Threads of time: Day 1 of the Montreal trip.

So anyways. It was friday afternoon. Everything was going well. I was going to take off an hour early so that we could beat the rush to Montreal. At 3:45, 15 minutes before my expected departure, the power went out in our block of town. The Kanata North Technology Park was running on backup power because there was a blackout. Outside, the winds were howling and snow was being pelted. Soon, I waited downstairs, but to no avail. I later got a call from Sameer that Eric got settled down with more work an hour before we were expected to go. So we waited until 5:00 before we left.

Took us another hour to get to Val's place to pick him up. So by then, Val and I were pretty hungry. Eric and Sameer seemed fine. It took us two and a half hour to get to Montreal. The ride there was pretty uneventful. After we got out of Ottawa, there wasn't a lot of traffic because the storm had not gotten there yet. We had reservations at St. Huberts for dinner for 12 people. However, because of the storm, we doubted the rest of them would get there for the 8:30 reservation. So we called ahead and changed it to 4.

When we got to Montreal, Val used his GPS to find the St. Huberts. That would be fine, except St. Huberts is a franchise. And while we have a general idea of where it was, it was not exact. And thus, Sameer led us on an unexpected tour of the industrial part of Montreal. Let's just say we really didn't want to be there at night. As well, the civil engineers that planned that part of the town needs to retake their exams. There was a small overpass, one lane only, that went beneath a bridge before veering off to the left. Now, there was a traffic light there. We followed it, but that traffic light basically dictated the flow of traffic. Quite dangerous as it is a blind spot and one lane only. And dark, not many street lights. Took us half an hour, but it was good fun trying to navigate to the St. Huberts.

Here's the customary first picture of a trip after arrival!

After we got there, St. Huberts really wasn't that bad. We got a soup, meal and desert for around 20 bucks. I got the Cream of chicken soup, ribs and a slice of New York cheesecake. It was good, but I don't know whether that was because of the hunger of their cooking. During the dinner, we saw a lot of red shirts because of the Liberal convention in town. There was a lot of old people, but a couple of pretty attractive young girls there. Surprisingly enough, there wasn't a lot of young guys. Anyways, we finished the meal quite quickly and then we headed towards the hotel.

The hotel had valet parking, and by the time we checked in, it was around 10:30. Since we had nothing exciting to do and everyone else had yet to check in, we decided to go for Shisha. Mind you, at this time, I had no clue what Shisha was.

So anyways, we proceded down to St. Denis and it was quite beautiful. During this time, we saw a really sketchy hotel (that was a couple of town houses strung together with a main office around the block in an alley). I saw the girl described in the previous posts here, walking with another girl and two guys. When we got to St. Denis, it was kind of mystical already. Montreal has that feeling when its 10:30 and there was a slight chill in the air but amazingly clear skies.

When we got there, Sameer was leading the Shisha. We sat in the back divan and basically chilled for a bit. Eric ordered a pitcher and Val seemed comfortable with Shisha. Never the one to reject something without trying it, I tried it while Eric just drank. Anyways, here are some pictures of us.

Eric, Val and Sameer posing

Eric, Me and Val sharing a pitcher.

Sameer trying to prime the Shisha. Look at that smoke fly. Yeah, he was getting high.

Me with Beer and Shisha tube.

So after Shisha, we headed back to sleep, as it was 3am and we wanted to do stuff the next day instead of just laying in bed. Here's a snapshot of St. Denis as we left it.