Montreal

We spend Wednesday afternoon at Jean- Drapeau Park in Montreal. This is where the World Expo was held in 1968, with the Biosfair and an expo arena that replicates the ancient Greek coliseum. The Biosfair is an intriguing design, an immense open sphere of metal beams connected to each other as if someone were playing with a giant erector set. It has been successfully converted to a planetarium and insectarium. Unfortunately, the arena appears to have been largely abandoned; it is overgrown with weeds and grass and the concrete seating area is crumbling at the edges. It seems a shame, as the venue seems quite functional, if utilitarian. Maybe it doesn’t meet the size, scope and power requirements of rock stars and athletes, who are the primary users of an auditorium like this. Whatever . . . as we walk through the arena, we pass signs that describe the events, innovations and celebrities that made the Montreal Expo memorable. We read through the list of famous names . . . Marlene Dietrich, Jackie Kennedy, Frank Sinatra, Princess Grace of Monaco, Ed Sullivan, Milton Berle. . . and realize that almost all of them are dead. It seems symbolic, somehow, of the impact of Expo . . . . transitory and ephemeral.

We spend 2 days in Montreal. On Tuesday, we drive from the park where we’re staying into town about 30 minutes away, passing rural farmland and “prestige condos” – lots of them – under construction on the outskirts of the city. Montreal, like Manhattan, is an island, accessible by a number of bridges. We spend Monday afternoon walking around in Vieux Montreal – the old city, with its crumbling stone facades and cobblestone streets. The old buildings are slowly eroding and while a restoration effort was begun in the 80s, there’s still much to be done. We see a beautiful old stone church with towering steeple and stained glass windows. It has simply been abandoned, given over to the weeds, pigeons and homeless panhandlers who are everwhere.

There’s a church on every corner in Montreal; it’s not called City of 1000 Steeples for nothing. The most famous is L’eglise de Notre Dame; we don’t tour it, however – there’s a $4 admission fee and we’ve seen plenty of cathedrals in Europe that are hundreds of years older than Montreal’s Notre Dame. Steve is highly incensed that the church would charge an admission fee for a tour; I point out that they’ve got to raise money somehow for upkeep, reminding him about an old church we saw in Charleston that solicited donations for upkeep, as it was a million dollars or more in debt just from the cost of maintaining the structure. “You could go to mass and see the church and it wouldn’t cost you anything,” I tell him. “They’d probably charge you for it,” he responds.

We go to Montreal again on Wednesday. The weather starts out sunny but violently windy, but by the time we reach downtown, the breeze has settled and it turns out to be a pleasant day. We visit the Montreal Museum of Fine Art, which has a phenomenal collection of art ranging from ancient Greek to 16th-19th century European to contemporary work by renowned artists. And the museum is free! We spend an hour or so browsing and marveling at the work displayed. After lunch at a little French sandwich and bread shop, we head to Parc Jean Drapeau.

On Thursday, we pack up and move on. We had talked about driving in the Jeep to Quebec City, which we’ve been told is “very French” and very much worth seeing, but it’s 150 miles away, and I tell Steve I’m not up for driving 300 miles round trip in one day. So Quebec City will have to wait for our next cross-country trip.
That evening, I discover rock lobster in the freezer; I’d bought it fresh at one of the roadside seafood stands in Jacksonville, Florida. I decide we’ll have it for dinner. But I’ve never made rock lobster (which is really a type of shrimp) before, and by the time I’ve cooked it, beheaded and shelled it, I discover that what seemed like a good size package in reality only yields about ½ cup of meat – hardly enough for a meal, even if I stretch it with vegetables. Once again I’m kicking myself – why didn’t I buy more of that incredible fresh shrimp at the Mercado in Ensenada - at $9 a kilo (2.2 pounds). Unlike the shrimp and rock lobster I bought in Florida, the Mexico shrimp had shells but no heads (yuck – want to become a vegetarian – fast? Try cutting the heads off 15 or 20 shrimp.)

So I take out a package of frozen scallops, defrost them, sauté them in butter, garlic and lemon, and mix with the lobster. Then I sauté some frozen red, green and yellow bell pepper (Trader Joe’s, of course) and onion and mix it with the lobster-scallops and a splash of lemon juice, vinaigrette dressing and a dollop of mayonnaise for a warm seafood salad on a bed of lettuce.