Montreal – X10loupe

Quebec City and its fun crowd left behind It’s time to move to the main city in Quebec, the world known Montreal. Not a long ride gets me into town relatively early and it’s hot, what is needed is a shower but the check in is not for a couple of hours so I just end up catching up with mail, blog and all other sorts.

Done that and checked in it’s time to start exploring, it’s a beautiful day and I’m only going to be here two nights so it’s off to the races.

Screen Shot 2016-07-22 at 20.17.42 — Quebec City to Montreal

DSCN4179 — More statues of Glaswegians in view.

DSCN4180 — On the whole impressive buildings but with a religious je ne se qua

DSCN4181 — Now, do they want to be Paris?

DSCN4184 — Not quite the Paris Notre Dame, but Notre Dame none the less.

DSCN4183 — Plenty of people having street fun in front of the Cathedral.

DSCN4185 — And I end up enjoying a good half hour of jazz

DSCN4190 — My sister tells me this is called Tibetan Bridge

I decide really early on that I like Montreal. It’s french yes but has a sort of understatedness about it, not like Quebec, where you could be forgiven for thinking you were in actual France.

The riverfront is positively fascinating and I end up indulging in another bit of unhealthy eating, chips this time, while I walk along through the crowds of week end strollers.

DSCN4193 — A view of the Jacques Cartier Bridge from the old port.

DSCN4195 — I did not know I was going tomorrow so I took this.

DSCN4196 — Fancy feature which I’m pretty sure has a purpose.

DSCN4200 — And the Tibetan thing from the other side, also notice the guy at the top of the zip wire on the right.

DSCN4202 — I assume, disused, flower mill.

DSCN4203 — Old fashioned fire escape, so North America.

DSCN4204 — Another very North America juxtaposition of new and old.

I spend the night in the hostel bar, making friend with a couple of beers and turning in remarkably early. Campsites being as, sometime more, expensive than hostels is going to make so that I might end up staying less in them and more in the laters. I’m not complaining, it has some advantages, including no problems with bears.

Monday morning and the weather is not great. The plan is to climb Mount Royal for the view and to ride around the Gilles Villeneuve F1 Circuit. The plan collides with the weather first, forcing a wonderful detour to the Museum of Fine Art, and then with the fact that you cannot take motorbike on the circuit, more on this later. What about That for well laid plans?

Anyway I spend a few hours filling my rather melancholic soul with art and, I have to say, it helped.

DSCN4206 — The eye, I wonder if the window at the back is by chance or design.

DSCN4210 — The classics are classics for a reason.

Some people do not see the point of art, more don’t see the the point of contemporary art. In my older age I love art more and more, in my older age I find some contemporary art compelling, other haunting, most of it necessary.

Of all the piece I saw today, this by Sorel Cohen is the one that shook me more. I love the juxtaposition of photography and text and in this particular instance the text and the images form an almost perfect mirror for where I find myself for small intervals of nearly every day. As the text is sometime not easy to read I have written it in the caption of each of the works in the series.

DSCN4217 — Remembering your youth is a vexed experience.

DSCN4218 — You are misunderstood undervalued and isolated

DSCN4219 — You suffer from a profound and indestructible melancholy

DSCN4220 — Yours is an intense and troubling inner world

DSCN4221 — You feel anxious empty and numb, also lonely and unloved

DSCN4222 — You have an insecure attachment to abusive people

DSCN4223 — Your troubled childhood has made you distrustful and suspicious

DSCN4224 — You feel irritable and restless, you surrender to frustration and disappointment.

DSCN4225 — Rejection has broken your heart and left you weak

DSCN4226 — You find fault with everything, your present, your future, yourself

DSCN4227 — You are alone too much and feel worthless, you cry frequently and think about death.

DSCN4228 — You collapsed on the couch and wept

To those who say the don’t know what to do with contemporary art I say, what could you do without?

DSCN4233 — I think my dad had one of these.

DSCN4234 — And I know someone who’d love these.

DSCN4236 — And yes, they have an Anthony Gormley

A great morning of art and the weather got a bit better so I manage to climb Mount Royal after all.

DSCN4237 — View from the top of Mount Royal

DSCN4238 — An amazingly high number of people were running up and down the staircase.

So I had read on the website I could not take the motorbike onto the Île Notre Dame, the one of the two main island in Montreal where the casino and the race circuit are located. I ride to the other one, Île Saint-Hélène and park near the biosphere, the massive tubular structure below, and walk to the other island.

Fortunately they rent bicycles and I rent one with which I take two laps of the circuit filming and taking pictures as I go along.

DSCN4240 — Even without it’s plastic coating.

DSCN4242 — The Casino view from the circuit.

DSCN4258 — Looking down the pit straight towards the start line.

DSCN4247 — Pole position, second and third spot.

DSCN4249-001 — Panoramic of the pit exit, it is a lot smaller than it looks on TV

DSCN4250 — One hopes the will have cleaned up by the next GP.

DSCN4257 — The TV crews are just over the pit straight, no wonder they see what happens first hand.

DSCN4259-001 — The wall of champions and its victims.

DSCN4245-001 — Strictly speaking I should not be here, but…

DSCN4261 — According to my calculations this ought to have been one of the Ferrari garages.

DSCN4263 — The curbs have seen many many moons.

Not for the Cannes film festival but fun nonetheless.