Walking in Montreal

I slept badly again last night and had to pry myself out of the bed with a great effort.  After all these days of working in the room and mostly taking transit, I was feeling a bit twitchy, so I decided to get out and walk a bit.  It snowed for most of the day, but it was still pretty warm and none of it was sticking.  So the walk was nice.

I headed south on St. Denis.  It turns out that the neighbourhood of the hotel is mostly shops with a few restaurants, but once you get 4 or 5 blocks south, it becomes a neighbourhood of mostly bars, restaurants, tattoo parlours and strip joints, with the odd shop.  My theory is that you are supposed to start on the NE end of St. Denis, shop your way down the east side, have lunch and then shop your way back up the west side.

Downtown Montreal is positively teeming with tattoo parlours and strip joints!  I spent the morning wandering around, poking my head into interesting looking places and doing some window shopping.  I passed the Museum of Modern Art, several churches and de Fusiliers Mont Royal.  I owe a big thank you to Crystal, who suggested shopping at Simons.  They were having a sale, so I managed to find a sweater for Michelle and a shrug/wrap/drape thing for myself.

By this time, I was getting pretty hungry, so I made my way over to Schwartz's.  I was starving, so I really appreciated the giant sandwich; it's two thin slices of rye around about 8-10cm of slices of smoked meat and since I was there, I did it right with a side of fries and a coke.  YUMMY!!!  By this point, I'd done about 4 hours of walking so I decided to take the Metro to the recovery house.    Michelle is still doing extraordinarily well, slightly to the chagrin of the other ladies, all of whom are having some technical difficulties.  Emily was actually taken back to the hospital today for a blood transfusion, as they think her problems may be due to a hemoglobin deficiency.  I hope that's really the problem and that she's feeling better tomorrow!

I hung out at the house until a little past dinner, then the ladies all had to do their dilations, sits baths and douches before getting ready for bed.  I walked down to the IGA for a few last things, then headed for the Metro.  I stopped at Une Crepe again and picked up some dessert to take home - a buckwheat crepe filled with roasted pear and covered in dark chocolate sauce.  Very, very yummy!

The thing I'm most excited about is that it's only two more sleeps until I get to see Stuart!