Montreal, Quebec—Day 196

Today was a great day. I met up with Laura, her sister Ester from Toronto, and Arianna, whom I met two days ago. Since Esther was in town, Laura and Arianna were already planning on showing her some of the sights in the Old Montreal/Chinatown area and so they invited me along to go sightseeing with them.

It was wonderful. We started off with dim sum at a place in Chinatown which was fun. It was my first experience with dim sum and at this place waiters brought around different foods for you to try (such as wontons, squid, shrimp balls—things like that) and then you select what you want to eat. Judging their reactions when we passed on things such as squid, we all agreed that they must have thought we were missing out on the true delicacies. To top it off all of the tables were covered in layers upon layers of plastic (much like a white trash bag really) and at the end of your meal they would clear the table by literally picking up the dishes by grabbing the sides of the plastic and pulling it all together in a sort of bag. Very efficient and clean, I guess!

We then headed over to the Old Montreal district and walked around a bit near the Notre Dame Cathedral (where, apparently, Celine Dion got married among other important things) and saw the old part of Montreal near the port. Luckily the day was just beautiful (unlike the rain that we have had for the past two days that I have been here) so it was hot and sunny as we strolled along.

We basically made our way to different parts of town from there—up through a main square area and past the City Hall where several coaches and fancy cars were awaiting wedding parties. We then walked through some really nice areas of Montreal, which I probably would have missed being on my own, and eventually made it to a fabulous ice-cream place where even the smallest ice cream lets you have three choices of flavors.

I then said goodbye to the girls and headed back to the hotel to do a little work before meeting up with Andrea. The funny thing was that when I met up with Andrea, we headed out to a party and guess who was showed up! Arianna, Esther and Laura—small world!



(c) 2004 Sarah Galbraith. All Rights Reserved.