The Lunch Scam

The rain began overnight and continued into the morning, so I enjoyed a rare sleep-in and Walking Club didn’t get going until close to 9 after the skies had cleared. Even at that departure time I couldn’t interest Magnus, so he hung around in the room while the rest of the walked, then we all met up for breakfast. The breakfast spread was excellent, as each day they had fresh papaya, cantaloupe, and watermelon, as well as yogurt, fresh croissants, then all the greasy fry-up staples such as omelets, several types of sausages, fried potatoes, and lastly, trays of waffles, pancakes, and French toast.

We played around in the pool and did some body surfing in the ocean, and somewhere along the way Stella lost her silver earrings, which bummed her out, but fortunately a new set of earrings was only a short walk away in one of the jewelry stores in town.

Yesterday, we had been approached by two hotel staff – Samwise and Carlos, and they had offered us a free lunch at one of their sister hotels, which was a higher end facility, in the hopes that we might consider booking our next trip there. Upon agreeing, they pulled out a booking form, wrote some information on it, then gave it to us. Look, we knew right away there were some ulterior motives here, which would probably require a time-share presentation or something like this (what did someone once say about there being no such thing as a free lunch?), but on these all-inclusive trips any chance we have to do something out of the ordinary is welcome.

We arrived at the Presidential Suites Lifestyle Cabarete hotel at 12:30 and entered the front door to find a large eating area with no sign of food or guests. A staff member suddenly appeared, asked for our voucher, then led us across the street to a different portion of the hotel and we were directed to a table near the fancy bar and offered a drink. So far so good. Then a slicked-up dude arrived, welcomed us, gave us a party sack which included a mickey of rum, a bottle of Mamajuana ingredients (Dominican’s version of aphrodisiac liquor), and some other trinkets. Then…the sales pitch. He told us all about the model which was absolutely not a time share, but was the next gen version, now called a Holiday Vacation Club where you pay an initial amount (from $25k to $350k) which gives you access to any of their properties in the DR, Mexico, or Dubai. They also allow you to rent out rooms to non-members for a premium over what the member would pay, allowing you to pocket the difference. The salesperson was likeable and pretty convincing, as these guys always are, but we made it pretty clear this was not for us, but we would like to see a room. He took us up to the three bedroom unit, which was simply stunning, as all bedrooms and living areas had ocean views, and it was very modern and spacious. There was one other couple there cornered on a couch getting the hard sales pitch from another salesman, but we kept standing, in fighting pose, as our guy tried again to convince us to at least buy some sort of trial package. We said no, but asked to see additional information or a contract, but we were told flatly that they did not provide any sales information and all deals had to be done on the spot, today, which screamed scam and red flags. We politely declined and hoped we’d then be directed to the restaurant, and he did accompany us to the restaurant, right through it, past the fancy pool and pool bar, then were heaved unceremoniously down a set of concrete stairs to the beach below like yesterday’s garbage.

“So I guess you had to spend the 25 grand to get lunch?” I asked.

“What a scam,” said Ana. “That was a total waste of time.”

“What did you guys think?” I asked the kids.

“I think it was a great deal. I ran the numbers through my head and it makes a lot of sense,” said Magnus.

Stella didn’t have much to say, besides where were we going for lunch.

We had a great conversation all the way back about direct sales, multi-level marketing, our past experiences with these sorts of sales pitches, and how to recognize a scam. I found it the whole thing to be an irreplaceable learning opportunity for the kids, especially Magnus who is a natural salesmen, but also I think inclined to fall for these sorts of things, so exposure to high pressure sales in a safe environment with his parents was probably a good experience for both of them.

Lunch was had in the buffet, which fended off my family’s starvation after the phantom lunch invitation, then dinner was taken in the second of the hotel’s a la carte restaurants – the Asian Fusion. The rest of the day was spent by the pool, and Ana and I went for one more walk later in the day and were happy to come across a group of local kids who had struck up a big game of beach baseball. It was satisfying to see teenagers having fun with each other, being social, being goofy, and getting exercise instead of just standing there silently mesmerized by their phones, scrolling endlessly.

