Montreal murals

/ Greg / 4 Comments

Montreal has a vibrancy and energy that is unmistakeable. The city oozes culture from every pore.  Animated conversations over a glass of wine rise from sidewalk patios. A world’s worth of music spills into the street from homes and bars. There’s a rich selection of public art – some historic, and some modern, abstract and mind bending. And then there are the murals.  Sides of buildings in Little Italy, Little Burgundy and along Saint-Laurent Boulevard make for an open air art gallery and turn even a short stroll for a coffee into a memorable experience. These are a few of my favourite murals from a few days of walks around beautiful Montreal.

From an evening stroll in Little Burgundy near the Marché Atwater before a meal at Joe Beef:

Montreal mural

Montreal mural

Continue reading →

Montreal food favourites

/ Greg / Leave a comment

I’ve spent enough time in Montreal to have a few go to food places.  A trip to the city isn’t complete without a couple of staples.  These are mostly things you already know about Montreal, and I’m not ashamed that my list isn’t one of under the radar places.  All of these are wonderful and deserved of the attention they receive (well, maybe all except the last on my list).

First off, every trip to Montreal needs a stop for a Schwartz’s smoked meat sandwich, a dill pickle and a black cherry Cott cola.  I’ve sampled some of the world’s great sandwiches and this is one of my all time favourites.

Schwartz's smoked meat sandwich

Continue reading →

The best dog that ever lived

/ Greg / 8 Comments

When you adopt an almost ten year old dog, you are faced with the inevitability that the end isn’t ever that far away. My wife and I knew that going into this. “Old dogs need love too” became a bit of an early theme. “We’ll enjoy what time we have” was another rallying cry. When things took a recent turn for the worse, we went back to those to help give us comfort. Truth is, no matter how difficult these past days have been, neither of us would trade anything for the time we had together with our Chewy.

Chewy, aka Chewbacca, aka Chewbert, aka El Cheberto, aka Uniboob McFluffypants (due to his pronounced basset hound chest and the fact that I believe all dogs should have the last name McFluffypants) was our dog for thirty one spectacular months. His past is an unknown for us. We think he’s part shih tzu (face, hair) and part basset hound (body, bark, temperament). His face looks like that of a muppet with impossibly large eyes and teeth that don’t point in any consistent direction.  He’s a mutt in all of the best connotations of that term.  He was, without any doubt, the best dog to have ever lived.

Chewy at the lake

You already know how this story ends, but all good stories have a beginning, a middle, a plot twist and then an end, and should be told in that order. So here goes.  This is the story of Chewy, at least the part he lived with us. A life lived with unrestrained and boundless happiness and love.

Continue reading →

Plaza de España

/ Greg / Leave a comment

When I first set foot in Seville, it immediately felt of its place.  That might sound a bit odd, but the narrow streets, the orange trees, the humidity, the scent it gave off… although I had never been here before, it was unmistakably Seville. Although all of the city that I was able to explore felt this way, one of the places I most wanted to visit, the Plaza de España, was so new relative to the historic city I wasn’t sure if it would have that same feeling.  Built in the late 1920s for the Ibero-American Exposition of 1929 and mixing a number of Spanish architectural styles, it felt like it had been here for centuries.

Plaza de España

Continue reading →

An epic road trip

/ Greg / Leave a comment

I live in an enormous, beautiful country, and sadly, I’ve seen more of western Europe than I have of Canada. Over the next week and a bit, I’m going to change that equation. As the final part of my family’s move from Halifax to Saskatoon, I’m flying back to New Brunswick to reunite with my wife and my dog after six weeks apart. We’ll load up the car, say a goodbye to my in-laws and kick off a journey of nearly 4,000km from Nackawic, NB to downtown Saskatoon to start our lives together on the prairies.

Since our dog isn’t able to fly, this part of our move will be an epic road trip (thanks Chewy, I owe you for this!).  Many have asked if we’ll cut through the USA on the drive.  Not a bloody chance.  That might shave a few hours off the trip, but I want to do this on my side of the border.  I want to drive alongside Lake Superior, see the giant nickel in Sudbury, visit the Terry Fox monument in Thunder Bay and do whatever it is they do in Brandon.  I’ve stocked my iPad with driving entertainment reflective of the journey we’re on: Taggart and Torrens “Canadianity” podcasts to keep us laughing and a playlist of Canadian music emblematic of the vast span of highways we’ll traverse.

