A small taste of Toronto has renewed our appetite for city living. After a thorough orientation from Miriam, we’ve spent the lazy four days roaming the inner neighbourhoods on foot, refuelling on coffee, sandwiches, pizza slices and beer (eluding meaty treat street vendors in lieu of the steamed hot dog and smoked experience Montreal is aparently famous for). LP’s are a bit cheaper here but the selection in most of the eight stores we visited left us drooling, and feeling empty at the prospect of turning our backs on many tempting aquisitions. How strange it is that second time around, we’ve developed a modest obsession for this highly impractical format. Music stores are beginning to smell as I remember them … vinyl, cardboard, and a whiff of nostalgia.
We left Toronto this morning and caught a train to Montreal; a five hour journey on a VIA Rail service. Leaving Toronto the English announcements preceeded the Francophone ones but about the time we began to see retaining walls graffitied in french, the conductor switched things up and the outer suburbs of Montreal began to flash by. We’re staying with our friend Ian who is studying at McGill University, and he gave us a quick tour of his neighbourhood on foot after a sandwich and a couple of pints at one of his locals; Dieu du ciel! – a microbrewery on Laurier West, and a practical lesson in pub-french essentials.
