Spruce Beer

Saturday 5/22:
Armed with newfound knowledge thanks to Google, I left the hotel and walked 30 minutes to a small meat market that had spruce beer. I had hoped to find some breakfast on the way, but the route took me in a direction I hadn't been yet, and it was mostly residential. Luckily, the meat market also sold sandwiches, so I had another smoked meat sandwich and cleared out their supply of 4 bottles. I walked back on a more interesting street just as the hustle and bustle was starting.
I went back to the hotel, drank 1 bottle, then headed out to St Catherine to pick up some last minute gifts. Halfway there, I changed plans on walked down to Centre-Ville and Vieux-Monreal, stopping at Notre Dame again and snapping some pictures. I had thoughts of paying the entry fee this time, but there was a wedding taking place. After buying some gifts in Old Montreal, I meandered without a plan for a bit, thinking of going to a sports bar to watch the Canadiens game with the locals. (Since they won the game I went to, tickets skyrocketed to $300). In hindsight I wish I had stayed out and caught the game in a crowd, but I ended up going back to the hotel and took a nap while watching them lose.
I woke up refreshed but still burned out a little. I wasn't in a touristy mood, so I went out to dinner instead. I found Frite Alors! close to the hotel, and had my first taste of horse. It was good, very chewy, similar to bison. The french fries were very good. Maybe that's a Montreal thing, good french fries...
After refueling I walked in a familiar pattern. St Denis-St Catherine-St Laurent-and Sherbrook back to St Denis where my hotel is.
I found the metro station that has the airport shuttle, and explored around inside to make sure I knew the way tomorrow.
Final thoughts on Montreal:
People are nice but impatient, especially the drivers. I probably heard or saw an emergency vehicle once every 2 hours, sometimes more frequent. Both Toronto and Montreal are pretty clean cities, and the people are friendly. They are stereotypically Canadian. Catching the playoff game was the highlight for this year, that was such an experience.
I have found another market 40 minutes away in a new direction that also carries spruce beer, so I hope to stock up in the morning before catching my afternoon flight.
I'm down to two bottles now, one started to fizz as I was figuring out how to pack it, so I drank it instead of risking an explosion.

Geographically Challenged

Friday 5/21: Today was pretty uneventful. I checked out of the Holiday Inn and lugged everything uphill to Castel St. Denis, the same little 2 star hotel I stayed at last year. It was a bit of a hike, but I arrived without incident. The room is slanted and the Internet only works when you lying on the ground close to the door, and it's still spotty, but you get what you pay for and it's a good location. I unloaded my stuff and quickly went back out on a mission to find the Portuguese place Dan found last year. I had a pretty good idea of where I was going, but it still took an hour wandering around when it should have taken 20 minutes tops. Oh well, I got reacquainted with that part of the city. I tried to get a hold of a few people to give me directions, but then I stumbled upon it. (For future reference, Geoff, it's on St. Laurent). I had thought it was on a side street, but it turned out it was on one of the main Montreal roads. I had the sausage again and it did not disappoint. After lunch, I decided to go on another mission, this time to find spruce beer. Last year, we found some in a cheese shop in the Italian District, and I remembered the general direction I should be headed. (see a theme here) My search came up empty, I never found the Italian district, and at one point I managed to actually leave Montreal city limits. Still, it was a nice but tiring 2.5 hour tour of a more residential side of Montreal. I came back to the hotel to regroup and rest for a bit before striking out for dinner. I headed back to St. Laurent and stopped at Schwartz Deli, famous for its smoked meat. Smoked meat is a pretty big thing in Montreal, and the sandwich was awesome. After dinner I walked towards St. Catherine, another big Montreal street, but I think I was about an hour too early to see the beginnings of the nightlife crowd come to life. I considered sticking around, but by this point I was felt dead on my feet from all the walking, so I headed back to the hotel. I don't think I would have had as much fun by myself this time around as I did with Dan and James last year anyway.

Go Habs Go!

Thursday 5/20:
The Toronto event went much smoother, but Montreal was still good and far from disaster. Lots of things went wrong, but in the end we pulled it off. There was a wealth management event going on as well, so it was very crowded. I stuck with Kurt and Gene again, and had a few fascinating discussions and a few stinkers.
At one point during a break, one of the engineers showed us his Montreal Canadiens playoff ticket for tonight. He bought it off a scalper for $225. I was jealous, but there was no way I was paying that much. Luckily, Dean later showed up and said he found tickets for 100 each on Stub Hub. They were kind of in a nosebleed section, but I leapt at the chance. How often am I going to be in a city with playoff hockey and be able to go to a game?!
I finished all my duties, helped pack up, then raced back to my hotel to quickly change and grab my camera for the game. I met back up with Dean at the Fairmont Queen E,and we were off. It was just a short few blocks down the road.
When we picked up our tickets, we were offered a free upgrade to the $190 seats for no reason. How cool!
The center is neat. Outside the main entrance it has statues of all the great Montreal players throughout the years.