Eight days, two humans and a four legged furry dude in a Honda Fit driving through Montreal, North Bay, the Sault, Kenora, small towns in Manitoba and into Saskatchewan.   Here’s to something I’ve wanted to do for a long time.  No new stamp in my passport on this trip, and that’s more than ok with me.

 

Feel the Rush

/ Greg / Leave a comment

I’ve been to my share of interesting sporting events on my travels.  So it felt pretty natural to buy a ticket to a lacrosse match for my first Saturday night in my new hometown of Saskatoon.   I had watched parts of a few games on TV, but hadn’t had the chance to take in a game in person.  I had no idea what I was in for.

Without a car, I hopped a very convenient express bus out to the SaskTel Centre, the home (field? arena?) of the Saskatchewan Rush, the only professional sports team in Saskatoon.  The early bus gave me some time to get familiar with what is now my home rink.  Although located in the middle of nowhere, it’s pretty nice all in all.

At the Saskatchewan Rush game

Continue reading →

Memories of Montreal

/ Greg / 1 Comment

Eleven years was far too long.

I had forgotten how much I love Montreal.  It is a city with which I have a thirty five year history, going back to some of my earliest childhood memories.  At worst, I’d find myself in Montreal every few years until this recent prolonged absence since the summer of 2005.  Since then, I’ve been traveling a lot, but focused on seeing new places. I inadvertently left Montreal behind for more than a decade.

On my long overdue visit, I got a rare opportunity to see Montreal through fresh eyes. Eyes that have seen some of the world’s great cities – Rome, Milan, Zurich, San Fransisco, Stockholm, Paris, Vienna, Prague.  Landing in Montreal a more seasoned traveler it immediately hit me – Montreal is a truly great, world class city.

It is said absence makes the heart grow fonder, and of that, I am certain.  Absence also makes you reminisce.   Over my four days in Montreal, I kept coming back to my memories in the city.  Like in the early eighties, me as a child on my first trips with my Dad, and chasing pigeons in Square Dorchester.  Standing here on a quiet morning thirty plus years later, I could almost hear my youthful laughter and the sound of pigeons taking flight en masse.

Square Dorchester

Continue reading →

Two churches in Seville

/ Greg / 2 Comments

I’m not a religious person, but whenever I travel in Europe, I am always drawn to visiting churches.  Many times the social centres of cities are clustered around their most famous churches and religious sites, so it is hard to miss them.  And from an architectural standpoint, they usually form some of the most beautiful and picturesque locations.  In Seville, Spain, this was certainly the case.

The Seville Cathedral is the third largest church in the world, only behind St. Peter’s in Rome and the Basílica do Santuário Nacional de Nossa Senhora Aparecida in Aparecida, Brazil.    It is the largest Cathedral in the world as the other two are not the seats of bishops.   Size aside, it is striking from an architectural perspective inside and out.

Seville Cathedral

Continue reading →

Day trip to Córdoba

/ Greg / Leave a comment

I have a bit of a compulsion to include a few day trips on any of the longer trips I take.  If I’m within a two hour train ride of somewhere interesting, I always feel a pull to loop in one extra place or one more location to explore.  On our trip to Spain last fall, we had all kinds of options for day trips out of both Madrid and Seville.  Consciously, we decided to ease up on the day trips so we could kick back a bit more than on previous trips.  For me, there was one day trip that couldn’t be sacrificed – a visit to Córdoba while we were staying in Seville.

The pull to Córdoba was to visit the Mezquita – the religious site that has switched back and forth over the last 1300 years from a Catholic basilica, to a half mosque half basilica, to a full mosque and now to a Roman Catholic church. A straightforward morning train ride from Seville had us in beautiful Córdoba in under an hour.  We made our way to the Mezquita as our first stop and entered the Patio de los Naranjos, the inner courtyard of the site.

Inner courtyard of the Mezquita

Continue reading →