The Mansion

Wintering in Montreal

2012-01-13T13:41:00.001-08:00

After winning the Grantourismo/HomeAway Holiday-Rentals travel blogging competition in March, I was burdened with the excellent problem of how to use the prize of free lodging anywhere in the HomeAway property list. At long last I realized that the best vacation was the one that could be shared, and with a trip already planned to the East coast to see them, I added an extra layer of thermal underwear to my bags and told my parents to warm up their car: we were headed north to Montreal. I was excited to give my parents a get-away after all of their support while I had been in school, and I was thrilled about taking my partner, NT, to a French-speaking city. NT immigrated to America with his family from France at age 16, and while he has crossed the great while west, had still never been to Canada.

I was so excited about our trip, and so completely trusting of the lodging we selected on HomeAway, that I did not research this enormous city beforehand, at all. Neither did my parents. Nor did NT. But I didn't worry. I knew from the comments on the HomeAway website that the owner of our apartment, Alain, would meet us personally when we arrived, and from all of the positive feedback his guests had left him, I felt pretty certain we could rely on him to share ideas on how to best see Montreal in a whirlwind weekend.

While I felt confident that Montreal, just over the border, would be navigable, interesting, and beautiful, I didn't count on it feeling so... foreign. Drifting through the border from Vermont, no more snow lay on the north side than had on the south. Yet, suddenly the countryside was filled with French-style stone farmhouses, European cars, and the convenience stores and gas stations of NT's youth. And just when it seemed that we had taken a wrong turn into some small, French farming village, the city appeared.

Montreal, which rests on an island in the middle of the St. Laurence river, is Canada's second largest city. It is a cultural haven and both highly livable and hospitable, having been named both a UNESCO City of Design and North America's number one host city for international association events. It is also the second largest French-speaking city in the world, after Paris. While English and French are both recognized as official languages in Canada, in the province of Quebec it is only French. English appears, but second and smaller, on signs, menus and in greetings. In fact, it is illegal to greet someone in English before French, a byproduct of which being the Franglais greeting "Bonjourhello," popular throughout the city.

For being the sixth largest city on the North American continent, Montreal was surprisingly easy to navigate, and we found our way to our HomeAway rental without trouble. Our host, Alain was as nice as his previous guests had claimed and, to my relief, did in fact have many suggestions of what to see, along with a dog-eared guidebook that had no doubt been appreciated by others beforehand. He greeted us appropriately in French, then English and led us to our fabulous local, a modern condo on the 8th floor of a brand new building.

Our condo was on the edge of Old Montreal, a small set of city blocks, once making up the entire city. Where in the 1600’s it was fortified by a wall, it's boundaries now are marked simply by architectural differences, and, according to Alain, by the invisible border of expense versus cheap restaurants and apartments. He noted his favorite restaurants on the border, gave us directions to the nearest supermarket, the scoop on sights near and far, and his cell phone number. He made us feel right at home.

We relaxed at once into our stylish digs.

And ate nouveau french bistro style at the trendy Vallier, just down the street.

Our condo was a one bedroom with pull out couch, modern appliances and trendy style. In addition to being clean, comfortable, and having a coffee maker, one of its best features was a huge kitchen island with four stools. Here, we not only congregated to look at maps, and drink tea, but in the morning, before leaving to explore, we also laid out a veritable feast of Christmas cakes, breads and cookies (plus our favorite, the Grittibaenz) that we hadn't wanted to leave at home. Communal breakfast with our own foods was something we could never have done at a hotel, and gave us a chance to spend relaxed and unstructured time together as a family.

In addition wanting to introduce NT to his first experience of a French speaking country other than his own, something that sort of blew my mind and all sense of social norms when I first went to New Zealand years ago, I was also looking forward to him experiencing in full the intensity of a true Canadian winter. You will imagine my excitement then, when we woke on our second day to fat flakes of the season's second snowstorm. We trudged outside in winter gear for a view of the old city, and found our vision obstructed by our own hoods, scarves and eyelashes, laden with white. The magic wasn’t lost on us.

