The Recap

The dust has finally settled and I’m on my own again. Last weekend saw OJ roll into town, which was cause for a wee bit of celebrating. Thanks to him, I got a chance to take in one of the mandatory Montreal experiences—un match des Canadiens! His train arrived a little before 5pm, which gave us enough time to swing back to my place to drop his stuff off, then go right back downtown via metro to the Bell Centre. We didn’t have tickets, naturally, so we were at the mercy of the friendly street vendors.

En route, we met “Jacques,” who happened to have a couple of nosebleed seats available. I was somewhat surprised that OJ didn’t try to haggle a bit for the price, but whatever. The point is we had seats. Though he protested, at first, OJ convinced “Jacques” to take a picture with us. OJ had tried to play it off as a tourist thing, but “Jacques” was no dumbass. He knew damn well that this was our insurance policy against getting scammed. Fortunately for all parties, the tickets were legit.

This was my second opportunity to see an NHL game in person (the first being in Toronto, years earlier, thanks to some free tickets from a fraternity brother), but this time I got to see a team that I didn’t despise. Our seats were well up in the second highest row, right beside the Molson zone. Y’see, at the Bell Centre, they have a section sponsored by Molson where they do promotions and whatnot. However, we were just outside that section, so ineligible for any prizes. We did have the privilege of gawking at the Molson Promo girls, though!

The game ended in a shootout (totally stupid way to end any sort of hockey game, regular season or otherwise), with Buffalo taking home the victory, leaving us to drown our sorrows at Pub Saint-Ciboire. The boys from Cagibi were playing, so OJ got a chance to hear an example of independent (in many contexts) Quebecois funk/rock music. I also got a chance to introduce him to Blanche de Chambly. Though not nearly as potent as la biere Trois-Pistoles or la Maudite, it’s still quite good. A couple of pints later, we were en route to find late-night smoked meat.

A couple of blocks from my apartment, one will find a 24 hour restaurant called Le Roi de Smoked Meat. It seems to me that if the place is claiming to be “Le Roi” of anything, it should be pretty good. We’d actually discovered this place when the lads came up the year before. I won’t claim this is the best smoked meat place in Montreal, but it isn’t too shabby—especially after a night of drinking. So we grabbed takeout and headed back to my place to stuff ourselves full of smoked meat and crash.

For me, the rest of the weekend was uneventful. It seems that my once indomitable constitution has gone into decline. So while OJ was out doing tourist stuff in Montreal, I was at home, on my couch, watching football. So that’s the scoop. Til next time…