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I was surprised, when having our croissants at the Marriott's
concierge lounge to look out the window at a building seemingly
familiar in a place I had obviously never been. It was after staring
for 15 minutes that I realized it was the exact scene we had
bookmarked and visited almost daily of a Downtown
Montreal web-cam. Sure enough, when calling up the site before
we left, the camera was about 30 meters away, in a window of an
office tower next to the hotel, looking at nearly the exact same
view. That was weird!
We three followed my previous night's footsteps back down to Rue St
Catherine, and listened to more Francophone music. We nearly visited
the Art Museum, then decided to instead skip it and apply our energy
to sitting, enjoying the air and the sounds and the city crowds, and
to have crepes from a festival tent nearby. Our first hilarious
french experience was to learn that the counterman, a college
sophomore more or less, spoke no English. I managed to order
"lait au chocolat" (chocolate milk) and "crepe avec
chocolat un banan" (yum!). The decision to get "Berry"
covered crepes became a family joke when I realized, as he handed me
the plate, that "buere" was "Butter", not
"Berry". What a delightful lunch on a delightful afternoon. |
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 After
recharging at the Marriott (free Pepsi from the concierge lounge),
we changed and headed out for the Expo's
game. It was a snap to head down to the train (directly connected
below the hotel) and out to the the "Pius IX" station,
dropping off directly underneath the baseball stadium complex.
Tonight was, of all things, the night that Tony Gwynn got his 3000th
career hit. There was some ill will among baseball purists that the
lifelong  San
Diego Padre would achieve this special milestone in Montreal, a town
with little baseball history, a minuscule fan base, and seeming
indifference to the game. My own lack of enthusiasm for witnessing
such an event proved to me that I, too, had grown weary of the
prima-donna multi-millionaires that had come to ruin the game of my
childhood. Like many, I never recovered from the Strike of 1994, and
my emotional indifference to being at a historic milestone, such a
stark contrast to my uncontrolled enthusiasm during the Nolan Ryan
near no-hitter that I got to witness in the Astrodome in 1988, told
me that my lifelong love of baseball, like disco music and AMC, had
become a thing of distant memory. I cant even recall the score or who
won, but we did get a nice picture of the indoor fireworks set off to
celebrate an Expo home run and got a cute shot of me with
"Youppi!" the mascot. It was back on the subway, back
to the hotel and to bed. |
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Original Web Upload December 2000
Last Update: April 4, 2001 |
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Montreal on Foot / Rue St Catherine & Expos