Tuesday 17 December 2013

What a load of crepe

For our evening jaunt, we went in search of Crepes and walked for quite a while until we realised all creperies were closed on mondays. So we opted instead for a Bar. It was a place that brewed their own beer on the premises. I had a flammkuchen which is a bit like a pizza but on a wrap style bread. Very nice. I tried one of their beers which had a fruity taste to it. Even nicer. Huffle had a chicken burger and we shared a Molten Chocolate cake with ice cream. Superb. It was very casual and just what we wanted. I was starting to feel a bit poorly. A cough that stripped my throat, a runny nose and bad head which had nothing to do with the two large glasses of red wine and a half a pint of beer. On the way home we picked up some throat sweets and some painkillers.

Our evening in photos

Tuesday was checking out day. We lazed, checked the weather and snow for the Hamlet and Montreal and eventually made our way out for breakfast.

Yesterday on pur pilgramage for crepes we saw lots of cafes that we thought would be good for breakfast. Well they had moved, closed or never been there, which meant we walked a long way again and found little, but eventually found a Turkish cafe where we had eggs and toast and hot drinks. The owner was amused at the fact that I didn't want potatoes or beans with my eggs or cream or milk with my coffee!

Frozen trees in Pl Jacques Cartier

Then we wandered around a few tat shops hoping to find some presents for the boys but were not too successful until we found a shop called Mortimer Snodgrass that didn't sell tat but did sell some very funky things.

We revisited the English Pug and the French Poodle statue as we had read that there was a second statue and we missed it earlier. This other one was a woman with a French Poodle. The dogs were looking at each other and the owners were facing away.

We briefly went in the basilisque de Notre Dame but came out when we knew we had to pay. Then made our way back to the hotel, packed our bags and checked out.

When the receptionist asked Huffle if everything was okay, he explained about the room temperature, which I am now convinced is why my throat feels so bad. She said she was sorry. Huffle told her that wasn't good enough and that yesterday Dan had said "I will see what I can do". Well to cut a long and boring story short, Dan had no authority to say or do anything and could have, in fact, moved us to another room that was less warm. We told her that he had said that the whole hotel was the same temperature and it was a fault. Apparantly that was a little fib on Dan's part. After the Manager was rung it was decided that if we stayed there again we could get a free upgrade. Whoop de dooo. Huffle has the Manager's card and will be emailing his disappointment to her. They didn't even take off our two pots of tea! Saying that, it was a beautiful hotel and is the best one we have EVER stayed in. It was in a perfect location, though the wifi was a bit iffy and we had to log-in to 'Andrews' instead and stand in the wardrobe to get two bars. Montreal will be forever called Two Bar Montreal as when we left Montreal on the train, we instantly got three bars.

After we got our taxi to the Train Station and dropped our bags off in Storage, we walked around Downtown Montreal. It was very cold at -17* feeling like -24*.

Next to the McGill College there was a curious group of statues which seemed hollow. I liked it at first but now I look at the close up I think it looks a bit weird.

The mix of old and new buildings was interesting but mainly Downtown Montreal is business buildings.

The McGill College and University was huge and partly covered the huge park nearby. It is interesting that around the colleges are plenty of greenery which must be great for the Students in Summertime.

This was my favourite staue of the day. It is a bench with a student sitting on top of it looking at a laptop that says "Steve Jobs et Mort". A squirrel is stealing a biscuit next to him and there is a discarded carton of fries near him. The laptop is a 'pear' not an apple. Very clever.

As we were cold and hungry, we started to look for somewhere to eat and after extensive walking, we went into Hurley's (as recommended by NoCustard). It was an Irish pub and as there was no Coke, just Pepsi, I had to have a beer (shame). Huffle and I shared a basket of chips as we were planning on having a crepe later. Nicely warmed, we carried on walking. We watched a huge traffic jam with lots of honking cars all because a truck driver was dropping something off. We found a Creperie (though didn't check Trip Advisor first - school boy error!). We ordered two Crepe Suzettes which boasted "homemade orange zest and Grand Marnier. We expected a flambe pancake but what we got was a pancake made with batter taken from a lidded bucket, creped and folded and bashed until it was a square. Then it was spread with Marmalade (not homemade orange zest at all) taken from a jar. There was no Grand Marnier and it was not flambe'd. It was horrible. Huffle sent it back. The crepier (is that the word for a man who attemots to make Crepes?) looked astonished as Huffle told him it wasn't very nice. He said no-one had ever complained before and that is what a French Crepe was supposed to be like. We disagreed and he made us another one. This time instead of being dry, it was chewy and lacking in taste. We changed our toppings to Maple Syrup (no mapleness at all) and Nutella (Huffle said that was the only good part). We ate it and left. There was no customer service at all and I wrote a bad review on Trip Advisor (as had many others before us!!).

Cathédrale Marie-Reine-du-Monde

It started snowing again and got considerably colder so we headed for the Train Station and Mall. On the way we crossed a park with colourful little bird boxes hanging from the trees.

Once inside the warm shopping mall, we poddled around, purchased a little something and picked up our lunch/tea for the train. Eventually we sat and people watched, grabbed our bags and finally got on our train. There were so many people but they all disappeared into Business Class and we had lots and lots of room in Economy. It was an interesting carriage. A French couple to the side of us had a bottle of wine confiscated as they were not allowed to bring it on the train. A woman in front played games on her phone but really loudly and a woman at the back of us kept shouting "what letter are you? ABCDEFG what letter are you? What letter?" The ticket collector was hilarious and kept saying the journey destinations over the tannoy but in a silly voice. It made for an interesting journey.

For the first two hours, Huffle emailed the Hotel Manager and voiced his displeasure and wrote reports on Trip Adviser (good and bad) and I blogged and Instagrammed.

1 comment:

Wonder Woman said...

A fairly successful trip then?! Crepes are very hit and miss in these places aren't they? Xx