Cycling in Montréal

One of the best things to do in Montreal is to travel its fantastic bike network. According to Montrealers I spoke to, the city’s attention to cyclists is a fairly recent phenomenon. All the more amazing that the city now has over 2,400 miles of bike trails (including bike lanes, which are a little more fancy than the US version.) Take that Portland!

I’m not sure why Montreal is overlooked as a cycling haven, maybe because the bike lanes are covered in snow 8 months out of the year.  The city plans to instate  European-style  bike rentals  in 2009, which many feel would curb bike theft and help increase trips by bike.  It’s certainly a city to watch, and hopefully imitate.

Québec

If Montréal is North America’s Paris, as many guidebooks promise, then Québec is North America’s Carcasonne, or Chinon, or Mont Saint-Michel. Whatever, something quaint and French. The skinny cobbled streets and miniature houses of the old city are packed with tourists searching for history and culture, and I was among them. The city might be habitually nationalistic, as it is the territory’s namesake, but this year it is celebrating its 400th year of existence. Everything is baby blue and white in the old city and the celebrations are in full swing. The University of Québec gave Céline Dion an honorary doctorate, probably to convince her to come for the celebrations and read nationalistic poetry for four hours (not kidding).

Closer to the river most tourists lose interest, making way to galleries, real coffee and utilitarian businesses, without losing the beauty of the landscape. Right on the river Quebec has its 400-year expositions with a focus on green interactive art. The silos across the river in the last photo light up at night, with a 40-minute film chronicling the history of Québec. More photos of Québec can be seen on my flickr

Canadian Manners

I frequently have bad experiences at restaurants in Manhattan due to the obnoxiously loud volume caused by other diners.  Said diners are Americans, at leat 99 percent of the time.  Restaurants seem to add fuel to the fire by raising the volume of the music, maybe so passers-by will want to join the party.  So I was surprised when I went to Au Pied de Cochon, the busiest restaurant on a posh restaurant-row, and found I could not hear any of the conversations around me.  Yes, it was loud.  The  kitchen was open  and it was in the middle of the restaurant (see photo), and there was seating for at least 50 people. Yet people were speaking at reasonable volumes.

A more striking example of Canadian manners is what I experienced on the train to Quebec City this morning (more on that later).  The train was very quiet and as we waited to leave, I noticed that people were whispering.  Whispering.  I was ashamed of the noise my granola bar wrapper made, tainting that beautiful silence.  As the train left Montreal, the ‘captain’ came on the intercom and told us to please be respectful of our neighbors and turn our phone to vibrate mode.  I thought, “who cares?” but saw that everyone else around me was checking their ring tone setting.  So I did too.

I’ve been to Canada a handful of times but never has it struck me as being so distinct from its bratty neighbor to the south.  There is less pretension and less aggression here, which permit a more civilized way of dealing with situations and other people.  Maybe it’s socialism, but Canadians seem to be a lot more considerate of others.  It could be an the east coast thing, or maybe I’ve just had the luck of running into some well-behaved Canadians.

Staircases in Montreal

houses in montreal frequently carry an elaborate staircase. i’m tempted to ask someone on the street why this is the case, but i’m sure no one knows. i’m guessing it’s like the bay windows in san francisco: they are past-down accessories whose reason for existence no one questions. but think of san francisco and images of steep skinny streets lined with colorful bay-window clad houses pops in our heads. think of montreal and you get..? montreal doesn’t have a unifying architectural component like san francisco, but the staircases come close, even though the city doesn’t push them as such.

Vieux Montreal

even though old montreal is full of tourists, expensive cafes, furriers, lame art galleries and maple syrup shops, it is absolutely gorgeous. the stonework and its centuries of softening, the persistent vines and the inconsistent street pattern make the most cynical of urban explorers salivate. More photos of Vieux Montral can be seen here

Vacances!

oh canada ! where kilometers and miles coexist, where two languages pretend to be equal and olympians win bronze. americans come visit you because they want to soak up a new culture, and i am no different! montreal was my choice destination because it has history, a conviction to be french, sound bike infrastructure and youth culture. in the next few posts i will blog on your endearing culture and urban landscape. forgive me if i am critical of your food and business names, or if you find me comparing you to your bratty neighbor to the south. it’s not personal.

dinner and a view

 

view to the east beyond potted apple trees

Two of my local heroes, Michele and Charles Scicolone, invited me to dinner at their 2nd Ave. apartment tonight.  Michele writes cookbooks and Charles is a wine consultant, a gastronomic dream-team.  Michele supplemented the seasonal meal with terrace-grown herbs and tomatoes.  It was the first home-cooked meal I haven’t made myself in a long time.  The dream-team doesn’t eat home much as they are frequently invited out by restaurants for review; all the more kind of them to let me share a rare home-cooked meal.  Nothing beats the cleansing feeling of being able to trace and trust the food you eat.

 

i've only been as high as the 52nd floor.

