Take me to Montréal
Our reward for finishing our long project at ASAP was a three-day, two-night trip to Montréal. It’s the largest city I’ve ever visited. I took some notes while I was in the city.
August 26
OK, I admit it. I don’t like cities. I feel uncofmortable in them - at least until I get familiar with them. That aside, though I’m sitting in our hotel room at La Tour de Centre-Ville, right in the center of Montréal. It’s a fairly nice hotel - far from the best I’ve stayed in, but good nonetheless. Last night we went walking up a few blocks to a nice Italian restaurant, and then we checked out Sharx pool hall. I played a few games with the people from ASAP, and then we went over to the arcade across the street. I can now honestly say that I’ve played Dance Dance Revolution (Extreme!), and I can honestly say that I suck at it. I enjoyed the walk through Montréal except for the fact that it was 2 AM (heck, I wouldn’t feel comfortable in downtown Bangor at 2 AM). The French/English problem hasn’t been too big, and except for an unfortunate incident that left one of our group members (following the bus in a car) in America, the bus ride and customs were fine. Today I’ll be exploring the city some more and maybe getting a chance to ride the subway.
August 27
Penguins are cool. Really. We saw some yesterday at the Biodome near Olympic Park. Ducks are still my favorite animal besides dogs, but penguins come in a at close third. Affter riding the subway back from the dome, Mike (the head of ASAP) took a few of us New Media Society types over to the SAT, a few blocks from our hotel. What they’re doing there is awesome, and it’s a lot like what we’ve said we’ve wnted to do for a while at the University. It’s basically a place for digital artists of all kinds to meet, discover, and chat. There was everything from VJ’ing to immersive environment creation there. It looked really promising, and, even better, it looked like it could be done in Maine.
August 28
It’s great to be back in America, but I really enjoyed the trip west. We were able to catch Matrix Reloaded in Montréal’s IMAX theater on Tuesday night (AWESOME), and we went to the contemporary art museum ysterday morning. I also had time yesterday to climb Mont-Royal and get some really great pictures of the Montréal skyline (and buy a shirt). After I travelled back through McGill University, I met up with the New Media Society members (again) and we chilled in front of the World Film Festival grounds near our hotel. Our Cyr bus ride home was long (we got back around 2:00, and then I had to drive home), but we had fun by singing/listening to singing/trying to ignore singing, watching The Matrix, and more. We had to wait a half an hour for a customs agent to greet us, then go inside and declare ourselves, while two customs agents searched the bus (welcome home!). Besides that delay, though, we made pretty good time and even stopped in Gorham, NH for some McDonald’s.
It was a wonderful trip, and I’m really glad I decided to go. I think we all became a closer group because of the trip, and I was able to relax and have fun after a really, really busy couple of weeks. Now there are three and a half days until I have to go back to school. Can somebody lend me a week?
