Montreal, Day 2

The most surprising thing about Montreal is the feeling of being surrounded by creeps. Each metro station has a few wild-eyed vagabonds loitering just inside the entrance. It’s unusual to see women except in the most public places. Walking the streets, one gets the feeling that every other person has shitty underpants and unexamined, but benign, moles in all the wrong places. New York is teeming with crazies, but everywhere they are diluted to such an extent that, like a homeopathic remedy, their numbers are almost negligible in comparison to the sheer quantity of ordinary people. In Montreal, you get the feeling that the normals have all fled, leaving behind the dregs of the fur traders who have lived on a welfare state since losing their occupations centuries ago. With the advent of railroads, and the ensuing competitive pressures, such high value is unfortunately no longer placed on underfed rabbit hides and squirrel jerky. Any remaining regular people have begun to metastasize, and may be the scariest of all. It’s easy to see the inspiration for most Cronenberg films, if Toronto is anything like Montreal.

Our second day of vacation began innocently enough with a mediocre breakfast at a cozy cafe on Rue St. Denis, a trendy strip of restaurants, clubs and cafes near our hotel. I ate bacon, eggs, and home fries. Nina had investigated the breakfast offerings our hotel provided in the back shed, only to discover a few remaining frozen bagels, a jar of Smuckers jam, and some depressive Asian tourists lounging on the pleather couch, watching t.v. So at the cafe, she ordered the scrambled eggs and a chocolate crepe. The cafe au lait was perfect.

The plan for the day was to explore Vieux Montreal, the original fortified city on the banks of the St. Lawrence. Once past the creeps and blind mutant girls singing opera in the subway, we walked up an icy hill to Basilique Notre Dame, a historic landmark church inside the old city. The church was impressive as all big churches in foreign cities are. The lights were just dim enough to make the architectural and ornamental details interesting without revealing the quality of materials used.

Exiting the church, we slid down the back side of the icy hill to the waterfront Pointe-à-Callière Museum. The area surrounding the museum was covered in a giant sheet of ice. After painstakingly edging our way towards the museum, we entered only to immediately lose confidence in the value of the artifacts on exhibit, judging by the lack of attention paid to the entrance and lobby, and the absence of adults unaccompanied by small children. We left without entering the museum.

Looking at the map, I decided we should head towards the Vieux Port, where there was another museum, a church, a market, and several other historic landmarks. Each block took minutes to navigate through the unadultered ice and snow, and it was only after half an hour, and five or six blocks, that I realized that, for the second time in two days, I had lead us in the exact opposite direction from our desired destination. So we reversed course, and walked along the breezy waterfront until we reached the church, which was closed, finally reaching the Marché Bon Secours, the historic market of the old town. There, we perused miscellaneous fur items from China, on sale at quite reasonable prices. I bought a rabbit fur-lined hat, and Nina bought fur insoles for her cold wet boots.

It was time to eat, and I needed cash. Unfortunately, the only ATM machine in the market building only took Canadian bank cards. This scarcity of ATMs in Montreal was something that was to become more pronounced in our minds the following day. Amenities expected by a New Yorker, such as ATMs, grocery shops, and 24-hour pharmacies are apparently the exception in Montreal. Streets have an abundance of public phones, and it is not uncommon to see early-stage metastasizing phenotypically normal people using them. Nina had enough cash to cover our early dinner, so we headed back up the hill towards the area near Hotel de Ville, the beautiful Montreal City Hall, in search of sustenance.

Most things being closed, we decided upon one of the first restaurants we saw, a place called Le Grill offering cuisine francaise. The restaurant had a sign on the sidewalk pointing to an entrance that was situated through a small frozen courtyard that clearly looked charming in the summer. Once through the door, we were greeted by a friendly African lad in a winter jacket and work boots who showed us to our table.

The table d’hote, the fixed price menu which we each ordered, comes with your choice of soup, salad, or desert, an entree, and tea or coffee. The waiter, who we later found out was the owner’s son, said they only had mushroom or onion soup available. Nina opted for the onion soup, seafood stew, and tea; and I ordered also the onion soup, mules frites, and tea. Fortunately, they did not have the mules frites available, otherwise, I likely would have been poisoned in addition to being ripped off. So I asked for the roast pork instead.

The onion soup was mediocre – not terrible, but nothing great. My roast pork was really not good at all, but somewhat edible. Nina could not bear to eat her seafood stew, so we traded. The seafood was truly disgusting, consisting almost entirely of fake crab. My first bite of what little real seafood it did have tasted literally like shit. However, as you can expect, I didn’t complain to the waiter, neither did Nina… we had obviously made a bad choice of restaurants, and with knowing looks, we carried on, in peace, to have our tea, wondering if anyone else in the place was savvy enough to now just how bad the food was.

When the bill arrived, I instinctively took out my credit card, and was in the process of handing it to the waiter, when Nina said “Wait!” She grabbed the bill out of my hands and did a lightening-seed accounting of each of the itemized charges, clearly not happy with what she was discovering. Each of the dishes we had ordered had been charged at full price, not as one fixed-price menu. Plus, they had already thrown in a tip/service charge, even though we were only two people, and therefore not likely to under-tip. The total should have been about $35 CAD, but it instead showed $67. I withdrew my hand with the credit card, and we both began to convey to the waiter our surprise at being charged so much when the menu clearly showed a fixed price for our meals of about half that cost.

In response, he politely explained that the mushroom soup was included in the table d’hote, but that the onion soup was not. Nice of him to tell us that now that we had already eaten it. Furthermore, our teas had been billed in addition to the price of the meal. He had no explanation for why the tea had not been included, as it clearly was in the menu, except to say that he was not the one who had printed up the bill, so it was not his fault.

The manager, an African man in a winter jacket and ski hat, came over and reiterated what the waiter had said: that the onion soup was not included in the table d’hote. In response to my protests at having been told this after the fact, he admitted that the waiter may not have been as forthcoming about this as he should have been. He ignored my repeated demands to know why the tea had also not been included in the fixed price.

After minutes of the owner’s evading all accusations without the slightest hint of guilt, Nina, either feigning disbelief or honestly surprised at his perseverance, asked whether he truly expected us to pay for what was clearly the waiter’s mistake. To this he tactically offered, “Ok, well if you want to pay for just one soup, that is ok.”, as if he were doing us a favor. He impulsively added, “Today is the 26th of December, a day for relaxing, Madame. Please you should relax today. We are not trying to take money out of your pocket.” This disrespectful attitude, and his constant denial of any wrongdoing on their part really angered Nina, I could see that the manager was inching dangerously close to an an onslaught of biting verbal abuse from this unassuming girl.

Eventually, despite my protests, Nina threatened to call the police. Giving him the feminine outraged look that only one who masters the art of negotiation can manage, her moral righteousness and more likely, the threat of police intervention, indeed seemed to mollify his manners and destroy his obstructions. He muttered repeatedly, “I consent”, as if executing a legally binding document. Nothing about his demeanor or speech indicated a sense of guilt or remorse, and he still continued to say condescending things to insinuate that we were getting something for nothing. But eventually, he acquiesced, and agreed to “make a new bill” (indicating that bill-creation was an arduous task requiring not only skill, but also a strong will and honest determination) that did not have extra charges for the tea or soups (but did still include the undeserved tip).

Phtew (spit on the ground)! Nina had triumphed again.

Montreal, a city that unabashedly boasts its culinary talent, was seemingly devoid of anything appetizing… that is until later that evening.