I don't even know how to describe the game. It was such an incredible experience from start to finish. Both national anthems were played by a small group from the Montreal Symphony, without any singer. It quickly became apparent why no singer was needed. The entire stadium erupted into O' Canada. I've never seen anything like it, it was extremely powerful. The closest thing I've ever seen resemble the experience of the crowd was the Ohio St vs Penn St game at Penn St I went to a few years ago, but it didn't really come close. The promo was a towel, and most of the game you could look out into the stands and just see a blanket of white with the Canadiens logo twirling around. It didn't take long for us to join into the cheering.
I had an overprice hotdog, split the cost of 4 beers each with Dean, shared his popcorn, and bought 2 donuts randomly on a bathroom break.
I'm so glad the Canadiens won 5-1. It was such a fantastic feeling to experience the home team winning a playoff game. This was also my first NHL game. It's going to be hard to top that! I'm officially a Canadiens fan now.
I texted Gregg a few times during the game to rub it in. It's too bad the Bruins blew the series against Philly or else I would have had a chance to see them play.
I looked into prices for game 4 on Saturday, but since they won and the series is now 2-1 Philly, the tickets jumped in price to $300, so sadly I will not be experiencing the incredible crowd again.
Walking back to my hotel after the game was also fun. Lots of horn honking and cheering, the whole city was just loud! What an atmosphere! My voice is sore from all the cheering

Montreal Day 1

Wednesday 5/19:
The airport was busier than I thought for such an early flight. Highlights include trying to check my bag onto a Hong Kong flight, not taking off belts and shoes for security, and the flight itself was pretty entertaining thanks to the flight attendants. It was the Canadian equivalent of Southwest Airlines, so the flight staff was fun and told jokes, and didn't have any of that fake courtesy you find on most flights. There was a small mechanical problem with the terminal tunnel when we landed, but for the most part the flight was good. I had a middle seat and still had plenty of room. I always find it strange that the flight from Toronto to Montreal uses a big plane but from Houston to Toronto you are on sardine can.
We checked into the Holiday Inn Express close to noon before heading down to Vieux-Monreal to walk around. This hotel is so much better than the Best Western. I have a suite and the location is only a pleasant 20 min walk to the waterfront and the event hotel, which we couldn't set up until 5. That left plenty of time to wander.
The group walked close to the waterfront, where I had meandered about last year, and ate at a terraced restaurant named Jardin Nelson. I had some Montreal red beer and a 4 cheese pizza, one of which was goat cheese. Nothing comparable to the two previous meals, but still tasty. A little pricey too, but it was a really nice atmosphere with live music. The also had a "Tex-Mex" chicken, red beens, and sour cream pizza...
After lunch we made our way to Notre Dame, but didn't feel like paying the entry fee, so we just looked at the outside. As luck would have it, there was a port-a-potty outside, but due to construction I couldn't get the cathedral in the background, only a cool looking clock tower. I got a really strange look from the team when I requested the picture, but we laughed about it.
We walked down towards the water on the same side-street past the Christmas shop that Dan, James, and I found last year. I ducked into a small church that had 9 model ships hanging from the ceiling, just like in Copenhagen. We then made our way to the Fairmont Queen Elizabeth hotel where we were running the event to coordinate set up.
It sucked, the event staff was terrible, didn't listen to what we wanted, and undid a lot of the things we set up ourselves. They had logistic problems with our keal cases too. I hope we never have to rely on using a big fancy hotel again, it was much better before the Montreal office closed.
We showed up late to the big team dinner with the Montreal team from setup again. I had snails in a garlic-basil sauce as an appetizer, and venison sausage with a side of french fries cooked in duck fat for the main course. The duck fat didn't really affect that taste, but made the fries really crispy, which was good. I washed everything down with another Montreal red beer before topping the night off with a chocolate marquis in caramel sauce. The conversation at this dinner was good, but not as good as Toronto. Since we arrived late, we sat together, so I didn't get a good chance to mingle with the Montreal team until late. I got back later than I would have liked and really could have used some extra sleep, but it was a fun night.