Meet "The Hammer"

Walking Club was slightly delayed as it was pouring outside at 7, but by 8 Ana, Stella and I were walking the beach, amidst intermittent gentle showers, while Magnus the schedule-challenged teenager slumbered. Stella was hoping to find some shells, but there were few signs of life along the beach – no shells, no jellyfish, no perished fish, no crabs, and not even any shore birds. Really, the only living things were a few vagabond beach dogs, one which we recognized from the night before, as Magnus had struck a friendship with it and named him Hernando.

After breakfast we set up shop beside the pool and Stella produced a Sunwing beach ball she had been given on the airplane. It didn’t take long for a few kids to join our pool game of “keep it up” and soon we had overtaken the centre area of the pool with the competitors. A new chatty kid entered the game, and introduced himself to me as Ethan but I nicknamed him The Hammer as his contacts with the ball were vigorous, powerful, and completely directionless. And sometimes he would grab the ball, run around on the deck a bit, then launch himself into the water, laughing wildly, as he hammered the ball haphazardly and belly-flopped, or back-flopped, or face-flopped into the water while the rest of us took turns retrieving the ball from the far reaches of the pool. He took a liking to me and cozied up to me in the pool, then told me his life story which he summarized in about five rapid sentences: he’s from the Bronx, has younger twin brothers, and he suspects his mom might have been born somewhere else as she speaks great Spanish.

During lunch, Ana noticed that we hadn’t seen a single gecko or lizard yet, which was surprising as they are normally stuck all over the walls and ceilings at these resorts. And they are so much fun to use as targets for spitballs.

“Let’s ask the waiter what happened to all the geckos,” I said. “How do you say gecko in Spanish?”

“I think it’s legato,” Ana said.

As one of the waiters came by, Ana grabbed his attention and asked him in Spanish, “Excuse me, what happened to all the legatos that are usually on the walls?”

He looked at her confused and said, “What?”

“Legatos. Lizards. Geckos,” Ana said as she pointed at the walls and ceilings, and the waiter’s eyes followed her fingers, but was just not getting it, then he said something in Spanish like, “Senora, whatever word you are saying, that lady over there knows all about it, just ask her,” and then he pointed to the hostess.

“She is the legato expert?” Ana asked.

“Si, si, si,” the waiter replied then hightailed it out of the dining area.

Another waiter came by so Ana, never one to give up, tried again.

“Senor, what happened to all the legatos?”

“Ahhh, legatos. Si. Well, since Covid there’s been many fewer of them. Very suspicious. I think something funny’s going on,” he said, shaking his head, with a look of paranoia in his eyes. The pandemic conspiracy theories ran far deeper than I expected. Perhaps Bill Gates and his Illuminati had it in for the geckos of the world too.

We spent the day alternating between beach and pool, playing cards, telling the kids some old travel stories, and soaking up the beautiful sunshine. As promised, the Sunwing rep produced a credit card loaded with $150 compensation for the lost bag, and the bag itself showed up late in the afternoon, after being discovered in Toronto and sent out on an Air Canada flight. Stella was overjoyed, and showed up at our Mexican a la carte meal wearing a dashing outfit and a huge smile. The meal itself was voluminous, delicious, and opulent. After four courses of Mexican food, followed up with tequila shots, it was all we could do to limp back to the room, carrying the heavy load of our overburdened stomachs, and collapse on the bed.

Retail Mission

When vacationing at an all-inclusive resort, Walking Club meets at 7am every morning on the beach. Sometimes it’s just me, sometimes there’s one or two more, depending on who I can cajole into joining me. It is the best time of the day, as there’s enough light to see, but the sun isn’t up yet, so you get this hazy pre-morning atmosphere that is warm but not hot and perfect for walking. For the first Walking Club of the trip it was just me, and I started from the western end of Cabarete Beach where the hotel was located and walked east along the horseshoe shaped bay. The surf was large and crashing and the wind strong, but the further east I walked, the less frenzied the ocean became, and when it hit my risk tolerance level, I threw off my shirt and jumped in for my first ocean dip. Glorious. This is the moment I dream about every year, plunging into that salty, warm ocean water, then bobbing to the surface and floating there on my back, listening to the surf, feeling the water washing over me, and tasting the salt on my lips. There’s something about the ocean water that makes me feel fulfilled, and connected, and present. I love it.