Old Montreal is a tourist trap - the most expensive French restaurants can be found here, along with a souvenir shops carrying as many maple-leafed sweatshirts and stuffed beavers as you can fit in a suitcase. At the same time, there has been tremendous effort maintain the quality and charm of the original building and cobblestone streets, and one has the feeling they are going back in time as soon as they cross the border from new Montreal into old. In one morning we ate up everything the old city offered - from hidden courtyards and beautiful architecture, to my personal heaven - a maple syrup museum and bakery cafe.

Of course, we also visited the Notre-Dame de Montréal Basilica. No matter how many churches you have seen on your travels, this one is guaranteed to stun you into open-mouthed silence.

We were loathe to skip the Pointe-à-Callière Museum located in old city confines, but the scenery outside was too beautiful to miss, and that afternoon we hopped in a cab and drove up one of Montreal's longest and most fashionable streets - Saint Laurent Boulevard - to little Italy, where we fought through the icy wind and into the Jean Talon market, a local indoor (in the winter) hangout for all ages, filled with fresh fruits, vegetables and flowers, handmade chocolates, pastries and cuisine of all origins. We sampled Turkish, Argentine and Quebecois delicacies before purchasing some jars of homemade chocolate sauce with porto for friends back home, and watched locals on their way from work stop in to buy groceries.

As the snow began falling more heavily and rush hour reached its peak, we thought it would be an *excellent* time to do some driving of our own, and we headed out to the West Island to visit our good friends Abby, Mike and baby Lora. Abby and Mike recently made the decision to move to Montreal after years of commuting to Manhattan from various boroughs and suburbs. Mike is an English-speaking native to the city and he has plenty of stories of the fierce rivalries, nay, downright hatred, between the Francophiles and the Anglophiles that permeated his youth. For example, don't try and wave a flag on Canada Day, he warned, unless you want a beer bottle to the head...

At least that's how it used to be. But back home after nearly a decade, Mike says that the tension between the two dominant cultures of the island has faded into, if not total acceptance, at least a grudging tolerance. And while he and Abby still feel they receive occasional resentment for their tongue, they appreciate the fierce loyalty the French-speaking population maintains to their language and way of life. When then city's hockey team recently fired their long-time coach for performance issues, they temporarily replaced him with a unilingual, English-speaking, assistance, and the province rose up in arms. Despite the fact that the NHL conducts all of its business and training in English, its viewer base in Quebec is largely French speaking, and many people, including the English speakers, felt the slight. "It's the fact that he's not even really trying to learn," said Mike as he shook his head sadly. He recently signed up for French classes himself to brush up before applying for jobs.

If, by wishing for 'real Canadian winter,' I thought I would get only snow, I was mistaken. Our last day in Montreal began with temperatures of zero degrees…Fahrenheit, with a wind chill of -17. Nevertheless, after a last post-Christmas brunch, my plucky family and I bundled up and hit the near empty streets, dreams of exploring other enticing neighborhoods - the Plateau Mont-Royal, or Mile End, for example - on hand. And we would have gone there, if my father had not needed to purchase something from a seemingly generic looking department store, and we had not discovered what had happened to all the inhabitants of Montreal. They were underground.

We stumbled an underground mall, a place you could normally not pay me to stay in, what with there being fresh air and sunlight to consume elsewhere. But being there, I suddenly had an acute need to shop...Because strolling through masses of Boxing Day bargain hunters was highly preferable to the discomforting feeling of frozen eyeballs. And I wasn't alone.

Underground malls are a staple in cold northern cities and Montreal’s is no exception. But, what we had yet to realize, is that this particular mall was no mere hidden shopping center. It was part of a literal underground city, 4.6 square miles large and containing over 20 miles of tunnels. Not only does it provide endless hours of weatherless retail, it links to shops above and below ground, along with apartment complexes, office buildings, hotels, museums, universities, subway stations, a bus terminal, and even an amphitheater. A metropolitan ground hog’s lair. And what a lifesaver it is. On a winter's day, one can share tunnel space with up to 500,000 people.

To refuel after the 15 blocks we had spent in the winter chill, NT and I thought the most appropriate meal before heading home would be one of the Montreal classics: smoked meat, poutine or pigs knuckles. The line for smoked meat at the famous Schwartz's on Saint Laurent Blvd. had been prohibitively long when we passed by the day before, so we settled on an imitation, half-way back to our apartment, which to our gluttonous delight, sold a sampler platter of all three of the dishes we had been hoping to try.

