montreal journal - day 2

We woke on our second morning in Montreal just as late as we had the day before. When we had told Louise that we'd take breakfast around 9:30 our first morning, we thought of it as a one-time occurrence to allow ourselves to recover from jetlag. For two people who typically wake before their alarms on weekends, we actually rested on this trip (that's probably the point) and fell into the habit of taking the latest breakfasts of almost all of the b & b guests. We were only outdone by a woman who arrived from Toronto late in our stay and may still be sleeping for all we know.

At breakfast (light crepe-like pancakes with fresh berry sauce), Louise offered us a few suggestions for the day. She had good things to say about the Marche Jean Talon (the largest of the markets in town) and let us know that Wednesday nights were free at Montreal's Contemporary Art Museum. For those of you out there who aren't really interested in reading all of these long posts, aren't you glad we just gave you an elevator speech version of our day? If you truly love us and think we're pretty damn funny, read on.

We caught the Metro up to the market from the Mont Royal stop, which is very nearly the bleakest station in town (that dubious distinction is reserved for the gulag that is Cote-des-Neiges). Jean Talon is out on the Northern end of little Italy where a larger ethnic population is evident in all of the international restaurants and African internet cafes. After coming from the abundance of artisan produce of the Portland Farmer's Market, the outdoor farmers' stands didn't captivate us. The real draw here was a small spice importer run by the deVienne family named Olives et Epices. This shop was a veritable wonderland of seasonings and we spent a good hour staring in rapt admiration at the array. After having devoted over 15 minutes to discussing whether we should get the Madascar or the Tahitian vanilla bean, we knew it was time for us to make our purchases and move on with our day. We selected some gifts and decided on a box of Thai and Indonesian spices for ourselves (oh - and we went with the Organic Madagascar vanilla bean).

Post-market we were feeling a bit peckish, but of course any old restaurant would not do. We headed out into the surrounding neighborhood in search of an Armenian bakery. [Perhaps it is worth mentioning here that we weren't as savvy as we seemed when it came to finding local favorites. We had the amazing assistance of ...an endless banquet, a great food blog written by two Montrealers. Without their guide, we wouldn't have eaten nearly so much. It was like having a friend with great taste offer you all of their recommendations.] On the way to the bakery, we came upon this sign, which caused A to sing "faites la pause, faites la pause, faite a faite a faite a that kit kat bar" for the rest of the day. This caused P to declare, "Faites la pause from that song." Ah, love. Turns out, Armenian pizza is fantastic. From Chez Apo, got take out lamajoun (a flatbread covered in spices, spinach and cheese), sesame-studded falafel and tzatziki. This photo from lunch pretty much captures A's trip experience.

Strolling back through Petite Italie, we stopped into a Montreal institution - Quincaillerie Dante. This is one of those places that we keep telling people about when we try to describe Montreal. It is a cooking supply store in an Italian neighborhood with a difficult to pronounce French name ("hardware store") and a large stock of guns. That's right, it's a hunting/cooking shop where old women bickered in three languages over stockpots as businessmen on their lunch breaks stared down the sights of rifles.

After the superlatively good bagels from breakfast the day before, we knew we'd have to get some from the source. We'd heard good things about both St. Viateur and Fairmount bagels, but as Fairmount proved much harder to find, we chose to go there. We got one black (poppy) and one white (sesame) and wished we'd gotten a bag. Taking them back to our room, we tore into them immediately and found the crust to have a great snap to it and their interiors to be chewy like a soft pretzel. Seriously good bagels. We'll have to do a little comparison with stateside ones.

Once we felt revived, we ventured out to the Montreal Museum of Contemporary Art to horn in on the free admission night. They were showing a great exhibit by Brazilian photographer Vik Muniz, who recreates photos and famous paintings in a variety of "unique" mediums (coiled string, dust, spaghetti sauce, trash, colored plastic toys, chocolate syrup, Pantone color chips). Apart from how great it was to see Warhol's Jackie series in ketchup, the most striking of his pieces was a series of graphite sketches of famous TimeLife photos he drew from memory then photographed in soft focus. Among them were images that are familiar to American society - the flag raising over Iwo Jima, the Vietnamese girl burned by napalm, John Lennon in New York. But all of Muniz's renderings were slightly off from their reality, revealing that our memory of these images was comprised of their emotional impact much more than their visual intricacies. But seriously, chocolate sauce Jackson Pollock. Seriously.

Returning to Little Italy for dinner, we stopped in at Bottega, a chic looking Italian place with a powerhouse of a Neapolitan wood-fired oven that cooks a pizza in 90 seconds. We devoured their housemade sausage with a lightly dressed broccoli rabe, followed up with a simple mozarella, tomato and anchovy pizza and topped off our meal with a slightly exotic chocolate and pear tart (it had a starfruit garnish). All in all, the place reminded us so strongly of trattorias we had visited in Italy, from the simple, fresh presentations to the pleasantly boisterous atmosphere.

Despite our illnesses, we still had it in us to stop by a local bar for a drink. In an old bathhouse, Bily Kun (Czech for "white horse") had white tiled floors and mounted ostrich heads graced the walls. It was the kind of place that made you feel cooler for being there. We had two great local beers, which, by the way, Montreal has a lot of. Neither of us gravitate towards fruity beers, but the St. Ambroise apricot wheat beer was one-of-a-kind. The Cheval Blanc (French for "white horse" - coincidence? no.) blanche was like an adult Corona - malty, crisp and served with a lime - and a terrible choice for cold Montreal weather.