Week-end in Montreal

  Marc and I decided to take a couple of days to explore Montreal last Sunday and Monday. We stayed at the Armor Manoir Sherbrooke hotel, a nice little boutique hotel that was quite central and reasonably priced. The As we were walking down St. Catherine's, we noticed a beautiful church that we had not seen before. If you remember the famous neon sign that directed church-goers to St. James United Church on St. Catherine's, you might be interested to know that the sign is no more (or at least will likely find a new home in a museum somewhere). They have removed the commercial buildings that were built and rented out for the past 80 years, with a purpose to create revenue for the church. Apparently it worked, the commercial buildings have been demolished and the facade of the church is now revealed. For dinner, we were keen on going to Casa Tapas on rue Rachel (my fave tapas place), but it was closed, so we went to Nuevo on 775 rue Mont-Royal at St. Hubert. The food wasn't bad, but we were not too thrilled. The port and the creme brulee were nice. On Monday, we woke up for our complimentary croissant and then found our way for home-brewed cafe lattes at Brulerie St. Denis. This was a day for more eating and shopping. We had lunch at Zyng, an excellent nouillerie at 1748, rue Saint-Denis. You can pretty much custom-make your noodles the way you like them. After lunch, we browsed the used and new CD shops and curiousities of St. Denis. We wandered down Duluth Street, which has great little shops (Mexican ceramic tiles and sinks) and at the end of the street is a nice parc where we people and dog watched for a while. We ended the beautiful day for dinner at a Portuguese restaurant on Duluth Street and both had chicken "churrasco" style. Marc took us to St. Viateur bagel to pick up some sesame and poppy seed bagels, which I have since been enjoying for my vacation breakfasts. For more pictures, click here.

Bangkok meeting

Just back from Thailand where I attended a United Nations meeting to discuss how countries should follow-up on Crime Congresses, which meet every five years. The last UN Crime Congress was held in Bangkok in April 2005, so the Kingdom of Thailand also offered to host this meeting. I attended the meeting with my colleague from Department of Justice and the Canadian delegation made many interventions. In my spare time and during a couple of personal days, I had a silk/cashmere suit custom-made in 3 days and shopped mucho. Thailand is different from any other country I have ever visited. The people are so kind and always thanking you and their positive energy makes you forget about the heavy pollution and traffic. I took some interesting rides on the Tuk Tuks, which are 3-wheeled motorized open air taxis. The taxi drivers weave in and out of traffic like they are in an amusement park ride. I also visited a number of temples, including Wat Po, which contains the world's longest reclining buddha. The position of the buddhas varies according to the message that they send. A buddha with two hands raised up is meant to encourage peace. I also visited the Vimamek Teak mansion, a royal palace entirely made of teak and still used to house visiting guests. It gave a real taste of how royalty lives. Shopping at Chattachuk week-end market and Lumphini night bazaar were both beyond amazing. My favourite part was taking the canal tour in a long steel boat, where you get to see the way the Thai people live and they all wave at you as they go about their daily business on the shore. Also of note were the older gentlemen playing checkers with Pepsi versus Coke bottlecaps on the ground at the entrance to the Dusit Zoo. For more Bangkok pictures, click here.

Michael in Ottawa!

My brother, Michael visited us in Ottawa for a few days this week. He arrived on Monday, the Civic holiday and we had a nice afternoon, including a couple of games of petanque and a Thai dinner. I was getting my tastebuds ready for my upcoming trip to Bangkok so tried out a spring roll recipe, with rice wraps, carrots, lettuce and peanut sauce. On Tuesday, Michael and I went to the Currency Museum on Sparks Street, which has a pretty impressive historical collection of coins, paper money in Canada and internationally, including the famous Yap Stone. The Yap stone is from the island of Micronesia, where large concrete donut-shaped objects, up to 4 meters in diameter, are used as currency. It's not pocket change and apparently not very easy to steal. We then headed over to the Diefenbunker Museum, which was a two and a half hour tour, but well worth it. This is the bunker built during the Cold War by Prime Minister John Diefenbaker, to protect the select few government and military in the case of a nuclear attack. It was close to coming into actual full operation during the Cuban Missile Crisis, but never did. Interesting to note that Diefenbaker never planned to actually be one of the "select few". The Diefenbunker is protected by a coat-of-arms with dragons, which signifies hell's gates. The idea was that hell could be perceived to be on either side of the bunker (outside, with the nuclear exposure or inside, where you didn't know the fate of your family). It was used as a military base for many years. Mike's friend, Dave Crowder, and my friends Frank and Nathalie, joined us for dinner at Milestone's later on. Lots to do in Ottawa for those who are contemplating a visit! Kelly, hope you can join Michael next time too. We missed you! Click here for more pictures.

The Time Traveller's Wife

My friend Meliha recommended this one. The Time Traveller's Wife is a love story about Henry who has a genetic disease that sends him through time unannounced, and how he tries to live as normal a life as he can with the woman he loves, Claire. This book started off really slowly for me, and was quite confusing with all the hopping back and forth between past, present and future. However, once I got half way through, I found myself engrossed and curious about the next turn of events and I ended up really loving it. It is a sad and funny and very unique story. It will probably make its way out to the big screen at some point. Jennifer Aniston and Brad Pitt made headlines when they bought the film rights to Niffenegger's novel before it was released to the public.

Camping at Fitzroy Provincial Park

Marc and I went camping at Fitzroy Provincial Park, which is about 45 minutes northwest of Ottawa. The weather cooled down a bit this week-end, so the nights actually were a bit nippy. While the fire-building activities were a bit of a challenge, and we were very sad to see that after an hour, our potatoes were still rock hard, we did finally eat a lovely dinner later that same evening. The site was not huge, but we didn't need a lot of room...I think we had the simplest campgear on the whole grounds. Marc and I tried our hand at petanque (see petanque link in sidebar), the french version of bocce ball at one of the nearby sites. Marc won. We also swam in the river, which was mighty cold (it took us both about 30 minutes to totally submerge), read our books, played catch, and did crossword puzzles. See more photos here.