I returned to the room, collected my people, then we headed down to the restaurant area for our first breakfast, which was delicious, with many selections, and outstanding croissants. As we ate, the kids noticed a resort cat prowling around the floor, snapping up dropped morsels, then saw another one perched on the roof overlooking the diners, perhaps enjoying tasty gutter snacks.

With breakfast concluded, the retail mission was on. Ana loves nothing more than a retail mission, and a missing luggage provided an urgent shopping necessity indeed. We walked out the front entrance of the resort and set out walking down the busy main street and were passed by smelly two-stroke motorbikes, dump trucks, construction trucks, busses, beaten-up cars, all spewing clouds of gasoline and diesel vapours into the roadway and lungs of the many locals and tourists walking along the sidewalk trails alongside the roadway. We found an ATM and withdrew a nice wad of Dominican pesos at a rate of about 41 to 1.

After finding one beachwear store where the cheapest suit was $75 US dollars, the girls zeroed-in on a second hand clothing store and descended into a crazed shopping frenzy, like deranged and ravenous Great Whites ripping apart a whale. For our own safety, Magnus and I skedaddled out of there and across the street to a coffee shop where we enjoyed some drinks and chatted until the ladies exhausted themselves and the store’s inventory. After this, Stella’s mood was much improved.

From here we continued walking and soon reached the commercial center of town. It had been at least 20 years since Ana and I had been to Cabarete, and it really didn’t seem to have changed much at all. There were shops selling touristy trinkets, some selling surf wear and gear, small grocery stores, booze shops, restaurants, an ice cream stand, some banks, fruit vendors, and a lot of locals and tourists coming and going. Despite the road running parallel to the beach, the solid stretch of buildings made it impossible to see the ocean, other than quick glimpses through the shops with all glass front and backs, or the occasional pedestrian walkway. We found a few more clothing items for Stella, Magnus bought some trinkets, Ana bought jewelry, and I picked up two cigars. Retail mission accomplished!

We cut through one of the walkways to the beach and the world transformed. In place of loud motorcycles was the loud surf crashing up on the beach. Instead of shops selling trinkets, there was an army of vendors carrying wooden cases full of them, approaching each and every tourist trying to sell them a bracelet, or necklace, or box of cigars. And instead of an endless array of commercial buildings, there was an expansive and beautiful ocean before us, with the high winds building up large waves and crashing surf. Diesel vapours were replaced with moist salty air, cracked pavement replaced with soft sand, and instead of blaring car stereos were speakers from the many beach restaurants cranking out the latest Dominican bachata hits and salsa classics. Man, I love Latino land.

We walked back along the beach and soon the restaurants thinned out and were replaced by larger hotels, and in one case, just the abandoned and slightly creepy foundation of a long-ago demolished building, made even scarier by a blasted hole in the high foundation wall leading into darkness, and large enough to walk into, with ominous Spanish words sprayed on the moldy concrete.

“Hey Dad,” Magnus said. “I bet I can guess what those Spanish words translate into.”

“What?” I asked.

“Free hugs.”

We arrived back at the hotel just in time for lunch, where we continued our first day stomach expansion, then the kids returned to the room to relax while Ana and I attended the Sunwing orientation session at 2 pm, which was mostly useless and confusing, but we did find out that Stella would be receiving compensation for the delayed bag. By mid-afternoon the wind had picked up and as we walked onto the beach we realized why Cabarete is called the kite surfing capital of the world – by my rough estimation there were 150 kite surfers tearing through the bay, cutting through the surf, and doing giant leaps off waves then slowly parachuting down with many seconds of hang time. What a spectacle! Especially since the last time we were here, the sport of kite surfing didn’t yet exist, and the bay was full of windsurfers and Hobie Cats. Now, there was not a single sailboard to be seen – it was all kites.

