The Long Way Home

June 25 and 26, 2011

After our second night in the Seven Seasons Hotel in Montreal, we decided to start heading back a day early, mainly to prevent an 8+ hour travel day from occurring immediately before our days back at work. Our original plan on Saturday was to head to the city's namesake, the triple-peaked hills of Mont-Royal, though the occasional steady rain put a damper on that plan.

Instead, we decided to ride the rails a bit more and find some record stores to poke around in. Our first stop for the day was Tim Horton's, the Dunkin Donuts of the great white north. After fumbling a bit with both language and money, we got our food and polished it off. We headed back to the hotel to make a list of the places we'd like to hit up and then we were off.

The first place we came to didn't have much Dana was interested in - although the basement was filled with tons of vinyl, it was mostly classic rock stuff. We moved on to a place Dana had found called Aux 33, and apparently it was a jackpot. She had a hard time picking through everything and picking out the precious few she wanted to purchase.

Anyway, we headed back and checked out of the hotel, and by four we were on our way. We crossed the border after a few quick questions by the border guards. The only thing I declared was the tincture of maple syrup I had bought for my parents, so obviously there wasn't much searching involved. The scenery of upstate New York was gorgeous, and unsurprisingly rivaled Vermont and New Hampshire, mainly because they're all so close together.

We arrived at the hotel and went to sleep fairly soon after arriving. We also made a few plans to continue our legacy of Weird NJ tours of the state, picking out a trio of possibilities to fill the drive home.

Upon waking, we got ready and checked out by noon before heading to the infamous Clinton Road in North Jersey. Supposedly the hangout of several ghosts, KKK members, aliens, and who knows what else, it wasn't exactly all that scary during the day. It seemed like one of those disused, abandoned roads that most people avoid for the sake of their commute not taking longer. We turned around to head back to where we started and I pulled off to do some business quickly, since we were in the middle of nowhere. Dana advised me to get back into the car and directed my attention to what appeared to be an adolescent black bear padding across the road. Definitely didn't have to tell me twice!

It was reasonably creepy in the daytime, though, so I could only imagine how weird it might be at night, especially in knowing all the rumors about the place. We drove toward the next destination, the mysterious Luna Parc, stopping off at a festival we randomly drove by. The festival happened to be the famous Olde Lafayette Village's HOT DOG FEST. No, we hadn't heard of it either. We walked around for a few minutes just to soak in the worship-like fascination of the hot dog.

Hot dogs. We didn't stand in line for this.

Anyway, diversion completed, we headed to Luna Parc. When we saw the row of cars seemingly a mile long on the side of the road, we assumed we were in the right place. We parked and walked about a quarter mile to a strange-looking mailbox with a couple modest balloons attached.

After admiring the artistry of said mailbox, we headed onto the actual property. Almost immediately, we were quite blown away - the artistry that the owner, Ricky Boscarino, had put into the place was incredible and left us more or less speechless. I snapped a ton of pictures - here are a select few:

Quite the collection

Some stained glass in the bathroom

The little "Life Church" out back

They even had free popcorn! After marveling for a good forty-five minutes we decided to move on. We were extremely hungry, so we decided to make our next stop a restaurant. Dana found a lovely little place called Sammy's on the way. I ordered a chili dog and Dana got the chicken sandwich. Both were absolutely excellent, as was the raspberry shake I ordered to drink, and the whole place was decked out in a bunch of retro Coca Cola machines.

Places like this are, sadly, rapidly becoming a thing of the past. Visible from the lobby of Sammy's were a Taco Bell and a Sonic, probably doing their best to drive the competition from the area. I hope Sammy's continues to be profitable and just as tasty as it was the day we went there.

The last stop on the way home was to see a few metallic-industrial dinosaurs up in North Jersey. It was actually in the same town as Sammy's, but unfortunately it seemed that the whole place was part of corporate grounds. We couldn't discern any way to get in, so I snapped a couple pictures and then we were home-bound.

T-Rex in the distance

On Friday, July 8, we're Hawaii-bound! Stay tuned.

La Fête nationale du Québec

Friday, June 24, 2011

Unbeknownst to us, we had chosen a weekend of significance to Quebecois when we decided to come up this weekend. We had no idea until the day we arrived in Montreal - we were made hip to the fact that June 24 is a holiday in Quebec. La Fête nationale du Québec (something like National Quebec Day) is a celebration of all things Quebecois.

Actually, it's a pretty interesting bit of history. In the early nineteenth century, there were two major sections of Canadian territory, known as Upper Canada (part of modern day Ontario) and Lower Canada (part of modern day Quebec). Upper Canada had issues with financial solvency due to incompetence in management and over-extension of resources; Lower Canada was mostly an agrarian society that resisted being rounded up in a province that would levy taxes on them. Both Canadas thus had rebellious populations and, in 1837, rebelled against their British leadership.

