Highly specific travel guides, Canadian edition

It had been a while since I'd left Toronto, and an opportunity popped up to go to Montreal (as I'd been meaning to do again, since moving to Canada) so I figured, the time has come! But in the weeks leading up to the trip, I couldn't quite believe it would actually happen. It just seemed so involved - figuring out various baby-and-dog practicalities, and... well, really just anything beyond getting from one day to the next, something that's gotten simpler in the past month or so, but sleep sort of comes and goes, so. I'd swing back and forth between thinking I should be making lists of things to do and people to see, and thinking that that approach to a trip was something out of a past life.

Below, some tips for travel - to Montreal, in general - with a 5-month-old:

-Trains are good for baby-naps. Planes, I'm thinking, maybe less so. The train part went fine. Mostly.

-Beware the changing table on Via Rail. It has that warning about how it might suddenly and unexpectedly bop a baby on the head for a reason.

-Carrier yes, stroller maybe not. Subways in Montreal rarely have elevators, and everything (including the hotel some of the time, argh) has steps at the entryway. And there's no consistency whatsoever between Toronto and Montreal in terms of policies for getting the stroller on and off the train. (Toronto has elevators but no assistance, Montreal the reverse.)

-You want to wait until the baby's neck control situation is sorted before going far from home along these lines. Travel requires a lot of lifting/propping and carrier-using (ideally occasional front-facing stretches, so baby can see some of the sights) and that just makes things easier. If we'd tried this a month or so ago it would have been a really bad idea.

-Bring everything with you that you brought for the whole trip because you never know when you might need absolutely all of it. Like, say you've been in Old Montreal, having this lovely stroll, and are feeling really on top of things, having changed your baby (in a magnificent all-silver bathroom) just after opening time at a concept store. Then a half-hour or so later, you're feeding your baby in a supposedly VIP area of a mall, except it's mainly people who seem elsewhere on the socioeconomic spectrum so you're not shocked a guard permits you to sit there as well, and it becomes clear a further changing will be necessary, but that mall has no place for this, so you figure a market will, but guess what? The Jean Talon market isn't all that near its associated subway stop.

-Bring extra baby clothes every time you leave the hotel. Do not assume that just because the St. Lawrence Market in Toronto sells tourist knick-knacks every tourist-oriented market will have souvenir onesies to be purchased in an emergency. Do not panic. Remember that the sweater plus your own jacket as a leg-wrap will actually be fine for a few minutes when it's not even cold out.

-Accept help, even from the older woman who admonishes you in French for not having your baby warmly dressed. Don't get annoyed, just explain to her (also in French, of course!) the insufficient-change-of-clothes preparation situation, and you will be directed to a nearby thrift store where all baby clothes are $2.25 (and untaxed). Seemingly a good selection and I would have liked to have a better look, under other circumstances. Bought one outfit and one backup outfit (LESSON LEARNED) only.

-Try not to scream - in French or English - when the bathroom you're told is fine to change baby into the newly-purchased outfit in has no changing table, and is completely filthy, and you have to go back into the main part of the store and do this in a tiny dressing room.

-Bring a (large) backpack for an outing like this, because when you find the enormous French patisserie cookbook you've been looking for for years, you will buy it, despite being already quite encumbered. That free tote bag from a Swedish cultural event in New York might look nice but will not work for any of your purposes.

-Nursing is super awkward and some people will be bothered by it (I guess Ontario and Quebec have different approaches, but also, when am I ever out for the entire day like that in Toronto?) but if that's how the baby eats, that's how the baby eats. If that means nursing on a minute and filthy plank-bench in front of a (very good) Portuguese roast chicken place, on a narrow sidewalk, or on a picnic bench surrounded by 15-year-old boys, or in a bakery-café where a woman with a laptop had really wanted all four nearby seats for herself and her stuff, so be it. Let Montreal see your nipples for the requisite milliseconds. It's not the end of the world.

-When you meet up with a friend you haven't seen in years, and are speaking French in a social situation for the first time in a while as well, after... that, don't overthink the fact that you're maybe slightly less able to express yourself than under other circumstances.

-Dining out with a baby is totally possible if it's at breakfast time. Remember this when deciding what to order. Go with the bomboloni and the bagel and lox, even if that seems a bit much, price- and quantity-wise. Because dinner? Not necessarily happening.

-Nothing is going to happen at/after the witching hour. If your train arrives past that point, don't even bother trying to go to a pizza place, even if it's referred to online as family-friendly, and even if it is right next to the hotel. And definitely don't (what was I thinking??) order an appetizer. Accept that the day ends at 5pm, which is not all told a terrible approach to travel, if you've been out walking since morning.

-And about that walking: Remember that walking around with a baby in carrier is ever so slightly more tiring than doing so without. Your phone's automatic step-counter might tell you you just covered 5-6 miles but it will feel marathon-ish. Accept that there's wandering that will not happen. Figure out where the bus stops are located because you will sooner or later (sooner) have to get on a bus.

-Remember that for the baby, everything is new. That's exciting! Reminding yourself of this is the trick to making the whole thing fun, rather than just challenging.

A still-here post

-I have a book contract! I'd say WOOHOOO, but I don't think that covers it. What I had before was a book deal, which is not the same thing, but which is still a publicly-announced thing, which... if you're not me, you almost certainly don't care, but if you're writing a book or thinking about it, this is maybe useful information?

-I wrote about friendship for TNR. Could have written endlessly more on the topic. An alternate, probably unpublishable version would have gone into my various middle-school neuroses (specifically, anxieties centering on not having 'guy friends' or friends from other schools).

