Ploafmaster General

«Je n’ai fait celle-ci plus longue que parce que je n’ai pas eu le loisir de la faire plus courte» or something like that (sorry Pascal). Gonna cover a little more ground in this post, but not likely the last one.

First Full Day: Stretching Our Legs

We took our time getting ready on our first whole day in Montréal, but we eventually headed out past the tiny Chinatown for a late breakfast and coffee before exploring the old city. We were in line forever, but had some decent coffee and great pastries in a unique setting at Crew Café—the public space for a co-working operation in the old Royal Bank of Canada building.

The cafe positioned us around the corner from an entrance to Montréal’s Underground City near a section of the Berlin wall! Turns out it was gifted to the city on the occasion of their 350th anniversary.

We needed our transit passes for the week and had direct access underground to the Square-Victoria-OACI station. From there we jumped up a couple of stops to Champ-du-Mars near city hall to check out more of the old city and port. The photo at the top of this post is at the start of Rue St.-Amable off of Place Jacques-Cartier. It’s a gorgeous if touristy part of town, but we wanted to return to Mont Royal for lunch at one of the city’s oldest poutine shops: La Banquise. Worth the wait, really tasty, definitely the sort of meal you have maybe only once a year for the sake of your arteries!

I briefly parted ways with my family after lunch so I could do a little solo exploration using the amazing Bixi bike share system. If my youngest had been a few years older I think we all would have ridden together, but Valerie was generous enough to let me have my bike nerd time. I alluded to the cycling infrastructure in Montréal in my prior post, but the whole city really has SO MUCH. I posted while I was there:

Richmond hosted the UCI Worlds in 2015 and our bike infrastructure is still pretty spare all these years later.

Today I rode a BIXI (bike share) #bike around Montréal’s exquisite cycling infrastructure and it feels far more appropriate that they’re hosting the UCI Worlds next month.

It isn’t perfect and I’m sure locals want (and deserve) more, but I really felt safer riding around an unfamiliar city on a clunky rental bike than my own city that I ride every day as an experienced cyclist. What a treat!

Anyway, after a decent-enough dinner at an Italian restaurant near the arts district, we hit the grocery store to get some snacks for our day trip to Quebec City. And here I encountered the legendary milk-in-a-bag!

Tuesday Day Trip to Quebec City

Valerie loves an organized tour so she had us book a bus trip to Quebec City a few hours up (down? It was northeast but flowing out to sea) the St. Lawrence River. Our rest stop on the way brought us life-sized dinos in the parking lot and the realization that there are still some pay phones up there. Nice!

We initially went past the city to stop at Montmorency Falls, an absolutely gorgeous site to behold:

Once we were in the city we had a short guided tour around the lower city which Valerie enjoyed and the kids and I mostly tolerated. The self-guided exploration and climb up to the upper city (we did all the stairs up to the upper funicular platform!) was excellent, and we were all utterly charmed. We took the funicular down, because who doesn’t love a ding-dang funicular?

We returned to our hotel late and exhausted, but dang. Worth it.

God, what a fantastic trip.

My whole family just returned from Montréal, Quebec in Canada. This was the first international vacation for our children, the first visit to Canada for Valerie and me, and the first international trip for Valerie and me since 20212. I’ve wanted to visit Canada for ages, and Montréal is not a terrible driving distance from Richmond, VA. And in my head this was sort of an “easy mode” version of international travel for our kids: Driving (split over two days in each direction), same time zone, a city where most shop and restaurant employees can speak English, and a (mostly) modern North American city. But! It was still a city where most people spoke (Canadian) French by default, where many menus and signs had no English alternative. With an old city core reminiscent of Western European towns.

And it really did work out that way. Travel was easy (for how long it was), the city was marvelous, and while we never had issues related to language differences, the kids found themselves reflexively saying “excusez-moi” instead of “excuse me” after hearing it all week. The kids still felt like they were outside the US, not simply in a different city.

But oh! What a city. I found Montréal beguiling, whether it was the old city, the outer neighborhoods (I could live somewhere around the plateau), the variety of excellent food and coffee, or the extraordinary bike infrastructure. I wish I had 4 weeks instead of 1 to explore the place.

The week was chock full of goodness, so I may need to break this into multiple parts.

The Way Up

Like I said, we tend to like splitting long drives over two days, so on the first day we stopped in Troy, NY outside of Albany. Even though it was a single night, Valerie is terrific at selecting hotels and we ended up on the east bank of the Hudson River. We were able to dine on the waterfront and have a lovely stroll back to the hotel afterward.

After some truly incredible coffee and service at Jacob Alejandro we continued north.

The border crossing at Champlain was easy enough, and the Canadian border agent was patient and kind enough to physically stamp our passports since it was the first time for the kids (and the adults wanted them, too!). We made an obligatory stop at Tim Hortons, and from what I understand there wouldn’t be too many Canadian defenders of the chain’s quality. I didn’t expect it to be any good. I just wanted to do something particularly Canadian shortly after entering Canada, so we got some Timmy’s.

