Ottawa Vignettes

Went on a road trip to Ottawa (Canada's capital, pub quiz fans). It's fair to say, I was excited.

The beautiful parliament and senate buildings. If Disney princesses designed centres of government, they would probably look something like this.

Ottawa has big love for Queenie. Recent stained glass window in the senate building. Vicky and Liz and none of those dudes in between uglying it up. Liz looks pretty mad that Vicky has unrepentantly worn the same pearl drop earrings as her.

We got a access all areas backstage pass for our tour because our friend is a legal secretary for one of the senators. I despise queue jumping. Except when I am the one doing it. Mwahahahahaha.

Fairy tale princesses at work again. One of the senators, who was a bit beastly looking, was all like 'I'll give you this fancy ass library and all you have to do is promise to never leave and develop a special brand of stockholm beastiality'. I was like 'yeah cool, but talking clocks and candlesticks freak me out, so I'll give it a miss, good luck on beating that curse though, I'm rooting for you'.

The thing is, this art installation looks very much like a garden with a path. And anyway, that little girl was doing it first. I am a little bit proud to say, this was not the only occasion we got told off in the National Museum of Modern Arts. Then we rewarded our misadventures with dinner and wine.

Osheaga

The view of Downtown from Jean Drapeau park, home of Osheaga. 

My building is a couple of blocks from the one with the spikey pyramid on the top.

Last weekend I finished at 12 on Friday (the beauty of Summer Fridays!) and headed off to Osheaga.

It's your typical 3 day weekend festival involving various bands, both Anglo and Francophone, ranging from stupid middle aged men stood behind DJ decks pretending to be a)youthful and b)musicians (can you tell I have no love for dance music?) and the real ethereal and beautiful stuff. See Exhibit A:

Oh Florence, yes I will say your name.

It was more than fantastic to go to a festival where it didn't rain at all, no-one expected me to camp and I could get the metro there and back. (However good your mum is at getting you to the backdoor of a festival, it's still even better to just jump on a train and get door to door in 30 minutes including a stop for pizza).

If you'd like to recreate my festival experience (and why wouldn't you), you'll need the following:

- a whimsical park complete with worrying amounts of open water combined with (only slightly, Canada is very civilised) drunk people

- warm beer, ice lollies and poutine (more on this later)

- the following playlist (find it via Spotify lovers):

Heaven - The Walkmen

Carry On - Fun

Shuffle - Bombay Bicycle Club

Dirty Paws - Of Monsters and Men

No You Girls - Franz Ferdinand

Crew Love - The Weeknd

Shake It Out (Benny Benassi Remix) - Florence + the Machine

Heartlines - Flo again (she's good enough to get two)

Hoppipolla - Sigur Ros

Electric Feel (Justice Remix) - MGMT

Montreal - Velo (OK they weren't at the festival but the rest of the playlist is lacking some Frenching)

Sunshine and not a pair of Wellington boots in sight. 1-0 to Canada

P.S.The hot tip on this festival came from a guy who I sort of met at a Wimbledon party, but over Skype. I think the lesson here is, never let being thousands of miles away stop you WOOing (winning others over, GAWD, you mean you've not got it in your top 5? loser) the hell out of any social gathering.

Things I like about Montreal: Bike lanes

Hey blog fans! Sorry it's been a while, I've just been getting on with it a bit, y'know?

Anyway work's good, weather's still good, it's basically all good.

So this weekend I went on a little adventure. I started the day with a little brunch, sat outside in the sun. And because food is great, here's what I ate (sensing a theme to these posts?):

So my new gal pal and I kind of had to do something about the amount of stodge we had eaten and Montreal had the answer: bicycle adventure!

In Montreal they have a similar system to Boris' Bikes (but probably better because Johnson is a div) where you can find a set of bikes every block or so and you can rent them for super cheap. Now, anyone who's heard the story of the time I bought a £15 bike from Gumtree, knows that me and bikes aren't always bezzer mates. However, many holidays where the rest of the fam insists that we hire bikes in the middle of the day in the super heat, has sort of prepared me to love a city bike tour. And Montreal, for a built up city, is so set up for bikes, it has great bike lanes! I would normally freak out about driving on busy city centre roads on a bike with no helmet (soz Mum, there wasn't one available) but here it was no problem.

We headed north-east of downtown to an area called The Plateau (lovely name right?) and Mile End. Mile End is the area where a lot of the big student protests that happened earlier in the year began. Luckily for us, the neighbourhood was peaceful and gloriously sunny. We dropped out bikes off and wandered around suburbia. 

