Category Archives: cote de liesse

Monday 5th September 2016 – THEY SAY THAT A YEAR …

… is a period of 365 disappointments, and I’ve been having my fair share just recently. And another one ha reared its ugly head today. The night bus that I was planning to take tomorrow night – well, I can’t. Apparently there’s no room on it, and that’s that.

There is however another bus, but that leaves at 06:00 on Wednesday morning and so faute de mieux, I’m on that. But 06:00 in the morning – does that exist? We shall have to find out.

It also means that I shall have to stay another night in a hotel here, and for no good purpose too which is unfortunate. And “here”, as in the Comfort Inn on the Cote de Liesse, is clearly impossible as there is no way that I could be in the city centre in time for the bus.

However, wandering around in the vicinity of the coach station, I came across a street full of about 20 disreputable cat-houses, a mere 5 minutes stagger away from where I want to be and so tomorrow night I shall be installing myself in one of those.

God help the bed-bugs with me on the way!

Now I can’t remember how many times I left my bed last night. It might have been one, but on the other hand it might have been none. One thing that I do know was that we had the Sleep of the Dead.

I was in bed, as I said last night, by 21:15 and I remember nothing whatever until about 04:40. Totally painless it was.

And I didn’t feel up to doing much for the first hour and a half. I stretched out here on the sofa and took it easy with a glass of cold spruce beer and a coffee. No point in having a decent, comfy sofa if you don’t make full use of it.

Breakfast was from 06:30 and I was there very shortly afterwards (something like 06:31 actually) and here we had a minor panic. Bagels (and a toaster, coffee and orange juice) there were a-plenty. But where was the maple syrup? You can’t come to Canada and not have toasted bagels and maple syrup for breakfast. Anyway, eventually some was found and that was me all set up for the morning.

I had a companion too – a North African who told me that he was from Belgium. He was here on a tourist visa, so he said, but he was looking for work and asked me if I could help him. i gave him a few pointers, such as I know them, which isn’t very much, and then came back up here to attack some paperwork, of which there was more than enough. It didn’t help with me … err … closing my eyes for a little relaxation at some point during the proceedings.

But I can’t stay here for ever. Despite the fact that it’s Labour Day, there are things to do, places to go, people to see and all of that and so I need to sort myself out for the bus.

And I didn’t have long to wait either which was just as well because even though it was only 10:00 it was stifling hot already. The bus to the metro and the metro to the Berri-UQAM station and the coach station round the back. And this is where I had my disappointment.

deserted calm back alley rue ontario montreal canada september septembre 2016But of course you know that we don’t have problems, we have solutions and so we set off to put our principles into practice.

This isn’t a photograph of of my selected cat-house by the way. This is a photo of a very tranquil little alleyway at the back of what used to be a boot and shoe factory, and it’s right in the centre of Montreal. It wasn’t what I was expecting to find in a place like this.

typical montreal houses rue st timothée canada september septembre 2016This isn’t a photo of my selected cat-house either.

If you are a regular reader of this rubbish you will recall that I’ve been posting the odd photo every now and again of houses in Montreal and the surroundings because some of the inner-city housing has a very special charm or beauty.

And these here in the rue Timothée just go to show what can be done with a little imagination – something that seems to be sadly lacking in Europe these days.

Having resolved the issues of the next stage of my journey, the next plan was to resolve the issues of my stomach. It was lunchtime.

rue st catherine montreal canada september septembre 2016The rue St Catherine is what is described as the city’s “Latin Quarter” – something that took me by surprise seeing as how all of the signs were written in French.

It was also Gay Pride day or something in the street apparently. There were loads of same-sex couples strolling hand-in-hand or arm-in-arm. I took my time over eating my Subway sandwich (without spilling it all over the floor this year) – I didn’t want to bugger off yet.

street piano rue st catherine montreal canada september septembre 2016Last year, you may remember, they had street pianos dotted around all over the city so that anyone who fancied a quick tinkle on the ivories could go and have a play around.

They are doing the same thing this year too, and here is a pianist having a right old go on the joanna and he’s recruited a couple of vocalists to give him some accompaniment. I suppose that it’s all part of life’s rich pageant

chess match rue st catherine montreal canada september septembre 2016There’s all kinds of stuff going on in the rue St Catherine and at a certain point there are four or five giant chessboards. People give their names to the organisers and they are called up to play when a previous game is finished.

Here in this game we had a dispute over the rules of “castling” and I learned something that I didn’t know before. And that’s always good news.

We had a few moment of excitement in the rue Sainte Catherine too. A woman, coming out of a building, saw another man, went over to him to say ‘Happy Birthday!” and grabbed him in the most enormous bear-hug that went on for hours.

I was so impressed that I went over to her and told her that if that was the reaction, then I would like to say that it was my birthday too. However, I didn’t have the same treatment – not at all!