Despite the large and dangerous crashing waves, Stella and I decided to go for an ocean swim, which was less a swim, and more of a game of chicken with the unstoppable cresting waves, which refused to chicken out, and enveloped us and rolled us upside down, sideways, backwards, and forwards across the fortunately sandy bottom, resulting in sand rash, inhaled ocean water, and sand-laden crotches of swimsuits. It was great fun, so much so that Ana even joined us for some aquatic punishment.

We returned to the room for human crevice sand identification and removal, then a chill-out session on our balcony where I enjoyed a fine dark Maduro robusto cigar and a cold Presidente while listening to Bob Marley on the speaker and watching the guests and staff walking back and forth along the pathways. Moments like this are when I achieve a sense of stillness on these trips, so I relish and remember them.

Buffet dinner was excellent, but we did not stay out for any later evening activities as we were wiped from a full day in the sun so I was asleep before 10 and I don’t know what happened after that.

2021 Dominican Republic - Arrival in Cabarete

The heavy door to the airtight cigar tube opened and the sweet and moist Caribbean air flooded into the space occupied by masked Northerners, Omicron molecules, and lingering people smells. We waited patiently as those at the front of the plane gathered their things and slowly filtered out. The wait was excruciating, but we were now so close, and a successful start to our first overseas vacation in two years was imminent. I had kept my hopes purposely low in the weeks leading up to our departure as the fourth wave of Covid in Canada courtesy of the Omicron variant (successor to the Delta variant, the UK variant, and the original Covid Classic) was underway and cases were riding the exponential curve up, resulting in new travel restrictions and potential border closures. Fortunately, our departure date arrived before any new drastic measures were introduced, and on Thursday, December 16 we stepped off the plane and into the Dominican Republic, a place we hadn’t visited for ten years.

After successfully passing through customs and immigration, we proceeded to the baggage area to find the bags were already unloaded off the carousel and arranged on the floor, awaiting their anxious owners. Bag number 1, check. Bags 2 and 3, check. Bag number 4. Bag number 4? Where the hell is bag number 4? We raced around the carousel, looking for it, but found nothing, so scanned the other passengers to see if they had mistakenly picked it up, which was very possible as it was the most generic black roller bag you could imagine. No dice. I called over an airport worker who helped us with a brief search, then had us complete a missing bag report. The missing bag was Stella’s, and her heart and spirit had plunged, as our precious fashionista had meticulously packed it with carefully curated evening outfits, clever accessories, and Insta-worthy beachwear, and all her imagined glamour parades down the runway leading to the buffet were now in serious jeopardy.

We completed the paperwork and Ana exchanged phone numbers with the contact so she could keep us informed of progress. We left the Puerto Plata airport and found the Sunwing rep who pointed out the bus that would be taking us to our final destination of Cabarete, and as we walked over Stella shed a few tears, despite our promises of generous compensation from the airline, shopping opportunities, and surety that the bag would be found at some point. None of that mattered - she was completely deflated. Me, not so much, especially after discovering that the obnoxious wedding party of 40 that had taken over the departure gate with strollers, endless bags of gear, and bratty, unvaccinated kids running all over the place without masks spraying youthful germs everywhere, were in fact not going to our resort. One of the dads in particular, thought it was perfectly acceptable to walk up and down the length of the airplane throughout the journey unmasked and drinking beer while carrying his phlegmy baby. All we could do was tighten up our N-95 surgical masks and breathe shallowly.

After 40-minute ride which included a brief stop in Sosua to drop off guests at a different hotel, we arrived at the Viva Wyndham Tangerine hotel at 11pm and after being strangled with a check-in bottleneck, we were finally presented with keys to our rooms and began the heroic Victory Walk. This is the initial triumphant journey from reception to your room, as you are wearing your winter boots, carrying jackets and gloves, dragging suitcases, and covered with the funk of the airplane, but feeling overjoyed at the miracle of actually being here and imagining the all-inclusive week to come.

