Les Touristes

Summer is definitely the season for tourists in Montreal. I've heard more english spoken in the last month than in the last 5 months put together. There are several things we plan to do while living in Montreal, and we're hoping to check several items off our list this summer while Maddie is still here. We've managed to get in a couple of items in the last few weeks.

Those white lines in the distance are the rapids!

We had 10 consecutive days of extended family fun when Nick's family visited in late June and early July. The kids got to spend time with their cousins from North Carolina, and everyone was thoroughly exhausted by the end of their visit. On our list of "touristy" activities was to take on the Lachine Rapids. Yes, the Gilmores went whitewater rafting... I didn't know that some of the rapids are 10 feet tall (I never realized that there's no good metric conversion for the standard foot...3 metres, 304 centimetres) although they only felt like 303 centimetres, really.

Yawning before we even started!

Yes, this "dunk" was voluntary. Nobody was thrown out of the raft.

Sporty helmets, eh?

On the top of our list of "tourist" things to do in Montreal is to attend a Cirque du Soleil performance. Montreal is the birthplace of the show. The last show was in December, and ended shortly before we moved. The current show is only open for a month and a half, and ends at the end of July. We had to get it in this weekend if we were going to get it in before Maddie has to go back to Florida. The venue is a circus tent in the old port of Montreal. The performance was AMAZING. The other words I would use to describe the performance are: Strength, Balance, and TRUST.

As a scantily-clad woman glided out onto the stage, I couldn't help notice that her arms and shoulders were unbelievably sculpted. I mentioned this to Maddie, and she pointed out the washboard abs the woman was sporting. This woman's rectus abdominis looked like a 6-pack of 6-packs (36 pack?) Shortly after she was hoisted into the air by a set of rings ...the sweet boy sitting next to me looked up into my eyes and said, "Mommy, that's NOTHING like you"......  That much was obvious to me, but I was curious which part of her he thought resembled me least. "You would NEVER do that" was his only explanation. He's right.

Left on our list: Camping, touring McGill, maybe 6 Flags... that's a lot to pack into 2 months.