Both rebellions were crushed by the British, who responded with declaring martial law and passing the Union Act, which by 1841 unified both these provinces into one, the Province of Canada. Upper Canada, which was composed of mostly anglophone British and American citizens, got the better end of the deal - despite having over 60% of the population of this new province, Lower Canada and Upper Canada were granted equal voting rights in the united parliament. Additionally, anglophone minorities in the Lower Canada region exploited the lack of secret ballot in the province and suppressed voting rights of francophone French populations.

In 1867, after almost thirty years of union, the two Canadas were again separated - not into separate nations, but into Ontario and Quebec. In all, Canada became a federal state of four provinces (adding Nova Scotia and New Brunswick) in that year due to several pressures, not the least of which was their unification in response to America's Manifest Destiny doctrine and the British colonial doctrine of no longer wishing to maintain soldiers in their colonies. This meant that the smaller Canadian provinces, by themselves, were open to invasion from the south and annexation of territory. A united Canada provided much more protection from this threat.

Quebec has a fairly interesting streak of its own as far as its political history. Quebec has always considered itself as fairly unique from the rest of Canada, in language, culture, and heritage. Quebec has from the beginning been populated by French immigrants (first being dubbed "New France" by Jacques Cartier, who claimed the land in the name of King Francis I) who overwhelmingly speak French. There have been several separatist movements with aims to declare Quebec a sovereign nation, though support on a national level has never truly been enough to allow this to happen.

La Fête nationale du Québec, originally known as "Saint John the Baptist Day" after Quebec's patron saint, was secularized in the late 1960s and rapidly became a holiday focused on Quebecois national movements and sovereignty. As recently as 1970, a small group of separatists kidnapped government officials and even murdered one of them. Of course, the Parti Quebecois at large is devoted to using political and not terrorist means to achieve its goals, and has managed to pass a symbolic bill which declares Quebec a nation within Canada. Some of the bills brought to vote by the Quebec assembly really remind me of similar movements within America with English/Spanish involved instead of French/English - chiefly Bill 101, which aims to define French as the official language of the province, dissolving need for English on street signs or job offers/applications.

Anyway, now that the history lesson is over, here's what we did!

We woke up and got ready, and were out the door by about eleven. After hearing that the 24th was a holiday, we looked up the activities and celebrations associated with Quebec Day and decided to head to the annual parade. Luckily enough, the Berri-UQAM Metro stop was barely a block away from the hotel, and it happened to be essentially the hub for the entire city's subway transit. After figuring out that my debit card didn't work in the ticket machine, I withdrew $40 of Canadian money from the nearby ATM. Of course, the Canadian $20 bill has a gigantic picture of the queen on it and some interesting aboriginal-looking sculpture on the back. I fed it into the machine and we got two all-day passes and were on our way.

Montreal's subway is pretty well put together and exceedingly easy to use, whether or not you speak French. We headed up to the stop we had planned out and walked about two blocks before we saw the people lining the streets in blue-and-white-printed fleur-de-lis-spangled banners. The parade got to us around 1:30 in the afternoon.

Dana and I waiting for the parade

I bought some Quebec flag buttons from a guy!

This fellow headed up the parade and was yelling something about accompanying him to NEW FRANCE

It turned out that the event was known as "The Parade of Giants," and at its centerpiece were about two dozen 15-20' tall replicas of significant people in the formation and history of Quebec. Below are a few of them.

Jacques Cartier, a French explorer who declared what is now Canada for France. He mapped out much of the Canadian east coast.

Samuel de Champlain, an explorer and administrator who founded Quebec City and "New France". He was part of the first party to explore and map the Great Lakes.

Louis-Joseph Papineau (1786 - 1871) was the leader of the Patriote movement whose goal was Quebec independence. In the mid nineteenth century he led the Lower Canada Rebellion, which failed, and resulted in the unification of "lower" and "upper" Canada.

René Lévesque (1922 - 1987) was a reporter and politician in the government of Quebec. He was the first political figure since the Lower Canada Rebellion to attempt to negotiate political independence for Quebec.

Joseph Henri Maurice "the Rocket" Richard, Sr. (1921 - 2000) was a NHL player and longtime star of the Montreal Canadiens. He led the Canadiens to eight Stanley Cup wins and retired as the most prolific goal-scorer of all time. He was inducted to the Hockey Hall of Fame in 1961 with the three year waiting period waived. Also, he gets the prize for creepiest giant in the parade.

The parade was a lot of fun, and it was interesting to attend an event where everyone was waving a flag that wasn't American. Of course, it wasn't the Canadian flag they were waving, either, but the Quebec flag. I made sure to pick a miniature one up for a souvenir later that day.

After the parade ended, we headed back to the hotel for a bit to get our bearings and plan out the evening. On the way back, however, we found time to sit down and have one of the famous foods of the area - poutine. Basically, it's fries and cheese curds with gravy poured over the whole thing. Extremely unhealthy but absolutely delicious. Our waitress was extraordinarily nice and apologized to us for her English at one point when we didn't understand her - of course, her English was far better than either of our French, so we told her not to worry.

I ordered the Boucane

And it was delicious.

