Sleepful in Montreal. There was no doubt that Joe was dead tired from our adventures in Boston and Stowe, so I let him sleep in until 9:30 (still 6:30 at home, he reminded me) to restore just enough energy for a final push. This gave me a little extra time to figure out what exactly we were going to do today, which was in question when I woke up. We checked out of the tres chic Hotel Nelligan (see the review in a separate post) and enjoyed their complimentary breakfast in their nightclub-quality lounge, and Joe ate more croissants than a small cotillion (and four is my cap on French words in a sentence).
We finished up in Vieux Montreal – Old Montreal – that morning by investigating a historic firehouse converted into the Montreal Historical Museum (or whatever French name by which it was known), followed by a stroll through the neighborhood’s sparsely populated cobblestone streets which didn’t have nearly as much charm in the morning as they did in yesterday’s Hot August Night. Though I wasn’t surprised, at this point not even a trusty gelato could get the spring in Joe’s step back.
We ended our ramble at Montreal’s chief religious icon, Notre Dame, which from the outside looks like a surprisingly faithful replication of the Parisian original except for a lack of gargoyles. The inside, though gilded to the nines, was actually one of the more disappointing cathedral buildings I’ve ever visited. In order to pack ‘em in, there were two levels of balcony seating along the length of the church. What this did was that instead of having beautiful stained glass windows lighting up the church, the interior was dark and squat and not very soaring. I thought the radiators that had been placed in front of each of the rows of pews (it gets awfully cold in Montreal) as well as the gently sloping seating in the main part of the church were curious features indeed.
With the walking portion of our trip now completed, we retrieved our car and headed up to Mount Royal, the only hill in what is otherwise a very very flat part of Canada, so that we could survey our surroundings before heading back to the US of A. Our plan was to ride the paddle boats, so we started walking through the absolutely spectacular grassy knolls of Mount Royal Park. If I lived in Montreal I would spend every weekend here that it wasn’t 50 below; it was simply fantastic (and designed by Frederick Law Olmstead who designed Central Park and Golden Gate Park). About 200 yards into our stroll of ambiguous dimensions, we came to the crest of the final hill which overlooked the pond. Lo, in the distance, at the far end of a good sized lake, was the paddle boat dock. Joe made like our bygone Basset Hound Rockwell and got down on all fours and could not be pried loose. “Seriously, Joe?” “Nope, not going to go there.” “OK, then, let’s head back.”
Before we leave Montreal, I would be remiss if I didn’t comment on its Frenchness. I’ve experienced Montrealers during some of my business dealings in Stowe, and I know that there is always a sneering undertone of condescension to us Yankees, or really to anyone who dares utter a word of English. I was flabbergasted when I learned that Quebec actually passed a law prohibiting business owners from putting English on a sign on the outside a building and then mandated that any French, on the inside of the building or on anything printed, shall be twice as large as the English, and that there are severe fines for disobedience. It was no surprise, then, that there has been a mass exodus of Anglos from Montreal to mostly Toronto. During our 18 hours in Montreal, we saw a little of everything. All of the workers speak French amongst themselves, but unlike in France, everyone with whom I came in contact spoke perfect English. It’s like a little game. The difference is that when I’m at the counter at McDonalds in the US and two Spanish-speaking workers are speaking to each other, they will generally speak English if I’m standing there. In Montreal, they speak English to me, French to each other, then English back to me, which I found kind of rude. We also seemed to have more than our share of disinterested waitresses who just could care less about whether we wanted a menu or to order our meal or wanted to pay the bill. OK, enough of the French Canadians.
So with that pent up frustration in mind, we hit the freeway and I told Joe “Good Bye Montreal, Au Revoir” and we sped onto the underground freeway. I then gathered my written directions, merged left immediately and we were off. About 30 seconds later, I came to the realization that I turned onto the wrong freeway. We spent the next 25 minutes lost in space during perhaps my biggest directions mishap in recent memory. Of course it didn’t help that there were exits which were blocked, detours which were mismarked and lots and lots of French road signs which had about 250 words too many on each sign, all of which were in French and with names that all looked suspiciously similar.
We finally made it back to the Pont Champlain which took us over the St. Lawrence River and were headed back to Vermont. No balloons today. Returning two hours to Burlington seemed to take a lot less time than it did getting to Montreal. The border crossing this time was a non-event, and even with three cars in the line in front of me, a border patrol agent saw to it to open up a new lane. I’ve never appreciated American bureaucracy as much in all my life.