This photo cannot adequately display the true and amazing fact that pigs knuckles are really quite delicious... not to mention that they look nothing like pigs knuckles... We did notice, when we finally gazed up from our over-laden platters, a young Quebecois couple at the table to our left, politely sharing a small, single serving of poutine… Perhaps we were not meant to consume so much smoked meat and gravy on our own, we realized... but never the less, we left Montreal full, warm, and satisfied.

A link to Alain’s HomeAway property is here

Return to the world

2012-01-12T23:33:00.000-08:00

Having been in grad school for the last three (million) years, life hasn't had much time or money for traveling. And somehow, I didn't need it to. Being absorbed in a project or goal can sometime be enough to keep you distracted from wanderlust. I had begun to feel like perhaps the travel bug had died within me. NOT SO!

As soon as I graduated I realized it was time to get out of dodge. My grad school fatigued self pushed through a 27 hour travel day to fly train and bus from Seattle to Villefranche de Rouergue in the south of France, to visit my partner, NT's extended family, where I saw, what I believe was a large, and incredibly realistic Disney movie set...

Met the world's sweetest grandparents,

and hung around small streets and farmer's markets as much as possible.

From there, we trained to the Paris suburbs, where NT's high school friends happily entertained us with a night of drunken revelry and cheese tasting* at the home of an old friend.

We made a quick stop in Paris, where I saw Montmartre for the first time, and met the world's cutest one-year-old.

And then we sped away to Eu, Normandy, where I met more family, learned the true meaning of the word "cliff," and found out just how many mussels and fries a person can eat in one sitting.

From France we took Easyjet to Bratislava, and then a short bus ride from my Aunt's home in Vienna. I was thrilled to show NT my favorite farmers market and eatery - the Naschmarkt,

my favorite flea market.....at the Naschmark,

and my favorite park... at Schonbrunn...(not the Naschmarkt).

I also got to spend eight lovely days with my Grandmother, who braved heat waves and stormy weather in fast determination to be with us and feed NT as many Wienerschnitzels as possible.

Here are my Aunt W, Grandma and NT, on WS #2, in Heinburg an der Donnau. While my partner didn't get to choose his menu, I got the venison goulash with dumpling and currents, which was the second most amazing meal of my life (after this one).

NT headed home after four days, and I stayed on in Vienna, eating apfelstrudel in café houses with my grandmother, noshing on ever present street food,

and taking in the pace of the city.

I also visited some more of my favorite haunts from the summer I spent there years ago, and saw the 2011 World Press Photo show, which never ceases to amaze me. (My favorite photo is #14.)

Refusing to head home so early, I popped in to the east coast, to see my family in beautiful western Massachusetts and in the city - the city of course being NYC. I didn't know it but that would also be my last visit with my wonderful Aunt E., my confidant and NYC lunch date since I've been old enough to get to the city alone.

When you close your eyes sometimes, and then open them, the world sometimes seems clearer and brighter. Seattle certainly seemed more beautiful when I returned.

* i.e. introduce the American girl to your smelliest cheeses, then watch intently as she tries them. Hilarity ensues.

My morning.

2011-03-16T18:19:00.000-07:00

Today I shadowed Anita, the Nurse Practitioner at a senior home on capitol hill. Anita is amazing. She wants all of her patients to live to their potential, and she hates the use of drugs as the "remedy" for the side effects of other drugs. As soon as someone is sick, she'll dig through their file, and often she'll locate some offending pill, which never needed to be there in the first place. Anita follows hundreds of cases, and knows everyone by face and name; she also knows their grandkids, and husbands and boyfriends and the things that are most important to the in life. When she talks, she never takes her eyes off of yours. People's eyes light up when they see her in the halls. I really hope I can learn how to have that amount of presence someday.....

My Top Ten Travel Memories

2011-03-01T22:32:00.000-08:00

I drink cherry wine and learn to dance, in a town where teens compete to do the best polka. - Czech Republic

Ten year old Majda teaches me to count in Moroccan Arabic. "'Wahet,' 'jooj,’ 'tlata,'" she says patiently. - Erfoud, Morocco

We find shelter from a downpour with Rocio and Andres, from Chile. After introductions, he produces from his backpack a bottle of wine carried from home. - Lake Titicaca, Bolivia

Eighty-seven year old Bill teaches me how to plant garlic. - New Zealand

Seventeen and on my first trip alone. I meet a boy on the train who makes me jump out at all the stops so that I can say I’ve been there. - Austria/Italy

She asks in Quechua, and when I don’t understand, begins singing what sounds like a lullaby. Then she points to me. The first thing I can think to sing is Dido. - Bolivia.

