Knock, Knock, Knocking, on the hotel door.

Knock, knock , knock. Three knocks, not really loud, like someone knocking with just the knuckle of their index finger. It was enough to pull me out of my deep sleep. Dazed, I sat up getting out of the cocoon I had been enjoying on the couch. Where was I? Oh yea, I was in the living room of the Hotel room that we rented in Montreal. I looked toward the two bedrooms. The doors were closed. I waited a second to see if anyone else heard the knocking. Did I even hear knocking? I was asleep, maybe it was a dream.

Despite being groggy I gently moved my body off the couch. My legs were surprisingly working. Slowly making my way over to the main door I wondered if it was the maid or some hotel worker with the wrong room. It was just before 9am. How many hours did I sleep? Apparently not enough.

The door had one of those fish eye peep holes. I cautiously peered through as though a finger were to stick out of the hole and poke me in the eye. The image I saw was a bit unnerving. It was Hilary. She was standing there, looking straight ahead, waiting for someone to open the door but she was kind of vibrating like someone who had more energy than their body knew what to do with. I can't really describe it, it wasn't really vibrating but something inbetween a body twitch and a flinch.

I looked at my watch to double check the time, then looked back through the peep hole. Satisfied that I wasn't hallucinating I opened the door slowly while keeping myself behind the door, kind of like a shield. "Where does she get all this energy?", I thought. Once Hilary was in I closed the door, mumbled some kind of good morning then promptly went back to my cocoon.

Hilary sat down at one of the bar stools. Kind of like an animal freaking out before a storm, Hilary sat there, being ever so still, waiting like something was going to happen. The living room was quiet and I attempted to drift back to sleep.

It seemed like only seconds went by when people started coming into the room talking. It was like my couch was transported into the middle of some stage play where the volume was increased so people in the back of the theatre could hear. The last thing I really needed was real life surround sound. I was so tired and wanted to go back to sleep... until someone mentioned breakfast. Damn them.


"The Bagel" revisited


While Kyoko hides from my camera behind Sean, Chris takes pictures.


A cup o fruit.

For breakfast I found myself at the Bagel. A restaurant with a patio located between our hotel and the Beer Festival. It was a place I had visited on my last trip and I thought that the bagel sandwich I had there last time was pretty good. I guess someone heard me and decided to take the group there. The Force is strong with this one. Too bad my jedi mind powers couldn't get the Bagel workers to give me a free breakfast. What about a bonus for referral? Ah well.

The Bagel's service was a tad slow for our beer enthusiasts. There was only one waitress tending to the entire restaurant. It was a small restaurant, but still. The beer people wanted to rush over to the beer fest to stake out a table pronto. I, on the other hand, felt no pressure of time and my only goal was to walk up to the Fairmount bakery, buy a couple dozen bagels, maybe take a few pictures along the way, and return to the hotel. Maybe take a nap, maybe not. Easy Peasy.


I liked the blue, it reminded me of my parents house when it was first painted.

With the food of breakfast consumed, the beer drinking horde jolted toward the beer fest leaving Michelle and I in a cloud of dust. At least that's how I imagined it with the speediness of them leaving. On our way to a bus stop on around St. Urban Michelle and I saw a greenish water fountain. Michelle parted ways to take a bus to to visit her uncle while I went to explore the body of water.

The fountain had a silhouette cut out of a golfer swinging and next to the golfer was a golf cart, a real golf cart, in the water. I didn't really get the reasoning behind this but it explained the green water, like a putting green. Where would I be without the Wii and the Sports CD?


The golf cart and the green water.

While taking photos of the fountain it occurred to me that I forgot my tripod back at the hotel. On the way to retrieve it, I noticed these photographers. One guy had two cameras and was trying to shoot something with both of them at the same time. The other guy just seemed to be taking random pictures as if to fill his memory card for the sake of filling it. I looked into the general direction that they were pointing but nothing stood out. No people, no action, no landmarks of interest, yet there were these guys taking pictures, and quite earnestly. Photographing passing tourists?


The two photographers.


Church detail


The burger place from last night

If that wasn't strange, a few minutes later while waiting on a red light some guy with a wallet hanging from a string around his neck started talking to me about my camera. "Oooh, is that a D80?". He seemed amazed at first, then was really enthusiastic when he found out it was a D200.

At first it was interesting to be talking to a stranger about camera stuff. Then the camera guy switched over from talking about stills to talking about moving from Hong Kong to Montreal and owning the crappy video camera he had in a plastic bag. With no prompting on my part, he explained in great detail how he was trying to adapt the lenses from his Nikon F4 over to the videocam using some lens adaptors.

There are some people that blab without letting the other person get a word in edge wise or are unaware that the other person has lost interest and is struggling to maintain a listening posture, even stay awake. This guy was one of those unfortunate examples.

I felt my eyes glazing over. Energy was being sucked away. My life force meter was emptying by the second. You get the idea. My brain tried concentrating on what he was saying and my head nodded every now and then to acknowledge the little bits of info spewing from his month.
It's around that time that I noticed two people in wheelchairs zooming up the hill across the street.

I suppose the camera guy noticed my eyes flit from him to across the street. I took a quick picture. This was enough for him to change topics and eventually leave to get over to the bus stop. It was just in time as I was trying to figure out how to say "Good bye" now that I was in front of my hotel.


The hill climbing wheelchairs to the rescue.

Once back in the hotel room the couch called out to me and the next thing I realized was that I woke up about an hour and a half later to clip-clopping of hooves on the street. It was a tourist buggy rolling by.


Horse and buggy.

Almost seconds after sticking my head out to see th buggy the hotel phone rang. It was the guy at the front desk. "Do you have a car in the parking garage?". I replied "Yes, we have two.". There was a momentary pause before the phone hung up. I stood by the phone for a few minutes thinking it was a lost connection and the guy would call back to finish the conversation. Nothing.


The Cinema L'amour (for couples)

I left the hotel with tripod and made my way up to the Fairmount bakery walking up St. Laurent. It took about an hour. At the bakery I ordered two dozen chocolate bagels only to be told that there were only two left. Crap! That'll teach me to make a promise on something I have no control over. I bought the remaining two chocolate bagels along with a number of other bagels to give me a round number of four dozen. Onion, poppy, sesame, they were still warm.

The Fairmount bagel house


Dough!

I rested for a few minutes on one of the park benches in front of the bakery eating a few sesame seed bagels and watching pigeons. For some reason it really felt like a Sunday.


A moth.


A statue near Mont Royal.


Line up for Eric Lapointe

On the way back to the hotel I checked the cell phone I found I had gotten a call from Sean. He and Allison were on their way to the Bar-B Barn. The others would meet them there between 6:30pm and 7:00pm. I looked at my watch. It was 5:45pm. I was still about 15 to 20 minutes away from the hotel. I needed to drop off the tripod and bags of bagels before heading to the restaurant.

As things worked out Kyoko and Chris were at the hotel room just about to leave. We ended up splitting a cab. At the Bar-B Barn we met up with the rest of the travel gang. Linda, Darryl's girlfriend joined us there.


The Bar-B Barn


The whole hawg (nine ribs)


The group.

After the Bar-B Barn it was off to a pub, can't remember the name but it was about two blocks away from Fairmount bagels. We ended up going there after the pub as I spearheaded the campaign back to the bakery to see if they had any new chocolate bagels. They didn't. Crud.


The color of Beer

From the Fairmount bakery we walked south past Santrolpol toward the hotel. I wanted to make sure I knew what street it was on so we could go there tomorrow for breakfast/brunch.


It's Santropol!

Linda poses for Darryl in Toronto


"Why can't we have a light in Toronto?"