Canada, again

[baratron]

Oh dear. I have made Richard unhappy. I didn't quite realise that he was talking about going back to Canada THIS TUESDAY i.e. 28th January i.e.in a week. I was focused too hard on the being in Toronto around the middle of February part and not really thinking about the beginning of the trip.

I know nothing about Montreal other than that they speak weird Quebec French, the Biodome is really good, and anything I have picked up from the Kathy Reichs books which are set there. I shall have to search papersky and redbird's past lj entries about things to do in Montreal. And I need to find out how accessible the city is, especially in winter weather conditions.

I am now very stressed because I need to get enough meds and clothes for the trip, as well as sorting out enough work to take with me. I'm planning to work for half the time and look at museums, zoos etc for the rest of the time. (Probably one day of work followed by a day of sightseeing). A week doesn't seem like long enough to sort everything out. Argh!

Comments

[the-siobhan.livejournal.com]

Do you speak French? They understand "proper" French just fine, but you will have a lot of trouble understanding them. OTOH, most people in the city speak English as well.

[baratron.livejournal.com]

I can read French, and understand spoken Belgian French (the type I am most familiar with), and write it with extreme difficulty due to being completely rusty. I'm not terribly good at speaking it at all. Ah well. In the worst case, people will just think I'm a stupid tourist :)

[papersky.livejournal.com]

The city is... weirdly accessible, especially in winter. So there is snow everywhere, all the time, and it's cleared, but... it's still there. Downtown is better, but even so, expect snow underwheel. People who live here and use wheelchairs have huge snow-tyres. Your hotel will be accessible if it's a big modern chain hotel.

There's the "underground city" which we call the great underground empire, which is essentially a ton of buried downtown shopping -- and it's semi-accessible at best. Access is usually escalators, with occasional lifts in some places. There also tend to be three or four steps everywhere, and only occasional ramps, and while there's no snow, this is worse. Some bits of it are accessible, but in a way that makes it more rather than less infuriating. Place Montreal Trust is genuinely accessible if you go in at the Ste Catherine entrance. There's a lift and no random steps (there are random steps at the McGill College entrance.) This means you can get to Indigo, a big bookstore. Chapter, the other big bookstore, is also accessible.

All the buses are accessible, every single one, and they're generally really good about it kneeling and extending their tongues whenever they see the need.

The metro is essentially inaccessible -- there are 2 accessible stations. Just don't even try. But the good news is, you can take buses anywhere you want to go, if more slowly than if you could use the metro. Please do ask if you want routes, I'm really good at this.

The Musee des Beaux Arts on Sherbrooke is accessible if you ask -- they have hidden lifts in the old building which they have let me use. The Biodome is accessible once you get there, and so is the Botanical Garden, which actually is awesome in winter because the greenhouses are wonderful. Point a Calliere, the archaeological museum, is accessible, but getting there is annoying. The Redpath museum of Natural History isn't even a bit accessible, it's all Victorian and full of stairs.

If there's anything specific you want to know, do ask.

[baratron.livejournal.com]

Assuming they're booking him in the same hotel as before, it's Le Westin Montreal (http://www.starwoodhotels.com/westin/property/overview/index.html?propertyID=3313&language=en_US&localeCode=en_US).

I wonder how big the "huge snow tyres" are? My wheelchair has pretty big tyres - it's suitable for off-road use, although not a dedicated outdoor sports chair. Hmm. We have a couple of different sets of tyres here, anyway. And the wheelchair itself weighs enough that it doesn't skid, except down ramps.

Indigo and Chapters sound good, but is there by any chance an independent science fiction bookstore that has books in English? Whenever I travel to North America I buy all the books I want which aren't published at home :) Well, as many as I can carry, anyway. And I prefer to support independents when I can.

I wondered about the Botanical Garden! Sometimes they have a lot to see in winter, other times they are mostly dead. I expect we'll go there one weekend. We tend to be interested in live animals (especially wolves and bears, although bears in their natural habitat will be hibernating right now), plants and trees, sciencey stuff, and art. So I expect we'll be going to le Musee des Beaux Arts as well. Apparently it's "just down the road" from the hotel.

Would you be interested in meeting up for dinner any time? (It's fine if you're too busy, given that I haven't seen you since you moved to Canada).