A little bit of Sir Scott in Canada?

An extra special part of the day was thanks to my friend's guidebooking: 'apparently one of Montreal's best ice cream shops is just round the corner, would probably be a bit rude not to take a look'. Oh yes, it would be.

 If hobbits did fancy pants dairy products...

I had blackberry sorbet and praline and yes, it was as good as it looks. Much ice cream eating did mean it was time to get back on the bikes to work it off and this time we headed a little further out of town towards Little Italy. This area turned out to be a little less exciting than Mile End but we did stumble on a truly magnificent farmer's market. Now, I love a farmer's market, especially when there's tasters (Stockbridge on a Sunday!) and this one had tasters with bell's on! Plus, a few vegetables that neither of us had actually seen before, live lobsters, an oyster shucking bar and more maple syrup than I could really comprehend.

Multi-coloured chilli tree!

 Teeny tiny 'tatoes

 I know a boy who is going to enjoy these

Just a small portion of the maple syrup on offer

So after the market, stuffed and happy, we wobbled back to downtown (downhill on the way back is always nice!) and said good bye to our bikes. Cracking day!

First Week in the Office

The picture above is the glorious view from the top of Mount Royale. I took this picture on Wednesday lunch time. Mount Royale is just behind the building I work in and you can to the top and back in a lunch hour - how great is that?

This is particularly great in the gorgeous sun that you can see here - take a look at how it sparkles through the trees on the way up to the top...

Other highlights from my first week include a very North American style motivational meeting thing that involved hundreds of people talking about what we do well - and then 'karate chopping' (that's what it's called right?) a piece of wood with something we want to stop doing. It all seemed a bit silly at first (I'm British and cynical) but was actually really satisfying to do and probably about as Jackie Chan as I'm ever going to get. Here's the board I smashed through and for future reference: don't mess with me, I'm badass.

Also on my desk: lovely stationary courtesy of lovely work pals

I'm not going to talk too much about what I do at work but what I will say is that the major, fundamental difference between work here and at home, is that everything that combines food and work is so much better here. Case one: every meeting has food and drinks and they are so good (the kung fu meeting had cookies, a great fruit selection, all kinds of tea, great coffee and exciting selection of sodas - it wasn't even over lunch or anything). Case two: Friday team lunch. We went to this breakfast type place (breakfast is massive here, which suits me just fine) and I had the following:

It's called a Breakfast Pizza. The base is halfway between pizza dough and a pancake. Baked into it are sweet apple pieces, then its topped with cheddar and ham. I love sweet/salty combos more than ANYTHING (are you boring eaters freaking out yet?) so this was perfect. On the side were two eggs (over easy, baby) and fried taters. Oh and fruit, for health, y'know? Anyway, I got into the Canadian spirit and poured the maple stuff over...all...of..it! It was sublime and pretty much had to roll back to the office. 

OK that's enough about work (I know I didn't really talk about work at all - but that's the boring bit right?).  Before I go, check out these pictures - Montreal is gearing up for its comedy festival and I can't wait to see how it's weird stuff compares with The Fringe - more on that later.

Here's looking at you kid

Ah..so that's how you get the ship in the bottle...

Things I like about Montreal: Architecture

This is a picture of McGill University's Medical School (or part of it at least). Something I liked instantly about Montreal is its architecture. Cities often have beautiful old architecture (like my beloved Edinburgh) or flashy new skyscrapers (recent visit to the architecturally magnificent Chicago). Montreal is special because old and new sit together so charmingly.

Anyone who knows about my academic interests will know that I'm a fan of postmodern theory. Now, I don't want to go on about it too much (geeky), but a key element of the postmodern is when disparate styles, which should not work together, some how come together as something which has a meaning that shifts, isn't quite whole or sensible, and is yet profound. Now that's kind of a pretentious way to say that Montreal has a crazy mix of architectural styles but it really works. 

I'm sure as I grow more familiar with my temporary home, I'll find more treasures. But for now, here's just a couple I saw today on my walk home from work.

Shiney shiney deco shopping centre. I love the pointy arches and the corner cut-outs further up. (Wish my best friend and soon-to-be architect was here to tell me the proper names - what-up JPB?)

The red Hogwarts-esque building on the corner is owned by Sothebys. This is on the same block as the not so picturesque 60s/70s tower block that I work in. Anyone else think that plant thing looks like it came straight out of The Sims? Definite money cheat purchase, right?

View from the Roof

View from my pool: cool art-deco 'scraper 

Oh heya, how's it going?