Terraces have a loving quality: dwellers love the city they live in and therefore want to look at it.  But terraces are few and far between.  If buildings had more of these spaces it would 1) be more entertaining to spy on people sunbathing 2) be more green because people like to have plants.  My latest idea to save American cities is for everyone to have a greenhouse for a year-long supply of greenery and a lovely place to have breakfast.

 

view of downtown

practicing jane jacobs

jane jacobs, the darling author of urban planners, argued that it takes a neighborhood to raise a child.  she felt comfortable with her children running around her neighborhood because people knew they were her children.  she understood that if her children were misbehaving, any adult would have the right, nay, the responsibility, to scold them.  ultimately it’s a matter of protection.  you scold a child before they do something stupid.

last week i was leaning on the new bike racks (yes!) outside the laundromat gabbing with my dearest mum.  i heard something fall next to me and saw that a small boy had thrown a dirty lollipop up in the air only to watch it fall down again.  as if he hadn’t proven gravity yet, he picked up the lollipop again and launched it up in the air again.  this time it broke when it hit the pavement and he sat on a step.

but this pestilent child discovered pebbles on the sidewalk and began throwing them at the bmw parked behind me.  between his throws his mother came out and sat next to him.  he picked up another (bigger) pebble and his volley made a small dent in the car. some screaming ensued. he waited for her to turn away and threw a pebble at a moving car. more screaming.  she got up to check on their laundry and told him to sit there.

so guess what he did. he got up as soon as she had gone in, and he made sure she had.  as a mischievous smile spread across his little fat face, he made a run for it.  that’s when i decided help raise this child.

“sit down! sit down! your mother told you to sit down! sit down now!”

a stranger in sunglasses yelling in spanish was the last thing he expected; off went the smile, back down on the step he sat.  that same disappointed, sad look he had when he looked at me as i resumed my conversation with my mum was still there when i left the laundromat.  his mother was sitting with him again, explaining to another neighbor how misbehaved her son is, and how helpless she is.  she just needs a little more help from jane jacobs believers.

a swig of long island

this sunday i went to long island with some people from the international wine center (the school where i got my advanced certificate in wine and spirits). i’m usually more fascinated by concrete structures than by plants. but a grape vine is another story. we stared and poked at the vine buds, foresaw the emerging leaf structure and discussed its life cycle. we saw the vineyards the way they look most of the year: after pruning. in the summer the vine shoots will triple or quadruple in size and the current flower buds will turn into plump berries. the wine-grower will have to cut back the mesh of greenery to allow more sunlight and air to reach the grape bunches that would normally not stand a chance against the clever sun-snatching leaves. in august the nets have to be draped over the rows to discourage birds and deer. laborers will pass through the rows to thin out the grape bunches so the vine will have to send all its energy into a select bunches. the rotten grapes will be then be picked out and the nets removed right before the harvest, when the machine-harvester will pass over each vine, shaking them of their ripe fruit. i was exhausted just thinking about how much work the harvest would be, even with a machine-harvester. paying $30 for a bottle of wine never seemed more justified.

i imagined the landscape would offer more strip malls and gaudy gated communities but was pleasantly surprised. long island is a rather successful agricultural region. farms generate enough business from a carbon footprint-conscientious population, and there are zoning laws to keep farmers in business. wine tourism is booming. there are 46 vineyards on the north fork, up from 3 in the 80s. their main season is in the fall, right after the crush and when the pumpkins are ripe. the produce this time of the year was decent with lots of rhubarb, asparagus, radishes and young lettuce. my favorite part of the trip was our stop at a roadside pie place that had gigantic tasty pies for $15. ah the country!

i hate your umbrella

i thought that after 4 months of silence i would accumulate enough comments to make me feel wanted: it worked! i’m back, this time i promise. honest.

i now know where the expression “spring showers” comes from. like everything, it comes from new york. the showers come every 3 days or so and since new yorkers have a collective fear of melting, they bring out their huge umbrellas. don’t get me wrong, i like umbrellas. i think raincoats are generally ugly and the more people using personal umbrellas to match their outfits the better. note: personal umbrellas.

umbrellas are like cars: they create personal space for the user and promote a general apathy towards others. if you have a large umbrella, say one that could accommodate a family of 6, you might as well be driving an SUV. anyone who happens to be sharing the sidewalk with SUV-umbrella people has to move out of the way or face the possibility of being stabbed by one of the umbrella’s spokes. SUV-umbrella people are so petrified of acid rain that they cannot look up at oncoming traffic; more moving out of their way.

yesterday i saw several incidents that, if actual cars had been involved, would have wrought casualties. a woman running across park ave on a red light body slammed another jay-walker because she was trying to get a bus on the other side of the avenue. both parties’ umbrellas flew out onto the stream of honking taxis. an enormous man carrying a silver umbrella bumped the umbrellas of a stream of japanese tourists that had split up to avoid him. he was emailing on his blackberry, mind you. when i entered the subway, people climbing the stairs had already opened their umbrellas and made it impossible and dangerous to continue descending. my sudden stop probably caused pedestrian traffic jams two miles away.