busy with moving to get tickets to one of the Just for Laughs shows. I did manage to walk through the street festival in the Latin Quarter one evening. It was pretty cool. There were people on stilts, giant insects (picture above), bands, living statues, someone creating a sand sculpture, giant balloons, acrobatic street performers... the list goes on.

Fireworks are a big part of Montreal in the summer with the international fireworks competition. In total, I saw three shows - one from Terrasses Bonsecours in Old Montreal, one from the fire escape of my building and one, which was by far the best, from La Ronde, where the fireworks are set off. The picture above is from the last show. China put on a spectacular display! It is definitely worth the ticket price to see the show from La Ronde. Speaking of La Ronde, I am completely convinced that it is guaranteed to rain whenever I go there. Fortunately, it stopped raining in the evening so we got in a few more rides and could enjoy the fireworks.

Even after selling my car, I still went on a couple of road trips. A group of us from MEETin spent a relaxing Sunday at the Cascades Rawdon. We never go hungry at MEETin events. There was enough food for the BBQ to feed a group almost twice as big. "Swimming" in the rapids was like being in a giant, cold jacuzzi. Fortunately, the threat of rain kept the crowds away, but the rain held off until the drive home. A few weeks later, the xtreme foodies group did a day trip to Vermont where we sampled chocolate, cheeses, tea, and did a pilgrimage to the home of Ben and Jerry's. Since we couldn't bring anything back across the border, we wrapped up the trip with a picnic in a park in the mountains. We're now planning to go back in the fall when the mountains change from green to yellow, red and orange.

The "search of the best" restaurants continued. I enjoyed shark curry at an African-Reunionaise restaurant. We're planning to go back when the weather gets colder, but the event will have an "over-18" advisory because the chocolate cake was very... satisfying. Even the guys got the look that usually only women get with good chocolate. We also sought out the best Thai, Pho, southern BBQ, Old Montreal bistro, and one really good dessert place. We also enjoyed another pastry tasting, courtesy of our group's pastry chef.

Other summer fun included The Tempest at probably the only dry performance of Shakespeare in the Park, a New France ghost hunt in Old Montreal, and a walking tour of my new neighbourhood - Plateau Mont Royal.

In between all the summer activity, I'm slowing getting settled in my new place. An anniversary also came and went, which was marked with a conversation for the first time in six months. It's the start of many conversations. It's a good thing. I'll leave it at that for now.

Whoosh! Part 2 - So much merriment

I wanted the title to be "Eat, Drink and Be Merry", but it would have made the link too long. As the title suggests, April and May continued to have a lot of culinary and related events.

One MeetIn member is a pastry chef and he holds pastry tasting events every couple of months. I was finally able to attend one in early April. For a nominal charge, we sampled artisan tarts, mousses, cakes, chocolates and truffles on a Friday evening. Loaded up on sugar, we then headed out to Les Deux Pierrots for some merriment. It was described to me as a traditional Old Montreal hangout. The crowd spanned all ages, all there to have some drinks, listen to the live music and, if the music is good, dance. For those of you with some Kingston context, it's kind of like the Wellington (circa mid-90's) mixed with Clark Hall Pub on two floors. The music covered traditional Quebecois music (which is very similar to traditional Irish, Celtic, Newfie, etc. music) to rock covers spanning the 60's to this decade. We were the group of 30-somethings dancing off to the side while the students crowded the stage. I had so much fun that I went back with my Vancouver visitor over the May long weekend.

The "In Search of the Best..." theme dinners continued. They fill so quickly that I often wasn't able to RSVP in time. Still, my culinary adventures included Japanese shabu-shabu (fondue), traditional Mexican (think: mole rather than fajitas), Tibetan, a very unique wine bar (every hear of candy cap mushroom milk foam in a dessert?) , couscous, and Greek. Outside of the official MeetIn theme dinners, I also experienced a more traditional fondue place and a couple of terrasses in Old Montreal, an Irish pub, a fine Italian restaurant, and an all night Chinese food place after one pub night. Although it seemed like a good idea at the time, I'm not sure about the last experience. Next time I'll stick with poutine. I've started collecting business cards from all the restaurants and will keep a scrapbook, just so I remember where I've been.

As much fun as the restaurants have been, I wanted some more culture in my life. In April, I attended "Shakespeare Unplugged" at the Atwater library. The two-person play expertly wove together scenes and lines from a variety of Shakespeare's best known plays. I was surprised at how many I recognized.

The first Friday in May, I hosted my first MeetIn event to attend a concert/cocktail party at the contemporary art museum. That was a unique experience. For the price of admission to the museum ($8), we could sip yummy cocktails from the cash bar, enjoy the museum (which we didn't manage to do) and attend an hour-long concert in the performance hall. The museum holds the Vendredi Nocturnes every month and it's so popular that they don't announce the name of the band until the day of. We saw Bob, a dark, eclectic local band which included "go-go boys" (read: performance art) in their act. The band was excellent, though not exactly my thing. A picture of a "go-go boy" and a toy reminding me of a Replicator from Stargate SG-1 is below:A little more of a traditional cultural event, a friend from MeetIn and I went to see Neil Simon's The Odd Couple at a small theatre. The acting was fantastic and the intimacy of the theatre put G and I in the "splash zone" of flying beer spray and chips as Oscar was demonstrating his typical hosting style.

Working for a company that builds games for licensed movie franchises has its benefits. Our social club sponsored two movie nights to see Iron Man and Indiana Jones. Both movies were great fun. We'll be going to one more movie in June.

Since moving to Montreal, I've been watching Sex and the City reruns on TV. May was capped off with a girl's night out to the Sex and the City movie last night. I'm pretty sure every woman in Montreal was at the movie theatre last night. The movie was great, which we discussed over cosmos (what else?) and martinis at Jello Bar. Once again, I wish I had had my camera. The lava lamps were mesmerizing. Ah... more for my cell phone photo gallery.

Stay tuned for Whoosh! Part 3...