Drivin' north, eh?

Tomorrow we leave for Montréal, where we will stay in a fancy hôtel that is one block from a gorgeous cathédral, where I will eat probably too much rich French-Canàdian food, and where I wîll have time while adfamiliares is beiñg a classiçist to expløre the downtown streèts öf Montréäl. I will try not to mock the people I encounter for knowing Frénçh.

Sunday we will zip down to Portsmouth to collect our much-missed kitten, then Monday we will return home. We should get a pair of gorgeous drives this weekend, up through upstate New York and back down through Vermont and New Hampshire. I hope to have net access in the hotel, but this is Canada, so who knows. I may need to staple messages to an elk or something.

(And, if I may indulge in a crypticism: some days I can do no wrong. I gesture, and the universe bows. Enjoy my bounty. And my eeeeerie psychic powers!)

Montréal est bon

The "mont" in Montréal became clear to me as we drove across the Pontchartrain—there is a big lump of rock, approximately the size and shape of Montréal, squatting next to Montréal, and if you were to squint I suppose it could look like a mountain. Strange to see it rising from the otherwise two-dimensional fields of Québec.

Already, I like this city, and we have seen a bit more of it than expected, since my directions took us to the Hilton and not the Hyatt (where we are actually staying). No worries, as my map skills are way bitchin', and we conquered the one-way maze that is downtown Montréal. We're right between Chinatown and what appears to be the porno district, so I should have plenty to occupy my time. adfamiliares is already wishing I would stop speaking French, which I do not know. We've bumped into several of adfamiliares friends already, as well as Gil Rose from Swat. (William and Rosaria stayed home, alas.)

It was a beautiful drive up, as expected—through the snow-flocked Adirondacks, seeing endless pine and birch woods, interrupted here and there by black water dotted with islands of puffy white. We stopped for lunch at the Plattsburgh Burger King—our condolences to tirerim, whom we believe grew up there.

Not sure what I will do tonight, but I am looking forward to whatever it turns out to be. Wish y'all could be here—it would be more fun with a bunch of friends!