Capt. Mondo's World o' Mondo-ness

Third Day in Montreal: The Bagel Adventure
Late the previous day I had an email from Bryce which came in on my Blackberry. After a brief nap I answered the email, telling him that I was in Montreal, and was revisiting some of the places that we had both been to before – and that I had a better understanding as to why Montreal is not a major tourist town this time of the year.

This was all a way of psyching myself up for tackling my next goal while I was in the city: to buy genuine Montreal-baked bagels.

I had figured out that all of the major bagel bakeries were in the north-eastern part of town, all grouped together. As I wanted to get used to the Montreal subway system, I determined to learn more about it by navigating my way there. I figured out beforehand that the station nearest to the Fairmount bakery was Laurent, so I decided out the way to get there.

I noted several differences between taking a subway train in Toronto and Montreal. One of the most obvious ones is that the trains are very different, with Toronto trains using metal wheels on rails, and Montreal trains running on rubber wheels. This I already knew from previous visits, but forgot how bouncy the ride could be. A Toronto subway ride may jostle you back and forth as the train shifts between tracks, but you don’t get the bouncy up-and-down feeling when on a Montreal subway car. There’s also a distinct lack of ads which are plastered everywhere inside a Toronto subway car, instead replaced by emergency signage, which I noted was not always perfectly translated into English ("Use the fire extinguisher as apposed", which I think was supposed to be "approved" or more properly "approved manner"; more awkward but at least it is a valid word.)

Everything went well enough until I got the Beri-UQAM station, which is the central node for three different lines. There is a Sherbrooke station on the orange line, which was the one I wanted, and there is also a Sherbrooke University line. Guess which one I took? I also discovered that the waits between trains on the University line on Saturday evening could take a while...

I eventually figured out where I had to go when I got back to Beri-UQAM, and made my way to Laurent station. After an initial mis-start in terms of the direction I was supposed to head after leaving the station, I soon found my way to Fairmount Oest where the bagelry, open 24 hours a day, was located.

I bought six dozen bagels, then got a taxi back to the hotel.

Did some preliminary packing, watched an episode of Firefly ("Objects in Space", one of my favourites), that I had brought with me, then went to bed shortly after midnight.