A Fat Purple Fig

We are sitting in the rooftop bar at the Hyatt Centrico, in downtown Montreal, admiring the view over the water and La Grande Roue de Montréal, the largest observation wheel in Canada. We have traded our welcome-drink vouchers for an Aperol Spritz and added a charcuterie board, so we’re feeling pretty fancy. I look up ‘things to do in Montreal’, and run some options by Kitty. After all, on holidays, a day unplanned is as good as a day wasted (Fiona, 2017).

‘City Kickstart Tour?‘
‘Nah, I don’t wanna listen to someone talk.‘

‘Montreal Botanic Gardens?‘
‘Scroll on up, Mum, scroll on up…‘

‘Montreal Museum of Fine Arts?‘
‘I’ve seen the wall of vaginas, Mum. It’s a Watervliet…nothing can top it.‘

I am all asunder. If we don’t plan to see anything, what on earth will we see?

‘How about we a street art walking tour?‘
‘Okay, I’m good with that.‘

‘I’m happy if I’m just in the country,‘ Kitty concludes, further tempering my expectations.

The next morning, bright and late, we stroll up Boulevard Saint-Laurent. I have cobbled together a plan using a couple of self-guided walking tours; one that covers the sights, and another the street art, and am hoping to integrate them seamlessly into a casual walk. We stop for coffees. They offer to trade caramel for maple syrup in Kitty’s latte, and she adds a gravlax bagel. It doesn’t look like a regular bagel, and it is much later that I read about the distinctive Montreal bagel, thinner and wood-fired. Had I known, I might have ordered one.

‘I hate pickles,‘ Kitty remarks, unimpressed, ‘and I hate dill.‘ She eats it anyway.

Far from ‘teeming with boutiques, shops, cafés, clubs, bars, and restaurants’, ‘The Main’, as Boulevard Saint-Laurent in known, is a little lacklustre. Instead, there are Canadian souvenir shops, cheap sunglasses, kebabs, and a gentleman’s club. The locals are more sad than unsafe, but I slip cards, passports and keys into my pockets anyway.

Have the cities changed, or have I?

We see sitting pigeons and theorise that the stones must be warm, and admire the cluster of murals. ‘I like the pink hippos,‘ Kitty declares.

We about-face, and walk down the opposite side of the Boulevard, running out of change long before we reach Chinatown, and wishing we had more. I love me a Chinatown. I’m not hungry but, if I was, this is where I want to be. Kitty buys a bubble tea, and we muse on the subject of tipping. It is rife across Canada – not in a slip-them-dollars way, but built into the electronic payment system. Every card payment made, including for bubble tea, includes a step to accept the sales figure, then another to choose the tip amount. It doesn’t feel so much like a tip, as a ‘choose your own sales tax’.

Chinatown has its own murals, and noodles being made in restaurant windows.

Three destinations down – Boulevard Saint-Laurent, the murals, and Chinatown – we return to our hotel for a rest. Kitty might be onto something here.

I watch half a movie, then head down to the gym for a run. The row of treadmills is positioned in front of a window to the street, so I can see not only my own reflection, but the steady stream of people walking by, some of whom glance in at the sweaty, red-faced, how-not-to-gym exhibit. I am wearing a Kmart running shirt with no absorption whatsoever, so I have to keep finding different sections of it to mop my brow (I forgot my towel…and my water), giving it the appearance of giant, sweaty polkadots. When I finally step off the treadmill, I am suddenly disoriented, stagger across the room, and almost hit my head on a weights machine. I later read that one should always ‘taper off’ after a treadmill run. Ok, that makes sense. Thank goodness we’re leaving tomorrow.

When we emerge from our room, Kitty looks like a model in her denim jumpsuit, making her the recipient of a thousand glances. We are imbued with a sense of freedom, ruled by plans no longer. Instead, we are ‘heading to Old Montreal’, to see what we see.

And what we see is lovely.

Vieux-Port de Montréal, or the Old Port of Montreal, runs for 2km alongside the Saint Lawrence River, and was where the first colonists arrived in the 1600s. It is now a wonderfully-expansive space, dotted with attractions: La Grande Roue de Montréal, a zip line, market stalls, and parklands. It is a lovely place to be as the sun hangs low in the cloud-filled sky.

Kitty is a better photographer than me (of which she delights in reminding me), but I am still fond of my classic ‘reflection in the water’ shot of the observation wheel.

We walk past food trucks and market stalls, and down to the water. Kitty smiles at a security guard in a golf buggy. ‘Nobody ever smiles back at me here,’ she sighs. Poor guy; he probably thought she was smiling at someone behind him. She has a point though. The smiles are few and far between here, and we haven’t had a single wave-of-thanks from a driver. They just don’t go in for that friendly-business here.

I want to go on the zip line, but suspect Kitty will be crushed by the embarrassment. Plus, I’m a newcomer to regret-free foolishness, and the gym is likely enough for one day. We laugh at a sign about Australia (‘it’s a long way to come to learn about kangaroos‘), spot a squirrel and laugh at this determined duck’s bum.

We wander through the streets of Old Montreal, while a busker plays ‘Turn Around’ by Bonnie Tyler on his guitar. I want to film him, but we’re all out of change, and that’s the deal you make with a busker. We stop to admire a Formula 1 shop, with a life-size cardboard cutout of Max Verstappen in the window. ‘Hey Max,‘ Kitty says to it, ‘we’re coming to see you soon.‘

We bookend Montreal with an Aperol Spritz at John Michael’s Pub on Place Jacques-Cartier, a public square lined with restaurants and topped by the Nelson Monument, where we watch the world go by.

You can see quite a bit without a plan, so it happens.