Friday, 18 June 2010
Montreal, Canada
Some thought has gone into the timing of the rail journey between Ottawa and Montreal. Coincides with the kick off time of the England v Algeria World Cup football match.
Cunning plan to pass the two hour rail journey watching a live stream of the match. Find a live stream on the internet which comes from a Pakistan provider. You can guess how this is going to work out can’t you.
The stream plays perfectly for five seconds then buffers for ten seconds. Yep. That’ll make for a long game. A dreadful game that ends with a 0-0 draw. Wishing I hadn’t sent my two Algerian colleagues, whom I’d been working with in Qatar a few months ago, a cheeky email saying I’d have a beer for them to celebrate England’s win.
Arrive in Montreal and greeted with a ‘Bonjour’ by the surly taxi driver.
And so it begins.
Despite failing O level French, rather surprise myself with the outpouring of words that surprisingly form a coherent sentence in French. And we surprisingly arrive at the place I wanted to go to. The Hotel Le Relais Lyonnais (http://lerelaislyonnais.com/en/). Located on Rue St Denis right in the centre of a vibrant street lined with restaurants and shops. There’s a good buzz this Friday evening but thankful for a quiet courtyard room. Suspect it’s going to get noisy later.
The area is getting ready for the Montreal Jazz festival in a few weeks with sound stages being rigged. For the moment though it’s the Franco Festival. All things French. Jolly good.
Everything is in French. Signage. Menus. No English. Very annoying being greeted in French. Hard to believe that Montreal is in the same country as Vancouver.
Lots of weird types and beggars about. And an awful lot of sex shops and girlie bars in the mainstream areas.
It’s all a bit grungy, dear reader.