Our ground level rooms were excellent and had an adjoining door between them. Especially appealing to me was the instructive and inspirational mural painted on the wall of our room which had artfully painted word such as THINKPOSITIVE, RELAX, EXERCISEDAILY, EAT HEALTHY, WORRYLESS, WORKHARD, LIVE, LOVE. It was a pleasant change from the typical wall propaganda we are used to seeing in Cuba, such as PATRIA O MUERTE (Country or Death), LA HISTORIA ME ABSOLVERA (History Will Absolve Me), SOCIALISMA O MUERTE (Socialism or Death), MUERTE AL INVASOR (Death to the Invader). Positivity, amigos.

After a rapid unpacking we searched out the midnight snack bar and sat down for a plate of crab croquettes, hot dogs, and French fries, and ate it up greedily. I washed my food down with a plastic cup of cold Presidente beer which was inspiring and marvelous. As it was late, we had a very quick look around the resort, which was smallish, well-kept and nearly empty of people, then retired to our rooms for the night, anxious to begin our first full day tomorrow.

A Power Weekend in Montreal - Sunday

Power weekends are all about power breakfasts, so we got ourselves packed up and checked-out then drove up to the groovy Mile End neighbourhood, northwest of downtown, to look for a café. We first went for a quick walk to check out Fairmount avenue but found ourselves mainly alone, with most of the shops closed, and a chilly wind blowing in our faces, so we slid into the Faberge café and found a cozy booth. Breakfast was decent, the crowd was Bohemian, but my favourite part of the experience was our server’s tshirt which read, “Fuck Le Gluten”. Now I don’t speak much French, but that message came through loud and clear.

By the time we finished eating there was a long queue of people waiting to get into the café. Besides opening up the sidewalk patio tables, they had also slid open the patio doors and flipped out these nifty built-in seats and a table that allowed them to seat an additional two customers. Fairmont street was now fully alive and that chilly wind had been replaced by beautiful sunshine, so we set out on a walk to explore the neighbourhood. While Ana popped in and out of shops I just stood on the street, or sat on benches watching the people of Montreal walk by.  And what I saw a lot of were Jewish wearing these nifty fur hats. The Jewish religion is one in which I know precious little, but I do find that whenever I get curious and look into any aspect of Judaism, I get way more than I bargained for and can spent hours going down the internet rat hole. Ana told me the bosses of the temples get to wear the fancy hats. But after a couple of searches I learned that may not be the case, and all Hasidic (not sure what this means, maybe Orthodox?) Jewish men are supposed to cover their heads on the Shabbat (Sabbath, I guess?) and if you have to cover your head, you might as well use a fancy fur hat (called a Shtreimel) instead of some low class Montreal Expos ball cap or Toronto Blue Jays toque.

I pried myself away from my phone browser to just pay attention to what was going on. I first saw one Jewish man, then another, then another. And they were all in a rush to get somewhere. They were never just standing there looking lost or chit chatting with each other. I couldn’t tell where they were actually going, as often they would just cut down a sidewalk and go into a house, or boogie into an alley, or disappear into a vehicle and drive away. And they were all carrying these long things in plastic bags, which looked like they could be cello bows or maybe even long stems of plants. Even mighty Google couldn’t help me figure out what those things are. It all reminded me that I have so much more yet to learn.

Ana found a great consignment shop and would have been in there all day, but I went in and broke up the party as it was now getting close to noon and we had a long drive ahead of us. We snaked our way back to the car, on the way passing some amazing fresh produce markets and an entire street that that had been closed off to vehicles and filled with tables and chairs to create a gigantic outdoor patio for the restaurants there. We had hoped to pick up some authentic Montreal treats from Fairmount Bagel but the line extended out the front door and wound around the corner, so sadly it’s going to be enriched white toast bread for the kiddies this week.

With that, we got into the van, drove southwest across the island of Montreal, bid farewell to this fine city, and were headed home.

A Power Weekend in Montreal - Saturday

I wake up first, but Ana is out of bed before me anxious to get going. On vacations, Ana replaces her regular 90-minute morning routine of plucking, picking, clothes-selecting, scrubbing, grooming, hair-drying, and mirror-posing with an ultra-efficient and highly compressed procedure that spans less than 20 minutes, but she comes out just as stunning as ever.

