Monday, July 3, 2023

YUL – Montreal’s Pierre Elliot Trudeau Airport

Pierre was Prime Minister of Canada for eleven years, and I thought he was pretty good.  He was certainly very smart and was following a vocation.  Justin, not so much, but he’s a lot better looking, and we can’t find anyone any good that’s willing to take the thankless job.  The USA has the same problem.  Enough of that. 

This will be the last time I leave Montreal in July, now that I have seen what it really is in Festival season.  I am missing so much this year: The F1 Grand Prix,  The Montreal International Jazz Festival, Just for Laughs, Cirque du Soleil, Francofolies, Montreal Completement Cirque, Nuits d’Afrique, on and on and on.  The Terrasses are full and we have more pedestrian streets.  It’s a happening place.  Come visit, like Sue and Mike Nagle did this year.  I was happy to have them in town, even just for a bit, and Steve was happy to drive us all around.  We had dinner at Bonaparte, yum.

And I didn’t totally miss all of the good stuff.  The Grand Prix paddock is just across the street from my apartment, so I witnessed the partying from on high and walked around the area, where there were fancy cars on display and a lot of car-related booths.  The only one that looked interesting to me was the simulator, and it had too much of a line up.  No surprise. 

I also got to see Echo, Cirque du Soleil’s new show, with Linda, Bev and Wendy.  We had dinner at Terrasse Nellie, on the roof of the Hotel Nelligan, in old Montreal.  I’ll be taking more people there.  It was magic.  So was the Cirque.  They always think of something new.  And, they give us locals a break.  I remember paying $265 US for the big top in San Francisco six or eight years ago.  Here we sat in the very first row for $155, Canadian.  That’s only a hundred bucks to you.  The first row is a kick, by the way.  There’s just enough element of danger from flying bodies to keep you on the edge of your seat. 

That was Thursday, June 29.  The next day at 10:30am, I met with my accountant to turn over my papers so he could do taxes for two countries.  I was ready about 10:28am.  I just threw away a bunch of receipts.  I have way too many to justify, anyway.  How much can you charge against a job that doesn’t pay?  It just gets me about $100,000 worth of free cruising every year.  No, the horseshoe up my touchie isn’t giving me any pain at all. 

The minute my accountant left, I picked up the phone and called my new friend, Steve, to tell him I was free to play on Friday night.  I still had a cruise to sell and the clients were considering a number of them, so there was research, but I needed another night off, after taxes. 

I got on the Jazz Festival web site and found some balcony seats for John Scofield, a famous old guitarist.  By that, I mean he’s my age, and he played with Miles Davis, yada, yada.  Then I found Le Central, an upscale food court with better restaurants, and they had the reincarnation of Pintxo, a tapas place that I had loved years ago.  So I called and reserved there.  Steve left his car at Les Cours and we took the Metro, which is how you do festivals in Montreal, so convenient and no worries about parking, when everyone is in the same place at once.

The reservation at Pintxo got us a table by the patio doors, open to the street.  We had a nice bottle of Spanish white wine with our lobster tail, calamari and patatas bravas and went off looking for ice cream.  We were in the Quartier des Festivales, during the Montreal Jazz Festival, and we had a helluva time finding an ice cream place.  We walked from St. Lawrence Main to Place des Arts, by way of Complexe Desjardins and found exactly one purveyor of crème glacé.  By the time we found it, we didn’t have time to wait in line.  It was a lot of line, as you can imagine.  Someone is missing an opportunity here. 

So we made our way to our venue, the Monument National, home to the National Theatre School of Canada, and up to our pretty good balcony seats.  The theatre is probably a hundred years old, and I was told it had great acoustics.  They all did back in the day, before electronic enhancements took over. Something acoustical happened right on time at eight o’clock, but it wasn’t our show.  It was the fire alarm.  Down the four floors we went and out to the street.  The crowd was very orderly, there was a park across the street and four fire trucks arrived to check the building out.

The whole thing took about a half-hour until we were back in our seats and the show went on, as it must, you know.  I thought it was good, considering how old Scofield is by now, and that’s the essence of a Jazz Festival, the very old, very new, and very popular.  It will be on until July 9 or 10 but I am on a plane bound for California, another home. I can’t complain.

Saturday, I caught up with my emails and worked on my next cruise sale, which involved comparing the available Panama Canal options for next March.  That’s selling out, so I just made five bookings, four of which I will be cancelling.  The weather was very iffy, so I just had Steve over for dinner figuring we could go to the Jazz Festival after, if it improved.  We had thunder and lightening, while we ate down my fridge, and were too lethargic to go out after, even if the weather had improved. 

Sunday morning, I packed up Robbie to go to Dena and John’s house for a month.  I managed to catch him and John took him away around eleven-thirty.  I kept working on the Panama Canal cruise, finishing around four.  I stopped for breakfast and started to pack around five.  By seven I was done, but I made the mistake of going back to the computer, where there is always plenty to do.  I went out to dinner about eight-thirty, planning on Fiorella, my local Italian in the St. Martin Hotel.  No luck, they are closed Sundays.  The next closest place was Dunn’s, but smoked meat sometimes repeats and I wanted to sleep, so I had a hot chicken sandwich.  That was my go-to when I was at McGill and the gang wanted to go to Ben’s.  I didn’t like smoked meat at the time, so I would have a “Hot Chicken” (The “sandwich” is silent), ordered in English with a French accent, fries and a coke.  That’s what I had at Dunn’s, and, with tax and tip, it came to thirty bucks.  I used to get it for a dollar in the early sixties.  My IBM starting salary in 1965 was $5,400.  It’s looking a lot better in retrospect.

At 6:00am, I was in a taxi on the way to the airport, the “hot chicken” having provided the desired good night’s sleep, albeit a short one.  Not having a bag to check saved me a line that had to have 200 people in it.  The customs hall probably had 400 people in it, maybe more.  There was an attractive looking Nexus/Global entry line, and I asked the line monitor if TSA-pre would possibly get me into it.  That, no, but she took a good look at me, said she could do something, and sent me to the crew/handicapped line, which was even better.  So I am recommending that we old farts ask that question, even when we know the answer, just to have our age noticed, acknowledged and rewarded.  Then, at the gate, when they were begging people to check their carry-on rolling bags, I stepped up to the plate, expecting that good deed to be punished by a half-hour wait at the carousel in SFO.  Then, once First class and Super Elite status were boarded, she invited those of us who had volunteered our bags to board next.  I got on this plane without ever waiting in a line.  You’re welcome. 

The other trick that worked was booking an aisle seat in a row where the window seat was already booked, in the hope that no one takes the middle seat.  There is exactly one free seat on this plane and is to my right.   My mouse and notes have a seat of their own.  This trip is starting very well.