-If you spend the day hearing and using only French, and are in a partially Francophone country, it seems very, very odd that people are speaking English on the street. Old news, I suppose, for my many Canadian and Belgian relatives, but a new one for me. Also: It takes only a couple months in Canada (at least for this part-Canadian) for the English here to start sounding default and the US variety, all regions, to start sounding vaguely like a Texas accent.

Spring break, woohoo! Part II:

Just got back from an impromptu spring-break trip to Montreal - 24 hours of Amtrak but well worth it. (Update: now with captions.)

Highlights:

-Used bookstores. French books! For cheap! I only bought three, but was kicking myself for not having made a pre-orals trip up there, because they have everything.

-Art Java. Excellent cappuccinos.

-Arugula-garlic pizza at Pizza Mia in the Atwater Market.

-The Contemporary Art museum.

-Pastry place on Rue Bernard.

-Speaking French and having the other person not switch to English. In France, I've found, there's this idea that if someone's French is fully comprehensible but reveals non-nativeness, their use of the language is seen as harmful to its purity, and English is returned, even by those whose English is rusty at best. While teaching, my students often enough respond to my French with English, for altogether different reasons. But in French Canada, French is nearly always returned with more of the same, presumably for the same political reasons as cause all the signs and menus to be in French, even in what soon reveal themselves to be anglophone establishments. If all this extra practice has made my accent in French more interesting, so be it.

-The opportunity to discuss, at great length, the differences and similarities between Belgian and Canadian language politics. Has anything been written on this? I must know!

-Having a break from the permaconstruction site outside our apartment in NY.

-Most surprisingly, the train ride. Not only, what with it being a train and a discount fare, was it the more frugal option. It was as scenic as promised, what with the Hudson Valley and the Adirondacks. Plus, none of the hassle of airports, and a more comfortable spot to sleep in. And to catch up on non-French literature in.

Not as fabulous as hoped:

-The Apprenticeship of Duddy Kravitz. If there was ever a time I'd have found this book interesting, it would have been while traveling to and staying in where it's set. But... no. Back to Bobst he goes. I can't tell yet if the return-trip novel, The Group, is amazing, or if it's just by comparison.

-The hotel. As much as I approve in principle of hotels allowing dogs, when said dogs pee all over the carpet on the stairs and all floors, that's kind of a negative. And, if you're going to have literature in the room encouraging people to order champagne buckets at the like for a "romantic" time (do people really do this?), maybe make sure that the room's bathroom door actually closes.

-Joe Beef. As with virtually every restaurant listed in our guide - which is to say, just about every known restaurant in Montreal, because other Googling didn't come up with much more - the place was 'reservations essential.' Having already learned that, at least on weeknights, this was advice to ignore, we walked from the Metro down some deserted streets to the place, where we would be told it would just be a couple minutes, but that what we should do was make a reservation for half an hour later. This was slightly confusing, but we went along with it, and ended up killing time at a Montreal equivalent of Duane Reade. I like that sort of thing, so so far, so good.

The meal began with us having to stand and read the menu up on the board - something that could easily be eliminated either with printed menus or at the very least putting a second board up so that both sides of the table can read the thing sitting down, but maybe the daily menu means to food is super-fresh?

To put things into perspective, this was our second and I want to say last time ever spending that much on dinner for two. Accustomed to knowing ahead of time from menupages what a meal will cost, we realized this was a bit of a gamble. But it sounded so promising! And think of the money we saved by going to Montreal by train!

Still. Wine by the glass started at $11 (red at $12), which our waiter was very defensive about, perhaps reading our faces, or our wavering, explaining that we also had the option of bottles, which started at $50, or beer, an option which was not elaborated on price-wise. Hmm. The couple next to us, who seemed marginally less grad-studenty than we did, got the same defensive response when asking whether the entrees (some in the $50 range) came with anything on the side. It was almost as though the waitstaff realized the whole place was something of a gimmick. A gimmick designed to make patrons feel bourgeois for expecting a menu or a list of wines by the glass, as though there's some non-bourgeois way to eat in a nice restaurant that's been written up in all the conventional places.

As for the food... The menu was very Blue-Ribbon-esque, which is to say, haute comfort food, all-over-the-place, no-particular-cuisine, everything costing three times what one might imagine that dish could possibly, possibly cost. Anyhow. Prior to the meal, we received a 'from the chef' (excitement for a couple of pasta-at-home grad students!) of... deep-fried smelt. The dish is not for everyone, but the main problem was that the fries I ordered had clearly been fried in the same oil as the smelt, and were smeltier than ideal. That, combined with the (poutine-inspired?) cheese on top, ruined what would have otherwise been some stellar fries. I also got an artichoke dish that, at $16, was a much worse version of the equivalent and non-bank-breaking dish at NY restaurants like Bianca, Celeste, or Quartino. Jo got chicken that tasted like chicken.

What made this experience all the more frustrating was that lunch had been truly amazing pizza that came to something like $8 for two, with a bottle of water. The contrast made me rethink including a trip to an upscale restaurant as a vacation splurge. I should just accept that aside from this one not-even-that-expensive Japanese place in Tribeca, restaurants are something I could give or take.

-Whatever happened to Matt & Nat, or Denis Gagnon? Yes, I just complained about a meal costing far too much, and now I'm complaining about not having the opportunity to waste money on vegan handbags and avant-garde dresses. The former, it seems, are more readily available in NY. At any rate, if the 'likes' part of this post makes me sound like a pretentious humanities grad student, rest assured that if I didn't buy any clothes or accessories, it wasn't for lack of trying.