Vacation's end

It's been a nice vacation and I hate to see it end. Both Mrs. Evil and I have enjoyed our stay in Montreal, though we both have had colds for most of the trip. We spent the first copule of days resting, though we did take in a Habs game on the Saturday (Mrs. Evil is a Montreal fan). I spent Sunday and Monday in bed, partly due to my cold, and partly do to my being burnt out from the previous couple of months. Mrs. Evil went shopping on these days at the shops along St. Laurent and St. Denis.

We both ventured out on Tuesday where we went to Schwartz's for some excellent smoked meat. This was followed up by a walk to the Place des Arts where we purchased tickets to the following night's symphony and then went to the Musee d'art contemporain de Montreal and saw the work on display there. Works by Geoffrey Farmer, Yannick Pouliot and Arnaud Maggs were on display. Now the works by Pouliot and Maggs were, in my non-expert opinion, were good. I just didn't really get the works of Farmer. To me Farmer's works had a bit too much of the duct tape a feather duster to a broom and call it "War", about it. I suspect those more in tune with the contemporary art scene would find more in Farmer's work, but really. I can tape common household items together and state that it represents man's inhumanity to man, or humanity or college football for what it's worth. I'm just not convinced that it's art. Perhaps I'm just not open minded enough, who knows.

We then hiked down to old Montreal where I took Mrs. Evil to the Chateau Ramezay Museum. I've always liked this quaint little museum, mostly because it's been a museum since 1895, long before the province I live in even entered confederation, and the building itself has been around since 1705. It used to be the governor's mansion way back in the day and is a museum today. It has artifacts from various times in Montreal's history and this particular time had an exhibit about Maurice Richard, which Mrs. Evil loved. We then walked around the streets of old Montreal and we found a shop where Mrs. Evil bought a dress to wear to the symphony the following night. We walked back to the hotel, had supper and watched Sweeny Todd in our room.

Wednesday was spent in further exploration of old Montreal and time spent at the symphony. We also took the Metro to the old Montreal Forum. The Forum is where the Habs used to play until the Centre Bell was completed in 1996. Now it's a mall that has a couple of shops in it, but has a bunch of Canadiens memorabilia all over the place. The symphony was a nice relaxing topper to the activity of the day.

Thursday was spent with a trip to the Big O(we). We went up the tower where a great view of the city and surrounding sub-urbs can be had. Since the Biodome is right beside the stadium, we went and toured it before taking the metro back to our hotel so that Mrs. Evil, now sick with my cold, could rest.

Now it's Firday. We went back to Schwartz's for another amazing smoked meat sandwich, and since we're flying back today, two pounds of smoked meat to go. We then stopped by my favourite candy shop in Montreal, Sucre Blue to stock up for the trip home. Now there's nothing particularly special about the candy available at this particular shop, but any shop with that punny a name deserves my business. We stopped by what had become our favourite little crepe shop, Le Crepe 2 Go, on the corner of Blury and Sherbrooke. This little hole in the wall shop serves great crepes, both sweet and savoury and we ate there a fair bit. Then a cab to the airport where I'm writing this as we wait for our flight back to Calgary via Toronto.

So in the next little while I'll return to the political commentary that is the general theme of this blog, now that I'm refreshed by my rest. So if you've been looking for that, it will return in the next few days!