Montreal Day 1

Today I woke up in a startled and slightly paranoid state of mind. It was 7:45 and we were meeting at 8 to leave to the airport! I had left my phone on vibrate and slept right through the alarm, but in the end I was able to dash to lobby. I was still the driver, so I was in good shape.

The flight to Montreal was a quick 52 minutes, but the plane was enormous. It was 6 seats-per-row as opposed to the 3 per row that we flew into Toronto from Houston on. It was Air Canada instead of Continental, and they had an entertainment system built into the seat. Unfortunately, the Games function was unavailable, so I just spent most of the flight drifting in and out of a nap. One really interesting thing that I remember was my ginger ale. I ordered a giner ale and the flight attendant emptied a can into a cup, then added two small ice cubes. I preferred it this way, but thought it was strange since everywhere in the states they load you up on ice first then fill up the cup.

After checking into the hotel we headed out to Scores for lunch before set up. I think it is a chain restaurant in Canada and reminded me a lot of a Chiles type restaurant. They appeared to be known for their chicken and ribs, so I could not pass up an opportunity to partake in some baby backs. They tasted alright, and if you ignore the fact that they were ribs they were pretty good, but they just didn't taste like ribs. The sauce was very good though, it was sort of a tangy sweet bbq. The ribs came with fries and half of a toasted hamburger bun, which I thought was a little odd.  The lunch special was topped off with some ridiculously rich chocolate cake.

Set up in Montreal had a few a few hitches, but for the most part everything went smoothly. Once again, our van got there way before the other van because it took a wrong turn. I seem to have been blessed by being put into a group with good directionally minded people (and a GPS).

After fixing up all the rooms for tomorrow's event, we headed back to the hotel, met up with Daniel and the rest of the engineers who did not have anything to set up, and headed out to downtownish Montreal for a later than usual dinner. We chose Moe's Bar and Grill, one of the restaurants suggested by Norm in Toronto, and I had the the smoked meat sandwich, just like he suggested. Calling it a sandwich is pretty generous, in reality it was more like a pile of meat with two pieces of bread thrown in as a joke. I was not disappointed. I also tried snails for the first time and stole one of Dan's ribs, which were much better than the ribs I tried at lunch. Dan and I also split La Dulce Vita choclate cake, which was practically fudge instead of cake. Very delicious and heavy meal.