New England Coast, Montréal, NYC

The week before Labor Day, I had to fly out to Albany for business. I had to meet up with a software company that we do business with. Before this trip, I had been to 45 of the 50 states, the 5 missing including Alaska, North Dakota, Vermont, New Hampshire, and Maine. Since my goal of visiting every state in the Union was close to being complete, my new goal is to visit every country in the world (there’s about 190, give or take a few, depending on how you count). I had already been to Canada before, but I wanted to visit either Montreal, since it’s pretty remote from California, and they also speak French there. That would give me a little taste about what trips to other countries would be like. I also haven’t been to New York City in a while, so I wanted to check that out.

Jelli just got back from Europe, and she’s gotten bit by the traveling bug. When she heard that I was going to Montreal, she jumped at the chance to tag along. So here’s the plan: Fly to Albany for business, drive through New England, pick Jelli up, visit Montreal, drop Jelli off in New York City to fly back home, then drive up to Albany to return the rental car and drive home. The trip more or less went as planned, with a few minor “audibles”.

My week in suburban Albany for business wasn’t too exciting. Just project meetings, and meals at suburban restaurants afterwards. After the meetings were through, I took the Mass Pike through Worchester, and headed out to the Boston, New Hampshire, and Maine coasts. This was my first time in New Hampshire and Maine: states #46 and #47.



There were some quaint beach towns in both Boston and New Hampshire, and it was nice to drive through. The beach in New Hampshire was very clean, and had a fun pier made entirely of large stones that I could walk on.



Maine was nice too. I got to visit Kennebunkport, which is a tiny quaint coastal town with a small downtown strip of shops and restaurants. There I bought a $13 lobster roll sandwich. The lobster was good, but wasn’t worth $13 in my opinion. Kennebunkport is the town which George Bush (the first) would escape to in the summertime, so I wanted to check it out.




I reached Portland, Maine at dusk, and drove through the port area, which looked like a gentrified former-industrial area. There were many young people out dining at one of the many trendy restaurants at the strip at the port.

After Portland, I had to head back to Manchester, New Hampshire to pick Jelli up from the airport.



I wasn’t sure how tired I’d be after a day of work meetings and driving, and I wasn’t sure if her plane would be delayed, so I intentionally didn’t book a hotel room that night. The plan was to just drive and drive towards Montreal, until I couldn’t drive anymore, and then sleep there. Then plan worked well. On the way, we ate on the road from a Burger King drive through (new chicken fries value menu). We ended up driving through New Hampshire, and into Vermont. On Interstate 91, I saw something I’ve never seen or heard of before. Through a mountain pass, the two lanes merged into one, and remained a “two lane road” for about 5 miles. We ended up in St. Johnsbury, Vermont, at a nice Comfort Suites.

The next day, we headed out early to Montreal. I don’t have a passport, and I couldn’t find my birth certificate (I ended up finding it in an unmarked envelope in an unmarked folder in an unmarked box in my garage). I wasn’t sure if I needed a passport to get back into the US from Canada, but I ended up needing only my drivers license.

Montreal is in Quebec, and of course, Quebec is a French-speaking province. I’m glad Jelli was there to translate, because everyone speaks French there, and all the signs are in French. Sure there are some signs that are bilingual, but for example, before going to Montreal, I didn’t know what Nord, Sud, Ouest, and Est were! If Jelli weren’t there, I’m sure I’d be making more U-turns.



The Montreal freeway system was kind of confusing, and I still get confused at it when studying their freeways maps of the city. There aren’t many lanes, but there’s lots of people and cars on the road. That means lots of gridlock, and aggressive drivers. Not really fast drivers, since the speed limit is 100 Km/h or 62 mph. So when people speed, they’re really only going about 75 or 80 mph. But the roads are narrower and have tighter turns, so you have to naturally go slower. The only other American city with more aggressive drivers that I’ve seen is New York and maybe Boston.

Our first meal was at a yuppie sandwich place in suburban Montreal, near our hotel. Jelli was able to translate the menu for me, and place our order with the lady in French. When the lady asked Jelli if we wanted anything else, Jelli thought she asked if we wanted cheese. So I nodded my head, the lady looked confused, and proceeded to translate her question in English. So after that, I knew that it was good to have Jelli there to attempt to speak French.