I sit on the edge of a cliff, 12,500 feet high in the Andes. Below me is a cauldron of fog. Above me, a star-lit sky. - Peru

Our conversation is so engrossing that by the end of the night, I hardly realize that she and I have not shared a word of common language. - Italy

I am eating meat from chicken that has lived its whole life outside. I never knew meat was meant to taste this good. - Vashon Island, WA

A herd of goats rushes past me, breaking the alpine silence with miniature rockslides. - Austria

This post has been entered into the Grandtourismo HomeAway Holiday-Rentals travel blogging competition. www.homeaway.co.uk

Pike Place Market

2008-06-26T21:34:00.000-07:00

The Riad

2008-06-18T04:26:00.000-07:00

One of Julia's student's parents own a Riad (hotel/restaurant) in the Fez medina. She took me there for a late dinner one night.

Dinner went like this:
We walked down a long alley, covered in carpets and entered an unmarked door. We were greeted by a woman who led into an amazing courtyard with flowers, fruit trees and a fountain. A man strummed a small stringed instrument while a beautiful woman sat next to him and sang.
We were brought us wine, bread, and ELEVEN salads. We ate most of them and I was stuffed.

Then, a tangine appeared- a sort of sauce of stewed vegetables over meat, this one over sheep. Jules doesn't eat meat at all, while I will on certain occasions. Taking one for the team, I ate a polite helping of mutton.

The wait staff came for our plates. I was relieved until I noticed that after taking my plate away, they gave me a new one. "Another tagine is coming..." the waitress said in french. "Encore?" This one was chicken, with apricot sauce and stewed prunes. It was amazing.

The man switched to a new stringed instrument. The tagine plates were cleared, and three tiered cookie plate arrived, folled by mint tea that I will dream about for the rest of my life.

The family refused to let us pay, and invited us to come again. A man with a lantern escorted us down the alley and back to our car. The whole thing was completely unreal, but never the less, amazing.

Fez Medina

2008-06-14T07:14:00.000-07:00

The medina is the original city, surrounded by walls. It is still a fully functioning part of the city, with appartments, mosques, schools, doctors, industry, restaurants, and stores. The streets are narrow and goods are transported by cart or mule. The Medina in Fez is the most populated car-free area in the world.

Street sign:

Cleansing before prayer:

There are 64 quarters in the medina. A quarter is an area that includes a mosque and a fountain:

Traditional Moroccan houses were built with privacy in mind. If windows existed, they were enclosed, like this one, so that women in the house could see the street but could not be seen themselves:

Almost every house has a sattelite dish...

Working in a tannery:

Morocco

2008-06-10T15:14:00.001-07:00

PA->NY->Barcelona->Morocco

Morocco is amazing but all of this posting has taken the love of blogging out of me for the time being, so more to come later. The short version:

I arrived.

Julia (my cousin) lives in a mountain town that is resorty and cool and at the end of the day, a really nice change from the surrounding areas.

The closest city is Fez, one hour by shared taxi.

They speak Arabic and French. I know like five Arabic words, so I use French. My conversations are sort of pre-school level.

People are really nice, though the women are nice-nice and the men are not always.

I love the Medinas-old parts of the cities surrounded by walls. The streets are as wide as donkeys.

I made some moroccan friends today.

I went to a night club in Marakesh.

I fed some monkeys.

Today I am going to the Sahara!

Spain

2008-06-09T03:37:00.000-07:00

PA -> NY -> Barcelona

I thought this trip would be a chance to experience being alone, since I had a few days to spend in Spain before I headed to Morocco. It appears that I am not attracting solitude quite yet though: after a few blurry hours exploring el Barrio Gotico in Barcelona and weaving my way through crowds of people in the Picasso museum, I fell asleep in my hostal only to awake to my new traveling buddy standing at the foot of my bunk. Mariel, 29, from Buenos Aires and very much on the same wavelength as I, was my perfect traveling compliment. I tend to meander around, bumping into historical sites and museums only by chance. She, on the other hand, knew everywhere there was to go, had circled every important square, building and street on her map and was ready to see them as early as possible. Luckily, our paces were well balanced, and Mariel never went anywhere without mate and hot water which made seeing everything on very little sleep possible (and also made me addicted to mate.. drinking it now...)

