Day Fifty Seven: Bagels!

November 16, 2017

It might be a little dark and it might be a little cold and rainy, but these things can not deter me from my self appointed duty of cycling out for fresh bagels as early in the morning as possible. In fact, with the help of jet lag, I was lying in bed just trying to judge when it might be late enough to go.

It's not just the prospect of fresh hot bagels. It's the smooth and quiet joy of swooping through the streets. It's climbing up to Sherbrooke Street, requiring just a little exertion. Then it's the bike way on Rachel Street and the chance to think, for the 100th time, how great that they made this for bikes.

Separated cycle path in Montreal - always a pleasure to see.

And finally it's the fresh bagels. This comes with the major decision - eat one right now and be a pig, or daintily just pull off a taste. The concept of coming home with all the bagels unmolested is just not on the radar.

My trip is to this branch of the famous St. Viateur bakery. The production methods are fortunately identical.

This time out as I passed by the first French bakery I was not tempted to stop in. I must have enough baguette in my system for the present.

I was not surprised to find part of my "route barrée", which is something in Quebec very reminiscent of France. But I was surprised to see that special provision had been made for the routing the bicycle path around the obstruction. That's unusual, even perhaps in Germany.

Even though the road is torn up and it looks like the cycle way stops, there is actually a way through provided over to the right. Unusual!

Yesterday on arriving in Montreal it struck us clearly how much more beautiful Paris is. In fact Montreal is pretty much devoid of interesting architecture, we think. But an ad at the airport depicted houses in the "Plateau" area, where the stairs are outside the buildings. We have never thought of these as beautiful, but maybe, and there are lots of these houses on my bagel route. So I thought I would include an image of them for completeness.

Typical houses in Montreal's "Plateau" district. This is pretty much the most attractive the city has to offer.

We had time today to go through some blog pages with the kids. We are gratified by their interest in them. It was also great to see Joe playing with his knight and horse and to see how chic Amelia looked in her Paris outfit, heading off to school. Evee was sick today and sat on Dodie's lap most of the time.

We are not back home yet, so we will keep the blog rolling for a bit. There is a hockey game coming up on Saturday - Canadiens vs Leafs. We will stick around blogging at least for that.

Looking at the blog with Amelia and Evee. They especially liked the family history parts.

Today's ride: 6 km (4 miles)
Total: 2,109 km (1,310 miles)

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