Early morning Montreal is beautiful and this is my favourite time to explore a city – before she wakes up. We are on the hunt for just the right breakfast place, so we start walking, passing by so many impressive buildings, with copper roofs and architectural details you just can’t find anywhere else…except for every city in Europe. In fact, if you dropped an unsuspecting tourist in the middle of Montreal, their first guess would likely be that they were in fact in Paris, or Brussels, or Vienna, or some other European city. We see sculptures, cobblestone streets, fountains, pedestrian-only streets, and public seating everywhere, but very, very few vehicles. I am so intrigued by the sheer number of outdoor lounging spots, that I start taking photos of each one. Where we live, politicians don’t like providing public seating or public washrooms because they think it will only invite homeless people and make their lives more comfortable. Well, what the hell is wrong with that? What they fail to realize is that this is what make a city great; when it is built for people instead of cars. Great downtown public spaces attract people, which attract more businesses to serve them, and events to excite them, which brings more people, and before long you have an amazing, interesting, fun, and livable downtown that is necessarily hostile to vehicular traffic. That’s the place I want to be – not in a place that builds parking garages and makes homeless people sleep on the pavement.

We find a boutique hotel with a great menu and a stunning eating area with a backdrop of live moss on the wall, covered alcoves, exposed brick and stone, and here we enjoy a delicious meal while we dream more about the future and relish the present. Despite no longer being a coffee drinker, I do sometimes concede and have an Americano when the situation deserves it, and this morning was one of those times. I realize now that I enjoy coffee a thousand times more when I only consume it sporadically, in amazing places, with wonderful people, instead of relying on it daily to fuel a caffeine addiction.

With breakfast literally under our belts, we continue our ground exploration by walking through the port area, where we find a huge raised boardwalk with outdoor poster boards explaining the history of shipping in Montreal, a large expanse of natural gardens, an outdoor piano to play, composite lounge chairs from which to look out on the St. Lawrence River, and an art gallery featuring a Salvador Dali exhibit. We are tempted to visit, but we have an awful lot to get to today, so decide to continue our wanderings instead and save it for the next visit.

Our path takes us along the riverfront and we find a groovy farmers market, a high end spa called Bota Bota which looks to be built out of an old ship, a small marina, and a series of people walking around with baguettes under their arm and pastry remnants on their fingers. The day is now heating up and as we turn back into the streets of Old Montreal, we find ever more people appearing, including small packs of tourists being led on walking tours by guides. We visit an art gallery and meet the captivating owner who has Portuguese roots and exchanges business cards with Ana for possible future collaboration. We browse through several small boutiques selling fancy boots, antiques, hand made soaps, and a tourist one selling moccasins, beaver hats, maple syrup, and all the regular Canadian merch tourists lap up greedily. We run into a newly wedded couple, smiling widely with a photographer in tow, and pull them in for a selfie with us to celebrate their special day (and ours that happened 20 years ago!)

Chinatown is next, and Ana finds a shop full of gadgetry and trinkets the kids love so she shops while I stand outside and watch the goings on, still amazed at the huge range of free and durable outdoor public seating we’ve seen so far this morning. Benches, concrete tables and chairs, seating built into streetside window recesses, colourful composite chairs, concrete steps leading up to a shop where the owner has placed comfy orange cushions for anybody to use, wooden benches, seats around planters, garden swings on a built beach in front of a church, public sculptures doubling as seating, swings on playsets, picnic tables, and oversized window ledges. I stand and watch a duet of wooden seats and within the space of 15 minutes I see three different couples use it. I think I might need to write a blog just on this topic of public seating.

Ana returns and I point out a sign in front of a shop saying “Foot massage!” Now the last time I visited a Chinatown (in Toronto) unattended and went for a massage, I received an unsolicited offer of a sexual procedure that didn’t exactly jive with my concept of monogamy. So I’m always careful to run these ideas by my wife now as she considers me to be rather naïve and needlessly trustworthy in certain situations.

“Do you they will try to jack me off after a foot massage?” I ask her, curiously.

“I’m not sure how they do things in Montreal,” she replies. “But this is Solid Gold land so who knows?”

