Montreal!

border guards have infinite power over you basically so they are more likely to feel like gods and thus be bad

I'm pretty sure I hear them call themselves "border gods" when they talk about their jobs

everyone just assumes it was a slight mispronunciation

but i know what they said

considering a visit around July 23ish

would people be up for a FAP on the 3rd or 4th of July?

(is there anything exciting I should stay into the weekend for? otherwise planning on moving on to TO for w/e bcz a friend has just moved there and is working already)

[mh come up early!]

thunderstorms bring no relief here, huh

Loooved swimming at Parc Jarry on that one sunny day though

So far I'm impressed with the pools in this city

would people be up for a FAP on the 3rd or 4th of July?

(is there anything exciting I should stay into the weekend for? otherwise planning on moving on to TO for w/e bcz a friend has just moved there and is working already)

[mh come up early!]

― pink, fleshy, and gleeful (sic), Friday, June 21, 2013 8:24 AM (3 days ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

i would like to meet montreal ilxors and other ilxors. we don't have specific plans for any of the days we're there, but meeting during the day or for dinner would make things a lot easier for us than some night-time bar activity.

i might be super busy but i also might be able to hang on the 3rd/4th, my ilxmail mail works last time i checked

day or dinner suits me fine

n/a, sorry, i've been super busy and not looking at ilx!
i'll fb a link to my things to do column for the upcoming week when it's posted on thursday
jazz fest does start on friday though... lots of free outdoor stuff. only caveat is that it's downtown and it can get crowded later in the day. depends on how you're feeling about people and "jazz" i suppose.
here's hoping it doesn't thunderstorm and rain while you're here as much as it's been doing lately.

also, i am into going for dinner! :)

that's cool - we don't have much of an agenda at all other than having fun and being on vacation. thanks!

It is our 10th wedding anniversary in late August and Montreal seemed suitable, mais je parle Francais comme une vache Espagnole. Which is to say, I get by ok.

― J'ackHughes (admrl), Wednesday, June 19, 2013 2:03 PM (6 days ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

Montreal must be a popular anniversary destination--the bf and I have been making it the destination for our anniversary trip (late June/early July) for a few years now but he's got a summer job this year that makes it impossible. I'm secretly more bummed about this than I'm letting on.

i love how many gardens planted lilies, here

96% sure I won't be in Montreal until a bit or a bunch later now - realised it'd be 4th July and that might be amusing to stay in USA for...

but you'll miss canada day (july 1)

(there isn't much canada day stuff in montreal)

due to the anti-Anglo moving day conspiracy, I hear

(joeks)

we're here. just wandered around rue st-denis and ate pizza and had our credit card rejected at the grocery store five minutes after it worked fine at the pizza place. serious tourism begins tomorrow.

I got hella lost driving thru Montreal a couple weeks ago

p sure you live in america, you were real lost

It's an island, just take any road for long enough and you'll get out or end up in the water

i might be in montreal on the 4th

we fappin or what

yes! will ilxmail you flops when i know for sure

we ate at petit alep tonight, it was really good

yes!!

are you having a good time?

sorry the weather has been shitty... this is usually the good time of year, weather-wise, but this has been a bummer summer.

what are you doing next? need any suggestions or anything?

we are having a great time! weather has been pretty good imo, yeah it's been cloudy but it hasn't been rainy or sweltering so that's ok with me. the main touristy things we haven't done yet are go up mount royal (because of the cloudiness) and parc jean drapeau (also because of the cloudiness), also we have tickets to the insectarium but haven't done that yet.

i guess we mainly need suggestions of less touristy things to do, like neighborhoods that you can walk around and see cool things and then find a good restaurant to eat at.

obv there's tons of that right around where we're staying but it was also fun going over to wherever the marche jean talon and petit alep are and just walking around

have you done the jean-talon market then a picnic in jarry park thing yet?

oh. there ya go.

i would also suggest a stroll around the parc lafontaine environs.

have you done old port? you can walk around there and get a lobster roll out of a shipping container at muvbox!

It's another year of JFL, which means another year of them making a big flashy website where you have to click through images to see everything that's playing. I inevitably miss something each year because the site is so miserable. Is there some website out there with a decent search function (or even better -- one where I can ctrl+f through it) and less of this newfangled flash/xml/java/actionscript/etc eyeball clusterfuck bullshit?

we were in the vicinity of old port this morning but i don't know if we did old port. we walked along the water for a while but down near the weird spa boat and then wandered around old montreal.

you basically did it.

JFL website is worst

so the worst, ugh, it makes no sense!! i just want to see a list of shows! but no, it's a fucking maze. hahaha indeed.

i have been so busy these days. ironically, mostly writing about things to do in montreal...
perhaps go out to the insectarium on friday if still here then? there's this thing at olympic stadium, which is close by to the botanical gardens/insectarium, called First Fridays, in the afternoon, where there are food trucks and activities for kids.

olympic stadium is a giant concrete behemoth far from downtown (though has two metro stations!) that the city/province has been trying to revitalize with events like this. but the stadium just dwarfs everything and makes people, well, me at least, feel insignificant and alone. i still have a weird hope for it though.

it's sad that there is no baseball :(

;_;

tbr the terribleness of the jfl website was factor #2 in not coming to Montreal this week

though just noticed on twooter two Mexican friends from Sydney are there today, d'oh

realized that if you click on any 2-for-30 show and click the "buy with another show for 30" button it BRINGS YOU TO A LIST THAT YOU CAN COPY INTO NOTEPAD OR EXCEL

WHY IS THIS NOT AVAILABLE IN AN EASIER WAY

anyway i am picking shows in fucking excel now so THAT'S better

we've already been to the botanic garden and the biodome, so i am very familiar with the olympic stadium. but i didn't know about first fridays so thanks for that tip!

we have just for laughs in chicago too and its website is also hard to navigate. we managed to go and see maria bamford anyways.

oh also, there is this free outdoor circus show with 40 acrobats climbing a tower thing at square/park at the corner of berri and ste-catherine every night at 7 and 10 - http://montrealcompletementcirque.com/en/evenement/babel/
i know downtown is not the place one always wants to be, but this is pretty cool i think, esp for kids

also there should be a food truck or two around there too, but I don't know which ones

There are a million websites that purport to show you the location of the food trucks, but none can seem to manage the incredibly complicated operation of putting a pin on a map and then taking it away again.

Had an idea. What about a food truck that's just a bakery that drives around and has fresh bread.