I told you that it was not my lucky day, didn’t I?

parc arthur therrien la salle verdun montreal canada september septembre 2016But by mid-afternoon the heat was thoroughly overwhelming and the only protection is flight. I flew to the Metro and took the train out to Verdun and the La Salle metro station.

Just down the road is the Parc Arthur Therrien, whoever he is when he’s at home, if he ever is, and that was my destination. It was great to see the centre of Montreal from this kind of distance rather than being stuck in the middle of it in this heat.

saint joseph oratory parc arthur therrien verdun montreal canada september septembre 2016Over there in the distance at the back of Mount Royal is the Oratory of Saint Joseph which is on the Cote-des-Neiges. You may remember that we visited the Oratory in … errr … 2013 wasn’t it?

But not today, I’m going to enjoy the sun and have a good time, watching all of the people enjoying themselves – and I say “all of the people” because there are hordes here and everyone is having fun – even all of the kids who are splashing around in the swimming pool and the ponds.

st lawrence river verdun montreal canada september septembre 2016As for me though, I headed off into the shade and found myself the first real view of the St Lawrence river for this year. The motorway bridge away in the distance (downstream, fortunately) rather detracts from the scenery, but never mind.

And so, having found a nice shady spot out of the 32°C temperature, I closed my eyes for … errr … 45 minutes and it was totally painless, I’ll tell you that! It did me the world of good too!

st lawrence river blocks of flats verdun montreal canada september septembre 2016Having hunted down the gentleman’s rest room (and had I not needed it I would probably still be asleep there now) I went for a walk along the edge of the river, watching the fishermen, the canoeists and the jet-skiers.

And also admiring the properties on the river front and how I would love to live in an apartment in a building like one of those.

And you can tell by the sky ust what kind of weather we are having today. It’s magnificent.

And so I headed back into the city and changed trains for the Jean Drapeau station on the Ile Sainte Helene in the middle of the river at the other end of the city. That ought to be nice and cool with the breeze coming in off the river as the evening draws on.

But that wasn’t to be either. The island was closed off as there was an “event” taking place there – some kind of music concert that was clearly not my type, so I headed back to town. Just round the corner from the Sherbrooke metro station, seeing as I was in that end of the city, is a little Lebanese restaurant that does an assiette falafel at a very democratic price. That was tea organised.

I headed back here afterwards, part of the way in company with a woman from the North East of England who had lived here for 8 years and couldn’t stand the heat.

And forget your white-knuckle rides in amusement parks. Take the 202 bus from DuCollege Metro Station back to here with the lady driver that I had, and you’ll have the time of your life. I ended up back here, shaken but not stirred, at 20:45 and by 21:15 I was showered and in bed, well on my way to the Land of Nod.

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Saturday 15th August 2015 – NIGHTMARE AT DORVAL

We had another “sleep of the dead” last night – this change of air must be doing me good. So after a shower I went off to see if my room rate included breakfast, but of course it didn’t. Whatever was I thinking of? Breakfast is another 11:00CHF. It’s a good job that I picked up those bread rolls last night.

view from bedroom window ibis budget hotel glattburg zurich airport switzerland On my way back to my room though, I couldn’t help but admire the view from the window right outside my door. I thought that I could hear aeroplanes close by.

So in a minute, I’m off back to the airport even though there is hours before my flight. I might find a power socket somewhere that I can plug into – there are none here of course.

The tram came pretty quickly (so quickly that I forgot to photograph it) and the journey was quite simple. And while I was travelling to the airport, I came to a conclusion. My really bad experience last night was caused by nothing more than my lack of preparation – and the hotel can take most of the blame for this (just for a change).

Had it been clear in the hotel’s publicity that there was no shuttle to the hotel (but trams 10 and 12, and bus 510 pass in front of the hotel and a 24-hour bus pass can be obtained … etc), that breakfast was 11CHF extra, and that a Swiss adapter was needed for the electricity, then I would have been prepared, and my stay there would have been quite acceptable, instead of the totally chaotic mess.

But to give you one idea of the hotel, the coffee machine in the hotel sold at 3:00CHF. The same machine installed by the same company selling coffee to a captive audience at the airport was selling at 2:50CHF.

Negotiating the maze that is the airport is by no means easy, and we had another pig-ignorant security guard who doesn’t understand the word "please". All these people who were kicked around and bullied at school when they were kids have really been able to wreak their revenge on society with the massive expansion of what is laughingly called "security". The place was totally packed with people too

duty free shop at security check in zurich airport switzerland But on thing will tell you all that you need to know about the mentality of the Swiss – the "security" screening decants you straight into a huge duty-free shop.