Our first stop was the old town, Vieux Montreal. In reading the Lonely Planet, it looked like that the old town and the Vieux Port was the bulk of the touristy areas. So when we arrived and were looking for parking, I was a little disappointed. There weren’t many people on the streets, and it didn’t look like there was much to do. I was expecting something like the New Orleans French Quarter. As it turns out, much of the excitement and interesting shops was in the smaller streets, which we didn’t drive on. Also, there ended up being more crowds the next day on Saturday, when it was the weekend and sunnier. However, that initial turn-off was enough for Jelli and I to decide to call an audible, and change our plans. We decided that 1 night was enough in Montreal, and there was more stuff in New York City that we wanted to see, before Jelli had to fly back on Monday morning.

Montreal was a fun city though. Sort of like New Orleans with the French influenced fused with the North American culture. However, Montreal had much more French language influence, and New Orleans seemed more touristy and much more of a party town.



The rest of the time in Montreal, Jelli and I explored the remaining hot spots of Montreal. The old town had a lot of art stories, quaint shops, and restaurants, but Jelli and I pretty much went to the souvenir stores also there.

We then visited the Latin Quarter, which had a bunch of restaurants, geared more for the yuppies. There were lots of yuppies walking around there at night. This area was near the local university.

The downtown area was a strip of fancy stores, where the yuppies shopped. The only one that Jelli and I bothered to go into was the Gap.

We had dinner in Chinatown, which really consisted of 1 strip of Chinese stores and restaurants. We just ordered a half a duck (which was overcooked), and some Chow Mein. Why do Chinese people want to move to Montreal?!?



On Saturday, we spend the whole day in the Parc Olympique. The 1976 Summer Olympic games were held in Montreal. Jelli and I really didn’t have a reason to visit there, since neither of us were alive during this time. But still, it is probably one of the more touristy things to do in Montreal, so we went. It consisted of the Biodome, the Olympic swimming pool, an elevator-type ride that traverses the structured that holds up the tent above the Biodome, the insectarium, and a bunch of gardens.



Biodome

This was probably the most interesting part of the Olympic Park. We walked through a bunch of world regions, were they’d display live animals, kind of like Butterfly world at Marine World. We saw gators, fish, birds, turtles, and Jelli and my favorite part: the penguins. Kind of like an interactive zoo. One odd think about the Olympic Park was that the only remaining Olympic structure was the pool. No track, no soccer field, nothing. My theory is that the biodome is in the area where the Olympic track used to be, and since Montreal had no reason to upkeep these athletic facilities.



Elevator-type ride

This was kind of fun. We got to ride up this structure which looked like it just held up the tent which housed the biodome. (It’s easier to explain it with a picture). At the top, we got to see a 360 view of the city.



Insectarium

This was kinda weird. We went into a building with a whole bunch of bug exhibits, with roaches, ants, and other bugs. I guess it was interesting to see, but wasn’t as fun as watching the penguins try to fly.

Gardens

They have a bunch of gardens set up, such as Japanese and Chinese gardens. But by that time, Jelli and I were tired from walking, hungry from skipping breakfast and lunch, and just wanted to head out to get to New Jersey. At that point, we still had a 6 hour drive ahead of us.



We got some dinner in the Plateau area of Montreal. The Plateau area wasn’t as upscale as the Latin Quarter, but still had good restaurants nonetheless. Jelli and I ate at a restaurant in the outskirts of the Plateau area, which was supposed to have Quebec food. That was the second time that Jelli used her French, to read the menu and order our food. It turns out that the high-school aged waitress spoke English, and ended up speaking to us in English. We ordered a Poutine and a stir fried cubed chicken sandwich. Both were good, especially the Poutine, which really was just French Fries with brown gravy and Swiss cheese on top. I get the feeling that that’s what Quebec food is – French food with a North American influence. Which was okay – it tasted good.

After dinner, we headed out, back to the States. Before the border, we stopped at the duty free shop, picked up some last minute (and inexpensive) souvenirs, and I bought an inexpensive duty-free bottle of Absolut Vanilla.

We then crossed the border, with about 15 questions from the border patrol lady. Here’s some of the questions she asked us:

What are both of your citizenships?
What is the relationship between the two of you?
Who’s car is this?
Where were you born?
Where do you two live now?
How far apart do you two live?
Why did you go to Canada?
Where did you fly into?
Where did she fly into?
Why did she fly into a different airport?
California’s a long way to travel from to just go to Montreal.
Where are you headed?
Where do you work?