I was sad to see Mariel go, but just a few hours after she got on the airport bus and we waved good bye, Autsy and Jade arrived. We scoped out the local hangout spots, became experts on Gaudi architecture and ate amazing cheeses in the apartment where they are squatting...(sort of).

Onward

2008-06-09T03:27:00.001-07:00

PA-> NY

I spent the week after the wedding in New York. I love Brooklyn, staying with Aliya and Travis, exploring. I also love New York as the international meeting place. No where else in the world do so many people from different backgrounds come together, filling subway cars with dozens of cultures and languages at one time. New York also seems to be where all of my various lives intersect: family, childhood, highschool, college, traveling, seattle: people I've known forever and people I've just met all seem to be there. And invariably I run into them in the street or on the subway, amongst so many millions of people.

Aliya and Mathew at Cuban breakfast (Aliya is having lemonade cleanse):

My parents came to visit for the day, and we went to an Austrian cafe, complete with delicious pastries:

My four year old cousin took this one:

Travis+Bike:

The Wedding...

2008-06-09T02:22:00.000-07:00

Since the mansion - and its extensions- usually seem to know what everyone is up to in some form or another, it seems very strange to have to explain my wherabouts, especially in writing. But, I realize that today it has been almost 3 whole weeks since I left - wait a minute. I actually hadn't realized that until just now counting the dates out on my fingers. What in the world? - ok, so admittedly it's been a long time... Here is where I have been:

The Wedding:

PA was beautiful, the farm was on a rolling green hill covered in fields, trees and a few alpacas. We camped, cooked, planted, constructed, made bonfires, decorated, performed, danced.

Shira was the calmest neurotic bride I've ever met, and was moving chairs, cooking and carrying things until the hour before the ceremony. She and Jeff made the food for the dinner themselves using produce from local farms, canned beets for wedding favors and completely succeeded in making their wedding be a celebration of their community and their place within it, as well as of themselves.

I loved seeing so many people from my life in one place and getting to spend time with them in such an amazing place and way.

Aviva touched every part of the wedding without being there physically- she wrote a blessing for the ceremony, created part of the hoopa (spelling please?) co-created the centerpiece idea, wrote a song verse and was there on speakerphone when Travis played campfire songs. Still we missed her all of the time, and everyone talked about her incesantly.

Happy Mothers' Day!

2008-05-11T17:47:00.000-07:00

Dakota's friends came over!

2008-04-14T01:14:00.000-07:00

Crafting Time

2008-03-16T15:46:00.000-07:00

The Mansion kitchen is cooking with creative energy. Many a craft has been produced on its linoleum floors. A cursory list would include: sequin mania, pink feathered hula-hoop chandeliers, paper making, katubahs, kambucha, collages, crayon-sticker-marker-glue concoctions, blubber, landscape cakes, white chocolate sweet potato cake, screen prints, and hand-stiched recycled note cards. (Giant dream catchers, hookah lounges, and one hundred paper marigolds are omitted only because they were made in other rooms...)

Gemutlichheit!

2008-03-16T00:34:00.000-07:00

One of the earliest mansion moves was to head to Levenworth, WA for Oktoberfest. Aviva, Joana, Cori, and Nicole, along with honorary mansioneers Mike, Azure and Emma, braved the frosty mountains for a night of Germans, bier and herring.

Reminiscing...

2008-03-15T23:47:00.000-07:00

Dakota is the cutest member of the mansion. Here he is in one of his first few months in Seattle, washing some dishes.

Finally

2008-03-15T23:28:00.000-07:00

Obviously its a travesty that up until now, no blog has featured the life and times of the Mansioneers. As soon as it was discovered that this major oversight had been left undetected for not just one, but nearly two years, we set about creating one right away so as not to let any more precious time go to waste. This blog, which we welcome you to now, is to help share with you highlights of both the coming months, and those past, of life in our wonderful abode. As a large and eclectic family living in a large and eclectic home we are generally amused, touched, and inspired by our own antics, and we hope you are as well.