I started this post at the weekend, sat by my roof top pool. The sun was shining, the delicious scent of dead animal wafted from the barbecue and I was very content. My iPad, on the other hand, was not. Like a typical Brit on holiday, it informed me 'iPad is too hot and needs to turn off'. Typical. So my post continues tonight, on my bed, which doesn't make for such a great setting but I guess it'll do.


So I wanted to tell you all about my first weekend in Montreal!

On Saturday, I woke up late and finally finished my unpacking. My apartment is now decorated with arty postcards and friendly faces (the trademark of every room I've had since my first year of uni) and my bathroom looks properly full and girly.

The problem with unpacking and decorating is that, by it's nature, it's always accompanied by a lot of 'faffing about'. By the time it was done, it was early evening. Worried that I had wasted a whole day, I was about to head out for a wander when I bumped into a neighbour I'd met on my first evening. We got chatting and he told me about a party upstairs. Did I want to go? Hell yes I wanted to go.

On entering, I was greeted by a whole load of people exclaiming how much they loved British accents and a lovely lady presented me with a Strongbow. By her manner, I believe I was expected to consider this some sort of delicacy so I smiled warmly and the evening went from there...

By midnight, I found myself in The Village, Montreal's answer to Canal Street. The area is pedestrianised and, like its populace, incredibly well turned out. The club we got to (don't ask me the name, I've forgotten) had three floors - cool latin tunes with awesome dancers (J-Bizzle and his better half's kinda thing) on the first floor, 90s/00s dance classics on the second and techno on the third. Obviously it was 90s all the way pour moi. I drank Montreal beer which was surprisingly cheap and dragged myself home around 2. 

Pink bubbles in The Village

So Sunday, I was kinda sleepy but managed to rouse myself in order to attend Elaine's wonderful Wimbledon party (via Skype so no delicious Pimms for me). Sadly, I discovered I can no longer access iPlayer and the connection I did find was pretty delayed. This meant I spent most of my morning watching my friends watch the tennis rather than watching it myself. C'est la vie.

Sensing Murray's impending doom as the roof went over, I went to the shop in order to find some consolatory snacks. And just look at what I found!!

Problem was, after eating all of these, I really had to do something to make up for my binge. Fortunately for me, my building has a rooftop gym and pool. Which is, not so coincidentally, where you found me at the start of this post...so I guess it's a good place to end.

I've had two days at work now but I'll tell you all about that in the next post. Teaser: it involves kung-fu.

Bisous.

Day One: Sunshine and Tea

Today I woke up in Montreal.

The sun was shining, I had the whole day to relax, explore, soak up some much needed vitamin D.

For years, I have told the world and myself that I am no sun worshipper, that I actually prefer autumn and my outfits always look better when it's blustery. But today, I had a creeping fear, a fear that I had been lying to myself. What if I've always just told myself that my hair looks better after its been soaked through and wind blown dry? A coping mechanism to deal with British weather?

Back in the sunshine of the very un-British summer, I found myself with another conundrum, one a little more practical. I was in need of a brew.

I didn't bring any food with me, even the sandwich from the plane had been lost at the airport thanks to a stern customs lady. Fortunately, I have wonderful friends who had sent me off with a care package including, among less tasteful items, Tetley tea bags. Problem was: no milk. And I have never been nor ever will be, one of those people who can drink tea without milk. It's unnatural, OK.

Thus began my quest.

My apartment is just off the main shopping street in Montreal. My wonderful taxi driver told me on arrival: this is the centre of the centre. Good news. But H&M does not sell milk. Neither does Forever 21. I know, because I checked.

Reluctantly turning away from the shops, I walked in the other direction, right into the middle of the Montreal Jazz Festival. So, of course, I stopped, drank an iced latte, listened to some jazz and watched the cool kids mingle with the tourists.

Sadly, the latte did not cure my tea craving. So I journeyed on. After a couple of blocks, I found myself in China Town. Chinese supermarkets must sell milk right? Nope, apparently not. Keep going.

My next stop was the tourist information office. Guy behind the till looked at me blankly and told me he didn't live round here and didn't know. Thanks for your help, guy.

I was just about to turn home, when I spotted a women with a grocery bag. Better still she answered my enquiry with a Yorkshire brogue. How comforting. She directed me to a shop which turned out to be one block away from my building. Go figure.

I drank my cup of tea over Facetime with my Mum. We have it the same (strong but milky no sugar, if you're wondering).

This stall sold lots of maple syrup. It did not sell milk.