Sex Sells.

Not all of Montreal is picturesque rows of hipster houses and bike racks and cute dogs. A point of contrast with London, one that I personally find pretty disturbing, is that in strip clubs here, touching the girl is absolutely part of the deal. Obviously, having a shred of self-respect and respect for fellow womankind, I haven't set foot in one, but they really are all over Montreal, especially the main drag of Rue Sainte-Catherine. Not tucked away down that particularly charming alley between Brewer and Berwick Street in Soho, these are in-yer-face, loud and proud business operations. For example, here's one I snapped whilst standing outside one of the larger malls on Sainte-Catherine on my evening stroll today:

All the strip clubs you walk past advertise 'danse nue' and 'danse contacte', and the fact that there are no rules or laws that prevent customers from touching the girls surely means they're little more than a glorified brothel? Unsurprisingly, I'm unwilling to do the research myself, but suffice to say, I think it's 1-0 to England on this one.
xx

Hit The Road, Jack.

Ok so none of us are called Jack, but hit the road is what we did. Up to the Saint-Sauveur area, an hour's drive northwest-ish of Montreal we took our very grown-up looking hire car:

Which was driven expertly by Marianna, who had never driven an automatic before, but who had luckily driven on the other side of the road. Just look at her sitting on the left of the car! It's madness! :

The house belongs to a family friend of Jonny's, who lets it out most of the year but at the moment has no tenants, so incredibly kindly offered it to us for the weekend. And who are we to turn down a weekend by the lake? I didn't really know what to expect when we got there, but whatever cottage/chalet/shack I had conjured up in my mind was definitely not it.Wanna see?

Neat, huh? The recurring theme of conversation amongst the four of us when we set our bags down, after squealing with delight, was 'OH MY GOSH THIS IS SO ROMANTIC CAN YOU BELIEVE HOW ROMANTIC IT WOULD BE TO HAVE CHRISTMAS HERE'. It was super lovely. But outside the house was just as divine/typically Canadian:

As perfect as the house was, we wanted to get out and about and have some outdoorsy adventures. Late the next morning, after a probably very dangerous detour through the woods around the side of the lake, we found the boats moored on a jetty that we were looking for. Jonny and Marianna took a canoe, and Emma and I went for a pedalo.

Boating on a lake that looked like this....

made me look like this:

Upon disembarking from our boats, tragedy struck. I shan't say what happened as I think the person in question is still fairly unhappy about the event, but suffice to say it started off being very funny, but quickly descended into non-hilarity.
That afternoon, Emma and Jonny headed up to the pool:

whilst Marianna napped to the sound of country music, and I read a trashy thriller that was so bad/good I ingested it in one day. I'd brought a ripping yarn with me: 'The Problems of Modernity: Adorno and Benjamin', but unfortunately those lads were no match for 'No Time for Goodbye' by Linton Barclay, and instead of being read, found itself being photographed by Emma in locations such as the fridge or the toaster. Happy times.
That evening, we had plans to watch Showgirls which was foiled by the fact that the DVD and the DVD player were different regions. Buuuuuh. So we resigned ourselves to the hot tub. I'm not putting up photos from that on here because, although I have no dignity on FB, I would like to keep this blog a rank-free zone.
The next day, we all went up to the pool and Marianna and I played tennis whilst Jonny and Emma reclined. We were definitely giving Roger Federer and Andy Murray a run for their money, especially when we rejoiced at getting a rally of 16 shots going. Epic.
After copious amounts of Cheetos, with a heavy heart we packed up our stuff [minus Marianna's adapter and Jonny's towel and a few cloves of garlic] and set off back to Montreal.
Before long, the buildings were looking less like this:

and more like this:

and in no time at all, we were home.

It was a wonderful, wonderful weekend and I'm so glad we got the opportunity to spend time in such a beautiful house in a beautiful part of the world, with such excellent company :)
xx

Happy Labor Day.

So today was a bank holiday in Canada, and we headed uptown to Cote-Des-Neiges [or, Cote Day Nayyyyyyshe as the Quebecois/Emma pronounce it] to check out St. Joseph's Oratory. From the outside, it is a spectacular building and seeing it in the morning sunshine was beautiful.

In celebration of the fact it was Labor Day, please see a statue of Labor in the grounds in front of the Oratory:

Ok I'll admit I did feel a bit guilty taking this picture then racing up the 300 steps to the top, but I'd never seen anything like it [not going on many pilgrimages myself]. The most devoted visitors kneel on every step up to the Oratory and say a prayer on each one. They get a special lane:

At the top of the steps, there was a pleasant view of part of Montreal:

Inside the Oratory, one of the things I liked the most were the reliefs of scenes from Jesus' life. The shapes were cool and I liked whatever material they'd used on it:

We strolled in the gardens, which are lined with huge, beautiful statues of Jesus' last days. I thought the second one was particularly amazing:

The end point of our garden stroll was this fountain with a delightful gold lamb in it:

On our way back down, I voiced my distress at a numerous family enjoying a particularly frivolous family photo ON the statue of Jesus being crucified. They might as well go all-out and sunbathe on the statue of the resurrection. Or am I being a terrible prude?
xx

Poutine and the Portuguese.