Montreal is famous for its strip clubs, with Solid Gold being one of the most enduring and famous of them all, and during our wanderings last night we did see a lot of late night adult entertainment venues. But this place looked pretty harmless so I went in for my Foot Massage Only while Ana head back to St. Catherine Street for retail shopping opportunities and we agree to meet up later.

After speaking with the owner and looking through the menu board, I super-sized the treatment and received both a foot massage and back massage which were very relaxing and accompanied by tranquil nature music, dim lighting and, most importantly, no illicit offers. When my 60 minutes were up, they charged up my credit card then marched me downstairs and thrust me out into the bright daylight. I staggered around blind and dopey, looking much like those post hibernation gophers that mosey out of their holes in the spring, and wander cluelessly into the highway where they get smoked by Mac trucks.

We met at a café on St. Catherine street and ordered a couple of take away paninis, followed up by McDonalds ice cream cones. While at the café waiting for our sandwiches to be constructed, I felt a purple presence calling to me from the floor so I looked down to find an abandoned ten dollar bill. I reached down, picked it up, looked around suspiciously at the other patrons, waved it around a bit, then stuffed it in my pocket. There is no feeling quite like finding money.

As the day was heating up we slipped back to the hotel for a wardrobe change (shorts) then continue our wanderings, which included more retail shops for Ana and I found myself a super bueno record shop called Cheap Thrills and spent a good while in there browsing the vinyl and may have picked up a special record as a special Christmas gift for a special someone (Magnus. He never reads these blogs so there’s no chance of the surprise being spoiled.)

We burned away the afternoon by walking, wandering, and exploring and the phone told me we had already clocked 20 kilometres before dinner. After another wardrobe change into fancy duds and ten minutes of lying prone on the bed giving the back a rest, we were back up and out and headed to Old Montreal to try out a Portuguese restaurant we had noticed earlier in the day, called Porto du Mar. It was housed in an ancient building and as soon as we walked in we knew it was going to be good – small, dim lighting, ancient furniture, enticing smells, and a single Portuguese man working in the kitchen crafting the dishes.

It was literally the best restaurant meal we’d had in years. We stayed for a very long time, savouring the food, relishing the atmosphere, and talking to each other, eye to eye, with no distractions, and nowhere to be. For me, the memories began flooding back of us as a young, fresh couple, with kids and responsibilities far into our future, exploring the world and each other, loving life, taking chances, getting crazy, and being in love. And here we were doing it all again, after two kids, nearly two decades in the rat race, so many wins and losses, and so much growing up. I am madly in love with my wife.

The Montreal night was calling, and we were not yet finished with her so we set back out into the night, and the night was alive with Saturday – well-dressed people everywhere, bars and restaurants chock-a-block, street performers, food smells, excited hollering from party-goers, antics, and so many fancy women wearing stiletto heels doing the wobbly walk across cobblestones, one perfectly spaced crack away from going arse over teakettle. We found ourselves in a narrow, ancient alley with flowers strung from side to side and a series of stone buildings housing boutique shops. And endless stream of people, going nowhere in particular, passed through, and they were all simultaneously consuming and supplementing the energy of the warm Montreal night, just like us. As I sat on a bench watching all these wonderful people, I did an experiment. As people passed instead of just glancing at them rapidly, moving from person to person, I’d look at one person in the group and hold their gaze for just a little longer than normal. When they noticed, our eyes would lock, and I could see them struggling to figure out who I was, thinking we must know each other. I’d then just smile and nod, and they would do the same. Some would even say, “Hello!” or “Bon soir!” One man stopped in his tracks, came up to me, and asked if I could take a photo of him and his girlfriend, which I did, and they told me they were Algerian students enrolled in university here. It was a rather thrilling experiment, as I realized I never take the time to really look at people, in my rush to do whatever I am usually doing.

We returned to the hotel utterly spent after walking a marathon distance and my last thought before falling asleep was how fortunate we are to be alive and living our best life.

A Power Weekend in Montreal - Our 20th Anniversary

We last visited Montreal at least 12 years ago when our kids were little, our patience was thin, our attention diverted, and our pace frenzied. My only memory of that trip was sitting on the patio of our rental apartment in Little Italy with my father-in-law, drinking a beer and enjoying the peace provided by the ladies taking the kids for a walk to the park. That’s it.