Crossing Pont Champlain on our way into Pylon City had me singing “Your Ex-Lover is Dead” by my favorite Montréal band, Stars, until we hit the sort of multi-event traffic insanity that many locals assured us was fairly typical. In this case, however, we arrived right after the lunch hour on the final day of both Montréal Pride AND Otakuthon. As it happens, hour hotel was right near the convention center, so we could not actually reach the parking deck due to road closures. We needed a few hours of entertainment before checking in.

We decided to head out in the vicinity of C&L Cycles, a shop I’d been dying to visit after learning about it from Bike Breath. They have parts and goods from pretty much every cool alt cycling brand, they are the exclusive Canadian Rivendell dealer, and they also have a house brand (Bassi) with a lineup of fantastic steel bikes. My thinking was that a cool bike shop is probably in a cool neighborhood and, brother, that was an understatement.

Brief Aside about Mont Royal

C&L Cycles is on Rue Rachel in Montréal’s Mont Royal (Mont…réal?) neighborhood—not to be confused with actual Mont Royal within Mont Royal Park. This neighborhood could have been our entire vacation and we wouldn’t have been disappointed. So many great restaurants, cafes, beautiful parks, shops, and enough bike infrastructure to put my entire city’s paltry bike lanes to shame. I would go back to Montréal just to spend more time here.

ANYWAY…

We were fortunate enough to stumble into what turned out to be an excellent dumpling shop called Le Petit Coin Dumpling (chicken curry dumplings, I love you!), and some fantastic ice cream from Les Tropiques which we enjoyed in the lovely La Fontaine Park. When we wrapped up we were able to easily reach our hotel and check in.

We finished up the evening with some casual perambulating around Vieux-Montréal before collapsing into bed. The photo at the top of this post is from our room, an absolutely stellar find from my wife.

This has gone on entirely too long, so I think I’ll pick up with some more in (at least) another post. I just had to get something out though now that we’re home. I’ll be insufferable about how much I love Montréal to anybody who will listen for the next week at least.

Just crossed the border back into upstate New York. Canada, you were incredible.

Mois de l’Archéologie is a real treat in Old Montréal: www.moisdelarcheo.com

I don’t think I’m making any waves here, but folks? I’m fairly well smitten with Canada, and I’ve only been here since Sunday.

Quebec City. Wow!

[extremely Wesley Willis] DINO-SAUR MAC-DAWNALDS

Pulled this one off with “rococo” when I thought all was lost. 😮‍💨

hankgreen.com/smush · Aug 11 1006 pts · PERFECT 💯 · 33-day streak 🥞🥞🥞 🥞⭐🥞 🥞🥞🥞

Richmond hosted the UCI Worlds in 2015 and our bike infrastructure is still pretty spare all these years later.

Today I rode a BIXI (bike share) #bike around Montréal’s exquisite cycling infrastructure and it feels far more appropriate that they’re hosting the UCI Worlds next month.

Damn, dog.

hankgreen.com/smush · Aug 10 1236 pts · PERFECT 💯 · 32-day streak 🥞🥞🥞 🥞⭐🥞 🥞🥞🥞

My wife really knows how to pick a ding dang hotel.

Whoa dog, Le Petit Coin Dumpling in the Plateau Mont Royale neighborhood is pretty amazing. Chicken curry dumplings, pan fried. Perfect. lepetitcoindumpling.com

A perfect Smush before the last leg of my drive up to Montréal!

hankgreen.com/smush · Aug 9 1024 pts · PERFECT 💯 · 31-day streak 🥞🥞🥞 🥞⭐🥞 🥞🥞🥞

Bedtime in Troy, NY (NE of Albany). Tomorrow morning we have a comparatively short jaunt up to Montreal. Here’s hoping for a smooth border crossing!

I really HAD planned to make a long post about the Diamond Back, but after two rides I need to make some adjustments. That means it’ll have to wait until after I get back from Montreal!

Took embarrassingly long to get the pangram here.

hankgreen.com/smush · Aug 5 934 pts · PERFECT 💯 · 27-day streak 🥞🥞🥞 🥞⭐🥞 🥞🥞🥞

The smush-ening!

hankgreen.com/smush · Aug 4 866 pts · PERFECT 💯 · 26-day streak 🥞🥞🥞 🥞⭐🥞 🥞🥞🥞

Saw the new Spider-Man with the family, and it was really fun! I particularly appreciated how much it felt like a stand-alone movie. Well, I suppose it depends on its predecessors and does include a really BIG DEAL character, but it felt like it had an actual poignant ending.

Teaser shot of the latest #bike project. More on this in a full blog post later!

Got the red bike ready for its maiden voyage tomorrow morning…

Picking up the kids from 4-H camp in Williamsburg means Pierce’s BBQ for lunch in the way home! 😋

My best score ever! Smushtacular!

hankgreen.com/smush · Jul 31 950 pts · PERFECT 💯 · 22-day streak 🥞🥞🥞 🥞⭐🥞 🥞🥞🥞

Norfolkin’ with Valerie for a couple nights while the kids are at sleep-away camp.

It is rare to lose power for more than a few minutes in my corner of Richmond’s Northside, but I guess it’s one of those nights. May not get it back until the wee hours of the morning.

For the second year in a row, both kids are at sleep-away camp for the same week. Tonight I’m supporting my wife in a summer swim meet, and this week well be able to get coffee and meals together, follow our own schedule (mostly), and even take a few days off at the end of the week. Glorious.