After my cell phone regained consciousness, I then began to reflect on the fact that our last day in Montreal was really good, but it lacked that one signature experience I was hoping for. I felt obliged to give it to Joe, to try and fit one more thing into our itinerary in the 60 minutes of free time we had left. It’s like trying to stuff one last piece of clothing into your luggage, hoping that the bag doesn’t explode or the zipper breaks. I had my holy grail – the Shelburne Museum located 15 minutes past the airport in Burlington. Set against this wish were two things. One – the really, really dark and ominous skies in front of us, and two – the United Airlines email updates that kept pushing our departure time back a few minutes at a time which would put us in the precarious situation of missing our connection and potentially spending the night at O’Hare.
As we got into Burlington, all hell broke loose. It reminded me of that scene in “The Truman Show”, a favorite of Joe’s and mine, where Jim Carrey is on the boat getting pelted by increasingly more violent storms. You want a storm? Well, you’ve got one now! The skies unleashed their fury. Buckets and buckets of rain dumped on us. The windshield wipers were at full speed. Lightning cracked, visibly startling Joe who has seen lighting only a few times in his life. He knew the math between thunder and lighting to tell how far away the storm was, he correctly concluded that we were in the thick of it. He was absolutely terrified that we would be electrocuted. “Dad, we need to get out of the car right now! It’s metal!” “Dad, don’t drive under the power lines, they could kill us!” “Dad, let’s go to the airport right now!” I tried calming him down by telling him that this is only going to make our trip to the Shelburne Museum that much more memorable, and he said only if we would stay indoors. When I told him that the museum was mostly outdoors but that he had the same umbrella that he used in Boston to keep him dry, he told me that I could keep my death stick and he’ll stay in the car. The good news from United was that our flight was delayed which meant that we could stay from 3:45 until the place closed at 5. The bad news was that it meant our connection through Chicago would be even more dicey, and my backup plan through Dulles was already oversold.
So I ignored all of the looming disaster scenarios and pushed full speed ahead. We hydroplaned down the interstate and pulled into the Shelburne Museum overlooking Lake Champlain (that is, if you actually see Lake Champlain), and to our great astonishment there were all kinds of people still there. Got to love those Vermonters. It did mean, though, that the gift shop looked like LAX at Christmas. I knew that in the back of his mind, Joe was just as intrigued as I was and that his Basset Hound heels-in-the-dirt stance would melt away once he saw the place. I’m not sure that melting ended up being the appropriate term, but armed with my plastic bag of a rain slicker and our mini umbrella, we took the plunge into the maelstrom.
So from there we can both honestly say that the Shelburne Museum was wonderful. It might be the most unique and well done presentation of historical material that I’ve ever seen. A very wealthy New York heiress, Electra Havemeyer Webb, who owned homes all around the world including one in Vermont, donated a bunch of land to create a museum to dedicated to Americana and folk art. When we were there we saw an immaculately restored Ticonderoga steamship sitting in the pastoral Vermont countryside. There were historical buildings which have been relocated or recreated from all facets of American life – a lighthouse, a town meeting hall, a one-room school house, a covered bridge, a carriage barn, a print shop with working printing presses, a general store stocked faithfully with every last item available 150 years ago, and the masterpiece - a striking white, neo-classical plantation home with colonnaded porch in the center of it all. The home was built by Mrs. Webb’s children, and they took eight rooms from her Park City apartment and relocated them into the plantation home. More than just an opportunity to see how the other half lives, the house, and indeed many of the other buildings, also include the hands down finest collection of Americana outside of a major museum that I’ve ever seen. The parlor in the plantation house, for example, included four Monets. Joe’s favorite was the children’s toy collection – hundreds of toy fire trucks, model trains and piggy banks with mechanical penny-pitching devices. Forget Mount Royal, if I lived in this part of the world, we would be going here every weekend. Joe really got a kick out of it too. He couldn’t wait to see what was inside the next building; it was like Christmas morning. Through it all, the Vermont thunderstorm lived up to expectations, which meant that as bad as it was, the sun came out just as we were wrapping up. We had to work a bit harder today, but with some splendiferous help from mother nature, today successfully reached the operatic crescendo for which I have been striving. As we returned to the car, Joe said one final time, “Dad, I’m really tired,” and I knew he meant it.
The coda of our expedition, as always, is the flight back to reality. Flights were being cancelled right and left (but thankfully not front and center) and our connection window had been reduced to 15 minutes, but we were sailing smoothly. The Burlington to Chicago leg was painless, and when we got to Chicago, we enjoyed a few extra minutes courtesy of another delay. By this time, Joe had gone through all of personal diversions designed to keep him from fidgeting (including watching the serendipitously titled DVD “Fly Away Home” about a girl and her flock of ducks), so he practiced draining my computer battery with some minesweeper and solitaire. After landing in Los Angeles, we got back to the car and within seconds he was asleep.
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