So when Ana and I recently visited Montreal to celebrate our 20th wedding anniversary, I felt like I was visiting a brand new city. And what a city it is! Accompanied by magnificent late September weather, we explored the core of Montreal by foot over two days and as we discovered amazing sites one after the other, we wondered aloud many times how we could have neglected this jewel of a city for so many years.

We left Paris just after noon on a Friday and endured a grueling 7.5 hour drive to get there. There really is only one route to get to Montreal, on the 401 highway which seems to have been designed to offer a minimum of interesting views while attracting the maximum amount of traffic. But we have spent many hours on that highway this year as our sailboat was docked at a marina east of Toronto, so although you never get used to it, we have become more numb to the pain of its use.

The downtown Marriot is where we chose to stay and its location was perfect for a weekend walking tour. After checking in and offloading our bags we set out for St. Catherine Street, which is a long, wide, and mainly pedestrian street cutting through the dense network of tall and short buildings. As we began our stroll, we were stuck by the level of activity – people everywhere, in cafes and restaurants, wandering around, sitting on steps and public furniture, laughing and having fun under comforting public lighting, with music streamed loudly from public speakers. It truly felt like we’d parachuted into a different world after the months of lockdowns and utter lack of activity in our town and area.

There were many restaurants to choose from and we walked around for a long while before deciding on one, which turned out to be a vegan restaurant, but was not obvious from the menu as there were many “meaty” items that, upon closer inspection, contained only meat substitutes. The vegan house curry and nachos were great, the beer was cold, and the atmosphere was welcome with dozens of other patrons enjoying time together, unmasked at tables, all vaccinated due to the vaccine passport program implemented in the city. It felt safe, it felt fun.

Anytime you are finishing dinner with your partner at 11pm, chances are you are somewhere exciting having a great time – and we were. We went back out on St. Catherine Street and slowly meandered our way southward towards Crescent Street – a place Ana vaguely remembered from her trips to Montreal in her 20’s when she lived in Toronto. The scene here was unlike anything we’ve seen for what felt like years – a pedestrian-only street PACKED with people visiting the dozens of bars lined up one after the other. I realized instantly that this is what a vaccinated population and the path back to normality looks like. After perusing all the venues along the length of the street and coming across an enormous mural of Leonard Cohen artfully painted on the side of a tall building, we decided on the Aussie Bar, a place that looked to be marketing cheap pints of beer to university kids looking for blackout. I hadn’t even noticed the average age of the hundreds of people we passed until Ana said, “Do you realize we are the oldest people on this street?”

I looked around, scanning the crowd, finally focusing on one dude, barely visible far up the road, and pointed at him proudly saying, “Nope, there’s somebody older. But now that you mention it, I do notice that every person I see on the street looks like either Magnus or Stella.” This sparked an idea and we decided that we’d start badgering the kids into attending university in Montreal to give us reason to visit more frequently.

Ana and I had an amazing conversation as we sat together at a patio table, talking about some of our old travel adventures, but more importantly, those yet to come. Despite only consuming a single witbier, she started coming up with some audacious travel ideas (my own good ideas need at least 6 witbiers to germinate). She told me she wants us to backpack through Iran. Iran! I love this woman. We decided we would sail to the Azores and spend a year living there and hanging out with all of Ana’s crazy cousins.  We decided on another Southeast Asia backpacking trip, but this go around we’d really take our time revisiting all the countries we’ve been to previously. We decided to walk the Camino de Santiago in Spain and Portugal. We also decided that, despite the recent inexplicable lunacy of our neighbours to the south, we need to visit all 50 states of the US (and I added later that we might as well tack on the 14 territories the US oversees, especially as many of them are in the South Pacific). With minutes of Googling, Ana had found us a nifty truck cap that turns your Ford F-150 Lightning into a mobile camper and the plan was complete.

It was close to 1am when we returned to the hotel, both of us exhausted and exhilarated by our first evening in this fine city.