Event day

Tuesday 5/18:
For the most part, the event went smoothly. There were naturally some snags here and there like always, but it was good overall. I ended up working all of Kurt's and Gene's sessions, which are really fascinating and make me feel dumb sometimes.
After we finished with all the cleanup and everything, I somehow managed to get car duty. We had two cars, but had to make several trips to get everyone back to the hotel. I took the first wave back in 1 car and Don took another group back in the other.
I ended up making 3 trips, the third being the most entertaining as the window got absolutely destroyed by Canadian goose droppings. Yup, bunch of mature folks working at HP!
After freshening up at the hotel, the team and a few presenters headed out to a Korean bbq place, which turned out to be the biggest bbq joint in the Greater Toronto Area. I ended up driving again, and this time it cost us.
I made a wrong turn even though I had the GPS, so we ended up taking a scenic tour of Mississauga. I found it ironic that the Hertz Neverlost was on a Magellan GPS. What is it with me and directions?!
Dinner was incredible. We split into two tables and my table of 5 decided to split the family meal that feeds 5-6. That thing could have easily fed 8 of us! Fish cakes and bean sprouts were good, bul-go-gee was incredible, spare ribs were awesome, and even the spicy pork and spicy chicken were outrageously good, and I don't even like spicy all that much. The food just kept coming, and I couldn't get past more than 1 piece of Octopus when the seafood platter arrived.
I made it back to the hotel without incident and fell into a food induced sleep.

Last free day in Toronto

Monday 5/17:
I woke up and decided to take it easy. I had thought about cramming in a last minute sight, or walk around the Eaton Centre again, but I just decided to find breakfast somewhere on the street instead.
I headed in the vague direction that I remembered seeing Timothy's World Coffee, willing to give it a try mostly as a joke because "it's on the map!". It ended up being the last leg of the square I walked around my hotel, naturally.
It was very much like a Star Bucks. The cheese croissant was above average, the pain au chocolate was good, and the hot chocolate was excellent.
Afterwards, I checked out of the room and retraced my steps on the public transit system back to the airport. I thought it would be easier and cheaper to get back to the airport, then call Best Western for a shuttle than to take a $50 cab ride. It took 2.5 hours to get from the airport to downtown, but only 1.5 to get back. And this time I figured out how to pay for the subway, maybe it was just free on weekends. I waited about 30 minutes at the airport for the shuttle, and another hour and a half for my room to be made ready at Toronto.
The rest of the team trickled in an hour or so after I was set in, and then we headed to the office to set up the event. A few things went wrong/missing/etc. as always, and by the time we tracked things down and finished setting up what we could we were an hour late to the HP dinner with the Toronto team.
We went to Milestones, the same good restaurant that they had taken us to the two previous years. It took awhile to get a menu and order, since we had come late and the wait staff was busy with the rest of the party, but it was nice to sit down and enjoy a Molson or two.
For dinner, I had the lamb, which was the same dish I had last year. I felt a little bad not branching out, but that feeling quickly left as soon as the food arrived.
I got to know Dean and Kurt, two of the presenters, really well during dinner, which is a big reason why we have big team dinners.
After dinner I collapsed in my hotel room, knowing I would have to wake up earlier than I would like the following morning.
The Best Western was pretty horrible. Only 1 elevator worked and it was extremely noisy, and the room was blah. I wouldn't stay there again.

Sports filled Sunday

I ended last night by watching some standup by a pretty funny Canadian named Dean Jenkinson. It was strange comedy though, he was really polite and his jokes and stories were funny, but more pleasant than any other comedian I've heard. Most be a Canadian thing, but I really enjoyed the program. I also realized that I didn't pay at all for the Toronto subway system yesterday, which seemed a little strange to me.
Today started a little earlier than it needed to because I have a terrible sense of how distance relates to time. I ended up arriving at the Hockey Hall of Fame 40 minutes before it opened because I thought it was much farther away than it was. So, I stopped for a chocolate and honey crepe at La Marche, which was actually recommended by a coworker, then I explored some more outside and wandered down various side streets.
The Hall was pretty cool, I saw a Stanley Cup (there are 3, I didn't know that), along with all the individual trophies presented to players for the season and playoffs. They also had Olympic medals from 1920-2008, which was pretty neat to see. I really like hockey but have had a hard time following it in recent years, seeing the Hall has renewed my interest. Since the Hall was much closer to the hotel than I originally thought, I had time to drop off the souvenirs I bought before heading back out to Rogers Center to catch the Blue Jays vs Rangers game. I took a different route to the stadium just to see more of the city.
The played both US and Canadian national anthems, and the difference in excitement level by the singer was pretty intense. I wonder if American teams do that when the Blue Jays are in America, they probably do. Rogers Center is a very nice and clean stadium, but it was missing a few things that I took for granted at Minute Maid Park, like the mph and pitch tracker.
The Jays ended up winning 5-2, which was cool. I'm pretty indifferent towards the Rangers, but I've always supported MLB outside of the USA so I've been a Toronto and Montreal fan (when they had a team) for awhile. I was lucky enough to see David Murphy, a former Klein Bearkat, and Justin Smoak, a former USC Gamecock on the Rangers though.
After the game I meandered towards China Town. The section I found was more Vietnamese than anything, so I had some tripe and tendon pho that cleared up my sinuses better than any pho I've had in Houston.After some tapioca, I wandered some more in the direction of my hotel, but it was pretty lackluster. After a brief stop at the hotel, I decided to check out the World's Biggest Bookstore and then head back to China Town to do some proper wandering. I took a different hotel exit and came out right next to a pretty cool looking church. I peeked in and was satisfied. It kind of bugs me that most American searches are just monstrosities, I think the older architecture is really important.
The bookstore was gigantic, which was impressive, but I wasn't sure what to expect. It was just a bookstore really (go figure).
China Town take 2 was much more exciting. I wandered past numerous shoe, vegetable, and dvd outdoor markets, plenty of acupuncture and herbalists, and trinket shops. I did see a sign for the Royal Ontario Museum, so I followed it but never found the place. I did find what I think was the Ontario Legislature building though, which had some cool architecture. After looping around it, I headed back into China Town before heading down a sidestreet on a whim.
What an abrupt change! I quickly found myself in hipsterville. The Chinese influence seemed to just vanish. I wandered around a bit in hopes of finding some spruce beer, because that seemed like just the type of thing to find in a hipster place, but just like the Royal Ontario Museum search, this one too came up empty.
I slowly made my way back through China Town on my way to the hotel, and decided to check out the square I found with the live music last night to see if anything was going down. Nothing was, but I decided to pop into the Hard Rock Cafe on the corner. I already have a Toronto shirt, but I am a sucker for mugs, and they had a really cool Toronto one.
Back at the hotel now, watching the Canadiens get blown away by the Flyers in game 1 of the new playoff series.
Might be done for the night, but I did have the pho fairly early and might pop out later for something small to eat.