[papersky.livejournal.com]

I'll check with rysmiel about meeting up. This apartment is not accessible, and I am trying to think of somewhere that combines vegetarian with accessibility -- how are you for Chinese?

The Westin will be accessible. I've never stayed in one that isn't. And I stayed in one in TO last year when I had put my back out and they gave me a proper accessible room with bars everywhere, which I have to say I needed, and without me asking. They are my new favourite hotel chain.

There is not an independent SF bookstore, or really an independent bookstore at all. There's Paragraphe, on McGill, and accesible I think (there may be one step, can't remember) but they're a university bookstore and not really good on genre. Chapter/Indigo are a chain, but they're pretty good. Or you can wait until you get to TO and go to Bakka, which is everything you want. And accessible in the new location.

Biodome has lynxes, which are well worth seeing, but no wolves or bears. Granby Zoo has bears, but I think you have to drive to get there, I've never been but I see their posters on the metro. Or there are definitely lots of excellent bears in Toronto. and the polar bears won't be asleep no matter what.

There's a science museum in the Old Port which is modern and totally accessible but mostly aimed at kids. They get huge points with me for calling their cafe Cafe Arsenic.

[baratron.livejournal.com]

Chinese is my default "I am in a foreign place" cuisine! If necessary I can eat stir-fried vegetables and plain rice, though most Chinese restaurants can manage nuts and/or tofu for protein.

I also like Vietnamese, cooked Japanese (not sushi), Indian, Italian, Lebanese... Pretty much anything except for Thai, which I have problems with because I hate both cilantro and lemongrass. Oddly, becoming vegan has made me very much less fussy than I used to be, because I can eat anything that's vegan without getting ill.

Hadn't heard of the Granby Zoo before (don't remember seeing it on the random touristy website that I found). There was another zoo that was basically what we call a safari park in the UK, where you have to stay in your car and drive around because the animals are loose, but "safari" park doesn't seem like the right word for Canadian native animals, and they didn't supply an alternative ;) We were vaguely interested in the Ecomuseum Zoo (http://www.ecomuseum.ca/), but they are startlingly vague about how to get there:

How do I get to the zoo using public transit?
Visit the Société de transport de Montréal website at www.stm.info for information on how to get to the Ecomuseum zoo using public transit.

and I haven't looked it up yet.

[hobbitbabe.livejournal.com]

If it helps, I'd advise you to think of it as reading French and speaking English. People who deal with the public switch to English very easily and courteously (even to me, with my obviously-Canadian accent in English). I would recommend restaurants but I can't remember the specifics of your dietary things ... do you eat dairy?

I love visiting Montreal.

[baratron.livejournal.com]

I'm vegan because animal proteins and I Do Not Get Along. Chinese is almost always good, especially if they have bean curd on the menu and understand Buddhist-type diets. Indian can be good, though I tend to favour South Indian vegetarian restaurants over general Indian places. I love Italian food, although some Italian places have virtually nothing that's even lacto-vegetarian. To be honest, the only cuisine I actively dislike is Thai - I have the genetic trait of "cilantro is icky" and also really hate lemongrass.

I have the HappyCow (http://www.happycow.net/north_america/canada/quebec/montreal/) list of restaurants, but half of them sound terrifying ("raw" food? In winter?) or will be too far out, so recommendations are always good.

[kshandra]

"Reading French and speaking English" is a brilliant way of putting it.

When I was in Montreal for Worldcon, the phrase I was taught to use in stores, restaurants, etc. was "Bonjour-hi" as shorthand for "I'd love to communicate in your native language, but I'll just make a hash of it." ;-)

[redbird]

I hope some of my past posts are helpful—just about all of the relevant ones are tagged "Montreal," along with some that probably won't be relevant to your purposes—but I wasn't looking at accessibility at the level you need. (Even if I'm talking about things being easier to deal with/get to, bad knees don't stop me from riding escalators.)

[epi-lj.livejournal.com]

Montreal is pretty wonderful, but the weather is rather nasty right now and for the next little while. Pack warm clothes.

Pretty much everybody there speaks English. In touristey places they do seem to appreciate if you make a halting attempt to speak French first, but they will immediately flip over to English. My experience of businesses and other non-tourist attractions (our head office is in Montreal) is that 90% of business is conducted in English, and that virtually everybody is fluent.

I went to an art gallery there that I quite liked, but I cannot remember what it was called now. :(

They don't fluoridate the water!