We next took the train to Olympic Park, home of the 1976 Summer Olympic Games. The first thing we were greeted by upon exiting the Metro station was a couple of futuristic-looking domes. One was the Biodome, which hosted a few events (track and judo) during said Olympics, but was now a sort of zoo featuring four of the North and South American ecosystems: the Tropical Rainforest, Laurentian Forest, Estuary, and Arctic/Antarctic. It was pretty pricey but was very cool to see - the penguins and puffins were the best part, obviously, and Dana was surprised at how huge actual beavers are. The larger of the domes was accompanied by a huge structure jutting high above us. This was the Olympic Stadium, built for the 1976 games.

A view of the Biodome with the stadium behind it

Dana + Stadium spire

Puffinz

Beaver

We headed up through to the celebration. The park was titanic in scale, and for the festivities they had moved in an entire carnival and a huge stage. It had been raining on and off all day, so the whole thing was filled with mud, but it was cool to walk through and see all the Canadians having fun and celebrating Quebecois heritage.

Poutine on the go!

The stage

We didn't stay for any of the musical performances in lieu of heading to the waterfront and exploring. Dana had been there before and wanted to show me the shops and a couple of interesting buildings. So we hopped a couple more trains and spent a couple hours wandering around, collecting souvenirs and checking out the sights.

The main parliament building has an interesting facade

The waterfront

A stuffed polar bear you can apparently purchase for $37,000

Ruby! She and the polar bear live in a fur store. Not the biggest fan of fur, but since my ancestors were probably French fur trappers, I can't really judge

Dinner was a crepe with ham and cheese, along with maple syrup

It had been a long day, so we decided to head back to the hotel. We settled in and watched some of the coverage of the live music event from the CBC, along with a news report about the "Wet Fete" that talked about how the rain put a bit of a damper on the event. But of course, Canadians are strong and hardy people, and won't let a little rain, well, rain on their parade.

Montreal - June 23

Wednesday, June 23

Now, the day where we finally make it to the destination!

We awoke reasonably early and set off northward and toward Montreal. On the way out, we decided to gas up before leaving Massachusetts and followed the GPS to a gas station that turned out to not be a gas station. It was a worthy detour, however:

Giant chair in the middle of a field

Old, cool buildings

Horse of "Toy Town", aka Winchendon, MA

Horse plaque

It drizzled and rained the majority of the day, but it was still reasonably nice driving weather as we moved through Massachusetts and soon entered New Hampshire!

"Live free or don't."

Our first stop was the town of Keene, where we had found a little cafe we figured we might as well stop at for breakfast. Considering neither of us were hungry, though, we decided to briefly check out the record store there and head back. It was a nice little city, though; we were caught a bit off guard by the cars stopping for us in anticipation of our crossing the street. You know you live in New Jersey when this surprises you.

Charming little town

I'm a nerd and found this funny

Anyway, we continued on and pretty soon we crossed the river into Vermont. Vermont was absolutely beautiful and lived up to its motto: The Green Mountain state. I also never noticed that Vermont resembles words like "vermillion" or the Spanish "verde." Again, incredibly apt.

BEARS

We spent a lot of time just gawking at the scenery before we decided to find something to eat in Burlington, Vermont. I suggested sandwiches and Dana magic'd up a place called Four Corners of the Earth that was right on the way. We arrived and the place was fantastic in more ways than one. All the sandwiches had been named after cities or places and didn't enumerate what was in them. Perfect for experimentation.

Four Corners of the Earth decorations

Cat/Cat Stuff/etc.

Dana waiting for sammich

My "Hawaiian Ham" sandwich, with ham, pineapple, onion and honey mustard

Now it was time to head for the border. After stopping briefly at a grocery store for a toothbruth and bed bug spray, we were off. They border guard asked a few questions (got whiny with me for not being specific enough at one point) and let us on our way. Ahhh, smell that Canadian air! Well, it was a bit like fertilizer for awhile, since there wasn't much to see between the border and Montreal. Eventually, though, we found our way to the second largest French-speaking city in the world.

I mean eventually, though. We got stuck in traffic for about an hour and a half while being within fifteen minutes of our destination according to my GPS. Oh well. We got to listen to plenty of CBC (which has amazing accents) on the way into the city. The hotel was a bit hard to find, being the hole in the wall it apparently is. We had to park in a nearby ramp that's either $20 a day or $20 for 24 hours or more - we really should figure that out tomorrow. Oh, and the rain was stopping finally!

Double rainbow all the way across the sky

So intense!

We got up to the hotel room after parking the car and sprayed down the bed nicely with our bed bug murder spray. I didn't see any sign of critters in the bed, so we should be safe, fingers crossed. We decided to head out and find some French cuisine, and we found a nice little cafe called Les Deux Gamins. Dana ordered a delicious looking flank steak and I ordered the salmon with rice pilaf, and both were incredible.

Oh, and apparently we came to Montreal right as they're preparing for a holiday devoted to Quebec and its (hopeful) independence. Tomorrow there is a parade and fireworks apparently. We've got good timing!