Let's lay it down: Montreal's traditional dish shouldn't be good. It sounds revolting. Anyone ever thought of combining fried cheese curds, gravy and chips? Nope, didn't think so. But poutine is a big deal in Montreal, so it was only a matter of time before I put my already hardened arteries to the test and went in for the kill. La Banquise is commonly accepted as The Place to eat poutine, so we headed there for a Sunday night dinner. After a wait at the door [La Banquise is open 24 hours, and there's always a line] we were definitely in the mood for some fat and carbs. Marianna and I went for the bacon, onion and merguez sausage variety [ie, all that combined with fried curds and gravy on top of chips], while Emma decided on something involving beef and maybe peppers? Ok, so the description doesn't sound so appealing, and the pictures are probably going to make you want to vom, but I assure you, it's a party in your mouth.
Emma's:

Mine / Marianna's:

It's so much tastier than is feasibly possible, and the fact that La Banquise does so many different varieties of it means repeat visits will be perfectly justified.

Naively imagining a post-dinner stroll could atone for such gastronomic sins, we headed off in the direction of a Portuguese street festival that was going on down Rue Rachel. We found a beautifully illuminated church, and a pretty rad band playing sweet Portuguese tunes.

And because I enjoy bunting a great deal:

Montreal is such a festive, outdoorsy city that I'm really struggling to imagine what it'll be like when the cold weather comes in.
xx

Down By The Water.

After hopping off at Charlevoix Metro, we spent the afternoon along the Canal de Lachine and in the Old Port of Montreal. The Canal reminded me in parts of the canal I lived near in Hoxton, except this one was just full of redundant factories and dead industry. Every so often, however, a sight would surprise you and provide a huge contrast to the abandoned buildings.

Out of nowhere came this delightful sight:

But the view of the Downtown skyscrapers with apocolyptic clouds rolling in was cool too:

As we reached the endpoint of our walk at the Old Port, we could see some of Montreal's most famous architecture, Habitat '67. Designed by Canadian-Israeli architect Moshe Safdie, Habitat '67 was originally conceived as a sort of exercise in egalitarian housing, but now just serves as a nest for the artistic elite of Montreal. It's super, super cool and I'd been excited to see it since I got here. I tried to get a good picture that shows the way the cubes sit together, but ended up with this:

which kinda sucks and makes it look really lame, so here's a link to a photo that actually does this amazing building justice: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Habitat_panorama.jpg

While the views from the Lachine Canal might not strike as particularly 'beautiful' and Habitat '67 isn't the 'prettiest' of buildings, I think there's a lot of merit in the diversity of the architecture in Montreal.
xx

If You Like Racoon Grafitti, You'll Love This Post.

This is particularly rad to me because the following buildings are all in a row, like a wee street-art gallery on a particularly depressing stretch of Boulevard St. Laurent.

Is it wrong that to me, this guy is Ricky Martin? Anyone know who he is? Am I being massively un-hipster and ignorant?

. I

Up close, this one's my favourite as it's just so detailed, and the style kiiiiind of reminded me of Daniel Clowes, which is always and forever a good thing:

And just when I thought it was safe to return my trusty camera to my bag, what should I see but RACOON GRAFFITI!!!! Since being in Montreal, it has been observed that I have small mammal tourettes: whenever I see a dog, I point at it and yell 'HUSKY!' / 'FRENCH BULLDOG!' / 'YORKSHIRE TERRIER!'. This evening, it was 'FERRET!!!!'. But when I saw this particular work of art, it was impossible for me not to shout 'OMFG, RACOON GRAFFITI!'. Any city where racoons are high on people's list of 'things what I'm going to graffiti today' is a city I want to be in.

Franglais.

While Montreal is essentially a completely Francophone city, there are weird instances where French and English are woven into a sentence to appeal to speakers of both languages. My first encounter of this was when we walked past Starbucks, and I commented 'oh, that's weird, why is it called 'Cafe Starbucks Coffee' in Montreal?'. Obviously, to the non-fool, it's clear that it's caled Cafe Starbucks/Starbucks Coffee depending on which language you speak, but they squish it all together for reasons of aesthetics.
Here is a case in point of Montreal's concession to the English language:

Reconstruction of Greene Avenue / Reconstruction de Avenue Greene. Weird.
xx