Montreal

 Saturday, August 24, 2024

The plan is to leave for Montreal at nine, see as much as we can, and deliver Alex to the airport at four for his seven p.m. flight back to Israel.  As with all good plans, if goes a bit awry.  It's more like ten when we finally hit the road and the border crossing which usually is a breeze, or so we're told, takes more than forty-five minutes! We're in two cars, since everyone but Janet is coming on this adventure.  David wanted to ride in Grandma's car; but he has to be with his parents to cross the border and Ben's rental car is the only other one big enough to take the rest of the crew.  That means that we have to meet up close to the border, switch a couple of drivers and passengers, cross the border, then switch back! Kristina is in our car and all the younger generation is in Ben's

David and Elizabeth patiently waiting for the crew to assemble.

Ginger has set the timer;  but she doesn't make it to her spot in time!

Ah!  That's better!  and we even got Gus in the photo!

Big deal, geese, right?  But they're on a golf course!

There's a large Amish community here.

The first part is easy, since everyone knows where the Aldi's is on our side of the border.  Ben and Elizabeth take Ginger's car and Ginger and I head to Ben's rental. There's the grueling wait while the border guard gives everyone in every car (we assume from the time he spends) the third degree.  It's particularly annoying since the only other open lane seems to sail along and there are two lanes that are closed! Anyway, Ginger answers all his questions and he compares everyone's passport to their faces and we're off to the Tim Horton's we've agreed on. We get there and the kids are nowhere to be seen.  Ginger calls Ben and they are at another Tim Horton's on the same road!

Crossing the Saint Lawrence River

There is actually an island between the US and Canada that belongs
to the Akwesasne Mohawks!

Presently we've gone the 0.3 miles to the next TH and it all works out because there was time for David to have a Nutella donut which he apparently adored! And now we're off to Montreal. All the signs are in French and the speed limits are in kilometers, which we expected.  We didn't expect the car to know we'd crossed the border and to change the speedometer to kilometers!

I remember when we had minimums on our highways.

Chinatown!

As we're driving we get a text and then a phone call from Elizabeth. She's been on Yelp and has found a restaurant they would like to go to for lunch.  It's called Schwartz's Deli and is apparently quite as famous as the one in New York.  We had previously agreed to park in a garage near the Basilique Notre-Dame in the Old City; but that part of the plan has changed, too.  We're going to look for street parking.

We get to the city around one and luck into a parking place that should only be a couple of blocks from the deli.  I think the sign says that there's no parking between eight and six, Monday through Friday. There's another sign but I'm not sure what that one is all about, so we chance it.  Then there's the trick of paying for the space.  We know how a payment machine works, but you have to know the number of the space and they don't all have numbers.  We figure we can interpolate between the spaces and decide it is PB318.  It's next to PB319 and a couple down from PB316.  The machine says there isn't such a space and we give up.  We're tourists from another country and it's Saturday anyway. Maybe it's free on Saturdays! We tried!

Turns out the line for the deli is ridiculous and after we all meet up we decide to just walk along and see what we see.  We see a little soup dumpling place and that sounds great!  We only have to wait a few minutes for them to find a place for the ten of us!  We have two tables side by side and that's nearly half the restaurant! You can get steamed or fried dumplings and you can have a combination order with an appetizer/salad/dessert, a choice of dumplings, and a beverage.  The other table jusst orders several kinds of dumplings and shares.  Our table opts for the combination order and Ben and Elizabeth don't want to share.  But Ginger and I do.  We order fried dumplings with shrimp and coriander and steamed dumplings with lamb and coriander.  Ginger gets the salad and I choose the sweet potato cakes and we get a pot of chrysanthemum tea.

Soup dumplings are always a treat, although these seem to be heavy on the lamb and light on the soup. The fried ones are quite lovely.  Ginger says her salad with lettuce, peppers, and onion is spicy! The sweet potato cakes are basically sweet potato, lightly fried and covered with sesame seeds, in a bit of honey.

After lunch we want to go to the basilica and will try for the parking garage that is closest.  After sitting in New York-style traffic for quite a while we get to the address of the parking garage.  It's now a construction site.  The kids are even more stuck that we and time is fleeting so we abandon that plan and head for the airport so that Alex doesn't miss his flight.

People, cars, construction!

There must have been a wedding or something at the basilica because
there are people all dressed up coming out of it.

We opt not to actually go all the way to the airport and instead tell the kids we'll meet them down the road somewhere.  Thank goodness or GPS and cell phones!  Back in the day this would have been a nightmare! We text locations intermittently and finally agree to meet back at "our" Tim Horton's. They are out of Nutella donuts, but there's one last croissant with Nutella filling!  That's mine!

David has been such an amazing traveler!!  He's kind of over it now, but a bite of Grandma's donut helps a lot and having Mommy and Daddy appear it a welcome sight.  We're close enough to home now whtat we decide to only switch cars once and Eliot drives Ben's rental over the border, which means he has to field the questions.  He does great and the only potential hitch, "Who's car is this?" goes well with "It's a rental".  The guard, a VERY serious woman, wants to know who rented it and Eliot waves vaguely in Ginger's direction and says, "They did". Amazingly that's good enough!!

Isaac knows the way home from here and the kids are all very patient with the older generations questions about their plans and dream jobs. 

Janet is so pleased to have everyone home again.  It's so sad that she couldn't go to the airport to see her son off on his return trip;  but her throat is still sore and no one wants to get sick. I don't think she's tested again but she's still symptomatic.

Dinner is an "every man for himself" affair and there are many choices among the leftovers.  Elizabeth makes quesadilla's from the tortillas and leftover steak for her trio.  Ginger and I have sandwiches with the leftover cold cuts.  I lost track of everyone else.  It's been a really long day and although there was talk of playing Herd Mentality people begin drifting off while Eliot practices for an audition with the Philadelphia Symphony in a couple of weeks.  Isaac and Ella are waiting to hear whether they booked gigs on the Disney cruise.

I'm so beat that I crash really early and will get up early tomorrow to write this entry!