It can’t rain forever…!

Good evening blog readers and welcome to “Another rainy day in Montreal, the misadventures of An Italian Across America”!

Woke up to another rainy day here in Montreal, that’s the simple truth. There has to be a camera somewhere because it wasn’t raining when I looked through the window before heading downstairs (obviously without the umbrella). But as soon as we go out, it started spitting, so I said to myself, oh well, at least I do get some exercise going up and down flights of stairs, so that I can avoid getting like Mama Cass, as suggested by Renato this morning in one of his amusing emails! ;-)

Today we tried for the first time, Montreal’s Subway System, clean and efficient, but probably still a little bit too slow compared with other cities like London, UK or New York City, NY.

Our first stop this morning has been the “Basilique Notre-Dame de Montréal” where after purchasing a ticket ($5), we’ve been able to get into the church (I wonder what God would say about this…). The church is magnificent, truly a masterpiece, a work of art. We learned listening to one of the many tours given inside the church, that the only one buried in there is the architect who built the church, sometimes in the 1800. We also had the chance to see the new chapel, built after the fire of 1978 (oh well, I guess I can’t remember that, can I?!?! LOL).

The nice thing is that by the time we got out of the subway and inside the church, the rain had stopped; the bad thing is that by the time we finished with the “Basilique”, outside was pouring like hell!


So we had to wait for the rain to stop, about 20 minutes, and then proceeded to take a walk through Old Montreal, that we had seen yesterday while driving with the top down with our friend Chris. I was searching for a “Crepes place” I saw yesterday but we couldn’t find it, so we decided to get back on the subway and teletransport ourselves to “Petite Italie” again, where I’d read about a to die for pizza, that according to several reviews on the internet was absolutely to die for.

The place was about 10 minutes walk from the subway station, the name is “Pizzeria Napoletana” if you want to check it out, it looked pretty authentic, although I’m pretty sure I was the only Italian there, which in this case is NOT a good sign. We had two pizzas that we promptly shared to taste different toppings. I got one with blue cheese and sun-dried tomatoes, and Hap got black olives with capers. Both very tasty, thin crust, but not really what real Italian pizza is supposed to look like; nice try though!

Chair at "Pizzeria Napoletana":

After pizza we needed to take a walk, and what other place better than the Italian neighborhood? We found a small church that seemed to be just popped out of a Fellini movie. I almost got the impression to be, all of a sudden, back in Italy for a moment. We spent some time inside the church taking pictures and just wandering around admiring the art work and then headed to the nearest tube station to come back to the Hotel.

This evening we had drinks at a local pub, and then went to visit the “Canadian Centre for Architecture” who has a “Free Admission” policy after 5.30PM. The museum was very interesting, with two extraordinary temporary expositions about architectural environments in London, UK and Tokyo, Japan.

There was also someone (a Canadian architect I suppose) giving a lecture on his work who was also exposed at the center, and that gave us the opportunity to start “Operation Camouflage”, we basically blended with the walls and been able to have drinks and hors d’oeuvres with the speaker and his guests, very interesting!

“Mexican cuisine” for dinner this evening, Montreal most famous (and touristy) restaurant I would say. Typical Mexican (read: how Americans depict Mexicans) atmosphere with piñatas hanging from the ceiling and giant margaritas. The food was excellent, I had a classical Taco/Burrito Combination, and Hap got Pollo con Mole, which was also superb. We would recommend the restaurant to friends, as the staff was also very pleasant to deal with.

Tomorrow we’re heading to Ottawa where we planning on spending a night and hopefully (weather permitting) take either a walking tour of the city, or a boat tour (which would certainly be a lot better)

Pray for us!
Nico