Day 6

It was a lovely day. We started off with breakfast at our usual haunt. Breakfast was nice, the lady even remembered to bring J an empty teapot without asking! We had gotten started kind of late, so the “frog tour” (tour on an amphibious like water/road vehicle) was booked for the times we wanted. We changed plans, and wandered down “Catherine” st, which is much like Bloor St (near Bay) in TO. Our plans were to amble down to a set of shopping malls. Grandma and Grandpa decided to tour churches and meet up with us later. We set of wandering. It was nice, busy, but not a busy as the day before. One block in, and we found my absolute favourite store!! Swatch! Whoohoo! Yup, I got a new one….R was not happy though, they had a cute kid section and she REALLY REALLY wanted one too. The ladies in the store somehow thought they were ‘helping’ by asking her if she wanted to try some on, well of course she did!! We made it out with just my purchase though.
By about the 3rd block, we ran into a parade. We finally figured out that it was a parade of ‘native’ cultures. We saw “Bolivia”, “Aztec mexico,”, “Peru”, “Venezuela” and a few others. We were trying to catch up with the Natives, when we were waylayed by a CBC reporter who wanted to know what we thought of this. We proudly gave our spiel about how it is great to be in a place where we can see all these cultures, and all these cultures are accepted. We never did see if we actually made the news later. There was some sort of festival going on in a plaza a few blocks down. We got some relief from the heat in a mall, and decided to lunch there. These food courts had so much variety it is really astounding. Grandma and Grandpa met us here.
After changing R into some swimwear, and J into a swim diaper, we headed back across the street to the gathering. There were quite a few teepees, and fountains that bubbled up from the pavement, with large statues of moose, and live fir trees. It turns out we had stumbled onto a large Native dance festival. I’m guessing groups from the parade all ended up there. Anyways. The kids had a great time in the fountains, and we had a good time watching them, and swaying with the music. At one point J crawled away from the fountains, and towards some steps. R was very dutiful, and followed him closely, (also crawling ?) He really likes steps now, up, down, crawling, walking, you name it. She was also very very sweet whenever he got water sprayed in his eyes, she would wipe the drops off of his face…It made my heart melt to see it…. We dried off and headed back to the hotel.
Once here, we realized our room still wasn’t cleaned, so we went off to the pool as a family for some swimming. J is really loosing his fear of the water. He likes to be independent on the steps, going up and down. He also really REALLY enjoys “motor boat, motor boat”. He may be ready for parent/tot swimming yet. We got ready, and checked in with the grandparents. We got to sneak away, they took the kids for supper. Daddy and I took the subway back into old Montreal and found of fav restaurant from last time “Gallianos”, a lovely Italian restaurant in the old city. There were lots of weddings to watch. The food was lovely, and it was really too bad we couldn’t take it home in a doggie bag. We spend a little more time after supper wandering around, then finally made our way out of a narrow alley filled with artists and their work. There was another bride & groom about 50 meters ahead of us, and we realized their photographer was right in front of us, she stopped and asked her assistant to “Clear the way of tourists”. I must have snorted in laughter pretty loudly, because she turned and asked “well, if you could just walk to the side”….i was quite annoyed, but hey, if she really wanted to fight the hoardes, well, good luck. As we were walking (along the side just to be compliant), there was this artist who was holding up a huge piece of Bristol board and angrily waving his arms at the wedding photographer. He was annoyed that his “art” was going to be in those pictures. The arrogance of both of those ‘artists’ just astounded me!!!
We made it back to the hotel despite the oppressive heat, and stumbled into our cool room. The kids are now finally asleep, and I am sort of done the packing. Well, at least the stuff that really matters, the dirty laundry can just get shoved in without much ceremony in the morning.