After I told her where I worked, she stopped asking me questions, and let us pass. (A similar thing happened when I got a concussion when snowboarding)

Talk about the 3rd degree! She didn’t even ask me if I had fruit (which is prohibited to bring over the border)!

Anyway, we made it to New Jersey at around 3 AM. I was tired, but we made it.

The next day, we headed into Manhattan. We had 1 day to tour New York City. Jelli’s flight was 7 AM the next morning at JFK, which meant that we would have to wake up by 4 AM in order to get here there in time. So instead of getting a ~$100 hotel room to sleep for a few hours, we decided to stay out all night in the city that never sleeps. Kinda crazy thing to do, but hey – we’re both in our 20s.

I drove into Manhattan ($6 toll bridge, btw), and parked in the Tribeca area, which is downtown on the Westside. Parking wasn’t too bad at all. We bought a $7 all-day subway pass, which was well worth it. The first thing we did was try to find the Soup Nazi. We found it, but it was closed for the summer.



We walked down to Restaurant Row, but ended up eating in a pizza/sandwich shop. It was pretty good pizza – very fresh, airy, and tasty dough. We then walked around Times Square and saw the other Midtown sights.



We took the subway back downtown, and toured Ground Zero and Chinatown. Chinatown was insanely crowded, with people bartering over pirated DVDs, imposter watches, souvenirs, and live pet turtles. We even saw a Chinese woman selling Lo Mein from a street cart.



It was kinda fun, but I started to get sick of the constant noise, filthiness, crowds, and walking. New York City is fun to visit, but I wouldn’t want to live there.



After Chinatown, we tried to find SOHO and Greenwich Village, and I’m not sure if we ever found it. We were getting really tired from all the walking, and decided to go back to the car to change. We took the subway to Chelsea, and shopped for Lentils, just as Chandler did when he was stalking out Janice.



We met up with Aaron and Anne-Sophie, who were staying at a hostile in Harlem, as a stop over on their way to France and eventually Yemen. We took the subway down to the East Village with them, and found a yummy Polish restaurant.



We took the subway back to Harlem, and found a fun Jazz club. It was a real neighborhood bar, with live jazz shows every night. It was a fun mixed and fairly-older crowd, and seemed like a real neighborhood bar. Everyone seemed to know each other. Everyone was friendly, except one old guy who yelled at Aaron and Anne-Sophie for allegedly “stealing his table”. There was a woman who brought in some soul food, and I bought a plate for $5. Never would I have imagined that I’d be in a basement in Harlem on 149th St. at a jazz club eating soul food at 1 AM on a Sunday night. But I’m glad that I did.



After the jazz club, Jelli and I took the subway back to Tribeca, which took about 1 ½ hours, since not all the stations were operational at late night. I was surprised at how many people were riding the subways at late night. The subways were literally more crowded at the late night than during the day (partially because the subways come less frequently)

After getting back to our car at 3:30 in the morning, we still had about 1 hour to kill before going to JFK. We stopped at a 24 hour Dunkin Donuts, and then tried to find Monk’s (Tom’s) restaurant, around Jerry Seinfeld’s neighborhood. We never found it, because I think it closes at night. It was kinda fun driving on these one-way avenues in Manhattan, late at night with no traffic and hardly anyone on the road. The only cars on the road were taxis. It is kinda fun to be at a red light, and know when your light is about to turn green by a hoard of about 20 taxi cabs come from your behind you all at once.

Around 42nd Street, there were still plenty of people still on the streets, even at 4:30 in the morning. I have no idea what people do all night. Soon after that, it was time to take Jelli to the airport, and for me to be on my way to Albany. By the time I got to the NY State Thruway, I was pretty tired and about to fall asleep. From 6:30 until 9:30, I took a brief nap at a Thruway rest stop. After that, I was a little more refreshed, continued to Albany, and killed time before my evening flight back home.

It was a very fun trip, and I was glad to visit New England, Montreal, and New York City, all in a few days. I was happy to knock out states #46, #47, and #48, with only Alaska and North Dakota remaining. I’m sure I’ll go to Alaska at some point, and but I may have to make a special trip to visit North Dakota. I really should visit Michigan again, since I’ve only literally made a U-turn in Michigan, and that’s it. Maybe I’ll go to Detroit sometime.

Next, is visiting all the countries. So far, I’ve only gone to Canada, Tijuana, and Ensenada. That’s only about 3 of the 190 countries in the world, so I have many areas left to explore in the future.