A Little More from Montreal

June 30, 2017

Some readers are saying this blog is ending rather abruptly for them. We must say we feel the same, at least to the extent that one day you are cycling and then suddenly - you're not. Over a three month tour there comes a time (usually after three weeks) that the routine of daily cycling settles in, and being outside, continuously pedalling becomes your life. When it stops, it is somehow more wrenching than when it starts.

There is of course no help for this, save getting back out there on another trip as soon as possible. And yet even now it is not as if we are home in British Columbia, sitting in our easy chair and reading the Globe and Mail. No, until tomorrow, we are in Montreal.

Montreal is a good waystation between France and Western Canada. There are still baguettes to be had, and you can still bicycle to get them in the early morning. There are even some bonuses here. I would get in trouble if I did not mention the three grandchildren first, so here they are:

But there are also bagels. Bagels (plus "smoked meat" and "poutine") are foods for which Montreal can claim some special or originating status. To put it another way, Montreal is to bagels as Camembert, France is to that round and aromatic cheese. The Montreal bagel story is a long one, but for now I will just say that each morning at 6 I have been cycling out to pick up a dozen hot ones.

On my way is Boulangerie Mr. Pinchot. It is the cheapest and best for baguette and croissant on my route. For the record, a baguette there is $2.10. That's about 1.46 in euros - only a little too expensive.

Mr. Pinchot is a typical small bakery. I am not sure if the name is a play on words or really the name of the owner.

The way to the bagel and baguette bakeries is entirely on separated cycle ways. Here you see on Brebeuf St. that the actual driving space is little bigger than the cycling space.

The bagel bakery/cafe is just an outpost of the real bakery, which is on St Viateur St. Our family lived around the corner from that original bakery, which proudly proclaims "Since 1957". However as far as that exact neighbourhood goes, our family can proclaim "Since 1943" (at least).

Inside the bagel bakery. Though this is just a branch, the production is identical to at the original location.

Heading for home, you can see more cycle way, plus a church, like in France

The "holy trinity": baguette, croissant, and bagel, all collected on my early morning cycle.

Our big activity here in Montreal happened yesterday, when we grabbed the car and kids and headed east to the small town of Granby. Granby is home to a long running zoo. It obviously is not on the scale of something like the San Diego Zoo, but you still can not properly visit it in under two days. We thought about sleeping over in Granby (at the Granby Motel, of course) but decided to stick with one day.

This was my first time behind the wheel of a car in four months, so going out into a big city with four ultra precious passengers (three kids plus Dodie) was a challenge. I set the GPS for Granby, but was sure we would go over the Jacques Cartier bridge. It's not easy to get up onto that bridge, so at first I was cool as the GPS dragged us away from the bridge. Too late we realized the thing was making for the distant Champlain bridge, over a maze of high speed tunnels and spaghetti ramps and freeways. Actively second guessing the computer we broke ranks and dove onto the city streets of Montreal, to fight our way back to Jacques Cartier. That earned us an hour crawling through moring rush hour traffic. Fortunately the kids had all fallen asleep. For me it was a rough reintroduction to the world of cars and traffic. On our bikes we would have been on that bridge in a jiffy.

The zoo came through with the things we expect these days from a zoo- naturalized enclosures, some education, pleasant plantings. I thought the prices of admission, food, and extras like the monorail or pony ride to all be overblown, but then again running a zoo must not be cheap.

On the way back we again walked in to the disaster that cars have become in big cities. We sat in literraly not moving traffic for two hours (yes two hours) just the other side of the bridge to home. For three little kids in a car, this is cruel. For adults, not so great either.

Today we made an excursion to find Amelia a bike, since she has naturally grown so much of late. It's no use trying to find them a Long Haul Trucker or such, for pootling around the back alley, so we went to the housewares/hardware chain Canadian Tire. Constraints that we walked in with ranged from Sabrina's "no branding" to Amelia's colour preferences, but selection was very limited and we just bought the one that seemed the right size.

At Granby we also picked up some Route Verte, cycle way maps for the region east of Montreal. Maybe next year Amelia will ride that with us.

Readers: there is still a little blogging left to do. Watch for at least one more page in the next couple of days.)

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