And the number of people wandering around the airport carrying "duty-free" carrier bags shows that this shameless selling technique really works. It would probably work even better at the other side of the security check-in too, especially if it were to sell tranquilisers to calm the nerves (and pickaxe handles to deal with the security staff).

swissair airbus 330 300 zurich airport switzerlandI’m here watching them load up my plane. It’s an Airbus A330-300. And what’s more, I’ve even found a plug that will charge up my laptop.

In fact it didn’t take too much finding – rows and rows of empty seats all over the airport but just one row every now and again with hordes of people congregated around it

Boarding the plane was straightforward and, much to my surprise, the plane seemed to be almost new. Luxury wasn’t the word and the flight over to Montreal, although the longest that I’ve been on to date, was very comfortable. My meals were excellent too. The entertainment was not really my choice – I was even offered the chance to see The Great Escape
– however it wasn’t Christmas so I didn’t bother. Instead, I had Shaun the Sheep, The Adventures of Tintin: The Secret Of The Unicorn and Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets
.

One downside of the flight, nothing to do with the company of course, is that my neighbour’s idea of personal hygene was even less than my own.

With a window seat, the views outside were superb. With the airport being busy, I’ve never seen a queue like this of aeroplanes lined up in the queue waiting to take off. It was like the M25 at rush hour with all of them here.

The plane in front of us was something quite big and we had a wonderful view from right behind of it taking off. It’s probably the most impressive sight that I’ve ever seen, and there wasn’t much room between the tail of the plane and the ground. You can understand why so many tail strikes are recorded.

Having flown over a great big pile of tundra, we hit the St Lawrence River right at Sept Iles, and I recognised it immediately from the air.

alouette aluminium smelter sept iles quebec canadaThe bay itself was easy to identify, with its seven island and a pile of big ships anchored there, but what gave the place away was the huge Alouette aluminium smelting works and the port facilities that I’d seen in 2012 on my trip up the coast.

I’d wanted to see them from inside, but failing that, a view from the air is good enough.

lafarge quarry highway 132 montreal quebec canadaAnother thing that I have mentioned in the past are the huge LaFarge quarries on the outskirts of the city. They are not very easy to photograph from outside, as I had discovered once when I had driven past them, due to all kinds of fencing, lack of parking and so on.

However, here we were this afternoon, flying right over the top and here I was, sitting by a window seat. This was far too good an opportunity to miss, wasn’t it?

unacceptable passenger delay pierre trudeau airport montreal quebec canada 15 august 2015But don’t get me started on the ariport and Immigration, will you? Every day, during the mid-afternoon, about 20 long-haul jets arrive at Pierre Trudeau Airport, Montreal. If they are all full, that’s about 6,000 passengers (plus however many come in from other destinations).

The Canadian Government’s response is to have just FOUR (and for a short while, just THREE) immigration officers on duty.

My ‘plane was about 8th in, and I had a wait of 2.5 hours. I feel really sorry for the people who came in near the end and who were stacked up on the balcony because the immigration hall was full. Nowhere to sit, no water to drink, not possible to visit the bathroom. I could go on and on … "not with a bayonet through your neck you couldn’t" – ed.

Luckily I had some good music to keep me company, and that always calms me down. But finding, once through Immigration, that all of our suitcases had been taken off the carousels and dumped on the floor (and no-one knew where they were), and discovering that I’d left my cap on the ‘plane too, and I was off again, wasn’t I?.

Luckily the hotel bus was already there so I had to take my leave of my delightful companion with whom I’d been spending a little time just recently since I encountered her in the queue and we drove the half-mile to my hotel down at the end of the runway.

Having checked in, next task was to hit the city, and there’s a bus stop right outside the hotel. The bus 202 took me from here down to the Metro at DuCollege, and the metro took me to Snowdon where I made a stunning discovery – an Indian restaurant. From Calcutta, they are, but it was the nicest Indian meal that I had had outside Stoke on Trent. Beautiful, it was.

Bad news, though, is that my little ice-cream place on the Cote-des Neiges has closed down. A tragedy! So I had to make do with some mandarins from the outdoor office.

halifax nova scotia school buses parked up cote de liesse montreal quebec canadaGetting back from the town is not quite so easy – I have to go miles to find an overpass across the Cote-de-Liesse, but I came across some nefarious, nocturnal dealings here. There’s a whole pile of school buses, all from Nova Scotia and all on temporary licence plates, parked down the road. The drivers are, apparently, staying in my motel.

It seems that they are all time-expired (you can only use school buses for a limited number of years) and are being traded in for new ones, to be driven back to Halifax.

And back here, 22:00 (04:00 in real time), I just crashed out. And that was that.

PS- my phone number seems to be working, much to my surprise. It’s the same three figures as the last 4 years, but then 740-6186. If you don’t have the first three numbers, send me a message.

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