If I knew what I was doing, life would be boring

This is my third trip to Toronto for work, but this time I decided to spend the weekend downtown before working the event in Mississagua. Things got off to a good start: my flight was pretty uneventful with just a few minor delays, and I successfully navigated the Toronto bus and subway system to get to the Eaton Center, which is basically a huge mall right next to my hotel.
The subway opens into Sears, so I plowed through and into the mall area, looking for an exit. I ended up going the full length of the mall with all my luggage before finding an exit. It turned out to be a few blocks.
At this point I'm lost, which is par for the course, frankly I'm surprised I managed to get to the Eaton Center using mass transit without incident. Funny that I get lost in the mall and not on the subway system. I call a few people back home for some guidance, and Becca is the first one to answer. She laughs at my misfortune, and it was pretty funny, and then finally manages to get me directions from her super slow computer. Basically, I walked right back the way I came, only outside the center, passing a port-a-potty in front of Old City Hall (perhaps it was fortuitous that I got lost!)and arriving at the Marriott. The front desk told me that the entrance from the hotel to Eaton Center was on the second floor. And here's the kicker... after dropping my stuff off I went through the walkway and ended up in Sears...

The Eaton Center was just big. I didn't see anything really special about it, just a big mall. I had a roast beef sandwich at the food court, which was really good for mall food, and then just wandered about. I drifted into Y'alls Canada Store and bought a few nick-knacks while on the phone from a surprise call from Sheila.
I wandered back towards Sears, but decided to take a different exit and emerged outside next to a big square. On the corner there was a street musician band next to one guy shouting about Jesus and another one shouting about Muhammad.
I went back to my room, dropped off the new stuff, and then decided to go back to the port-a-potty to get a picture for my calendar. I need a partner in crime, way to hard to get a good pose while I'm also holding the camera.
After several tries I called it quits and decided to wander the streets around the center.
I stumbled upon a free outdoor concert, which turned out to be a concert of teen bands raising awareness for teen homelessness in Canada. An odd cause, but I donated some change. The first band was all chicks, and as I walked up they started playing Zep! She played a very impression Jimmy Page solo too. I stayed through two of their original songs, which sounded amazing except for the lyrics. A second band came on, but they sounded like a terrible Allman Brothers Band knock off, so I wandered a few more blocks to see if I could find anything interesting. I didn't so I slowly meandered back to the stage in time for a 3rd band. They were really young and had great voices, but the music was nothing special, so I listened for a song and a half before calling it quits. By this time my feet were starting to hurt so I just wanted to get to my room and rest for a bit.
The room itself looks nice, the Internet is a bit spotty and some of the TV channels are a bit fuzzy, but that shouldn't matter as I hope to be out and about more than in.
Tomorrow I have tickets to an afternoon Blue Jays game, but the morning is still up in the air. I'll do a bit of research tonight or maybe just play it by ear in the morning. I am close to China Town and a pedestrian walking center, so that could be pretty fun.