Valentines, La Belle Ville & lovely long weekends - part 1

I haven't updated in a while. I actually did have something to write about last week when I said nothing was going on, but I didn't want to ruin the surprise.
On Thursday night, Ell and I got together at her place to craft and bake, in preparation for our Friday night Valentine's date. Cupcakes and paper crafts... what could be better?!






All the while, I was still trying to decide if I wanted to go to Montreal for the weekend. I was pretty sure I did, but I wasn't sure that I felt up to making a 6-hour drive on my own, and none of my friends really said that they wanted to come. By Friday morning, I decided that YES, I would go, regardless of who came with me. My sister and brother-in-law decided that they were going to come too, with my niece. After a particularly annoying end-of-day at work, first, I got a call from my bro-in-law, saying that he had booked us a hotel in Laval, which I promptly freaked out about - I wanted to go to Montreal. Not a suburb, that is nearly identical to where I live right now! So I told him to cancel it.

Then I met up with Ell, and we delivered Valentine's Day fun to Pete at his office. I'm pretty sure it was the best part of his day. Okay, I'm absolutely sure it was. I am confident in our baking and crafting abilities. Then the three of us went out for Thai food, to a place that I hadn't been to before in Chinatown. It was rather good, but it's no Thai Princess.

I spent a great part of the dinner, and the car ride afterwards, convincing Ell that she should come to Montreal with me.

And she said yes!

The weekend was definitely shaping up. We went back to her place so she could pack, and I could book a new hotel on Hotwire. However, at that point, I couldn't get a hold of my sister and bro-in-law, so we decided to book it back at my place.
Got back to my house, and still couldn't get in touch with them. Called other family members, and they hadn't heard from them either. Now I was kind of freaking out, because they are pretty much glued to their phones. Left them very angry voicemails telling them to call me immediately when they heard this message.

Finally, at some point after midnight, they called me back, and I booked the hotel for arrival later that day. LOL. Talk about random and spontaneous!

Elliot and I drove in my car following my sister, brother-in-law and niece in their car (and an adjoining room - we ran into many problems last time we shared a room on vacation). We left at around noon. Ell and I had a totally top notch road trip - good tunes, good food, and girl talk. It didn't even feel like a 6 hour drive.

My friend David was actually in the hotel parking lot to meet us as we got in. I hadn't seen him in a while, and my back was turned, as I was looking in my car for something. So I heard him say, "Excuse me, did you need help with anything?" and assumed it was one of the valet attendants, and then turned around and saw him. It was quite funny. Checked in, got ready, and then Dave, Ell and I went for dinner at Les 3 Brasseurs. (Sis and others went elsewhere, to somewhere a little more family friendly). Our dinner was great - I had an LA Wrap (love those avocados, even though I'm pretty sure I might be allergic to them) ... Ell had some delicious poutine (one of my goals - to eat poutine in Montreal!)


It took us a while to decide what to do that night. After compiling a bunch of suggestions, we eventually parted ways with David, and made our way back to the hotel to weigh the options. We met up with my friend, Alex, who I knew from online but had never met before. She was absolutely fabulous, and everything I expected her to be - totally wish she lived closer!



We went for a VERY cold walk, over to McKibbin's Irish Pub. The music was fabulous. A cover band played two sets - they started out with a cover of Free Fallin', that was so well done, we didn't even realize it was a band until midway through the song. (In looking at the band schedule page, I guess the band's name was FM - This is all I can find on them.) We met up with Ell's friend, Jake, who informed us that we walked further to get to this pub, than to any of the places she had suggested to her earlier. Oops. A couple of random guys tried to pick us up, when they saw three girls sitting with one guy. They were amusing, for a moment. Until one of the guys called me a "Filthy Eye-Tye" ... yeah, not really impressing me much there, buddy.

Did you know bars in Montreal close at 3am?!

We didn't stay quite that late, but by the time we got back to the hotel, it was almost 3. I barely slept that night, even though I was exhausted from being up so late the night before, then driving, then going out... there were annoying people yelling in the hallway, and then I could hear my annoying brother-in-law yelling at the annoying people yelling. LOL. He ended up calling down to complain, and I managed to get a few hours of sleep in.


More photos at my flickr, and the rest of the weekend to follow!