Back in Montréal
I'm back in Montréal. I've had a poutine as soon as I was back from the airport and I bought fresh bread from the baker the following morning. With a piece of blue cheese from the market next to my apartment, it was a delightful breakfast. My fridge currently contains nothing but mustard, Jager Meister and tonic water; that's the way I like it. Why would I do the grocery when I can buy anything withing five minutes of walk?
Montréal is walkable. I missed that part far more than poutine. But, the fact that among the things that you can walk to is the pouting should not be overlooked. Withing ten minutes of walk I have tree bread bakeries, two cheese shops, four Irish pubs, ten convenience stores with a decent selections of beer, four liquor stores, two Greek restaurants, four sushi bars, two Lebanese restaurants, one Indian restaurant, two coffee roasters, at least twenty cafés, and a lot more. There is a decent mass transit in Montréal but what is really charming is that you don't need to use it. And there are so many bike racks.
Montréal is alive at night. Not that it's dead during the day, far from it. But, it keeps moving during the night and this is something that I like. If I can't sleep, and this is something that might happen when you suffer from six hours of jet lag, I know that something quite entertaining must be happening within a few minutes of walk.
I like to walk on paving stones, to walk among tightly packed Victorian houses. Don't get me wrong, Hawaii was great; I already miss the ocean. It's just that I love Montréal.