Hells Bells

 Well, you know how the adage goes.  If you don't have anything nice to say, don't say anything at all, and at the end of our trip to Quebec, I didn't have many nice things to say, other than the food was great, my travel companion was fabulous, as always, and the scenery was beautiful.  I'll just leave these pictures here, and not comment on the poorly paced out-of-tune carillon which rang non-stop as some sort of auditory torture to accompany our visit to the Chateau Frontenac (which is a hotel) and the St. Lawrence Seaway.

Quebec City is for Lovers (who want to break up)

 We made the 2.5 hour drive from Montreal to Quebec City, and luckily Montreal's rudeness also extends to its drivers.  FUN!  We were stuck in bumper to bumper traffic in a tunnel under the St. Lawrence Seaway, and this dickwad in a truck kept honking at us for being unable to phase shift through the traffic.  Once we were moving again, and upon discovering we were heading in opposite directions, we gave him the one sign more effective than the middle finger, the "you have a small penis" sign, perfected by my friend Ivana, and indicated by holding the thumb and forefinger about an inch apart.  Note--don't do this anywhere where you're likely to get shot, or if you're going to be continuing in the same direction, for the rage it induces is mighty.  (Mighty satisfying.)  You'll also be happy to know that I serenaded Lizzie with songs by every Canadian singer I know, including kd Lang, Celine Dion, Gordon Lightfoot, Leonard Cohen, Joni Mitchell, and most importantly, Bryan Adams.  She loved it, I'm sure.

Fun fact about Quebec City:  two couples I know, including my own parents, honeymooned here, and both couples ended up getting divorced.  Every time Lizzie and I saw young couples engaging in public displays of affection, we'd walk by and whisper "You're going to break up."  Ah, L'amour!  heh.

We wanted to walk to the old city for dinner, and stopped by this garden of hydrangeas, and then hoofed it up a huge fucking set of stairs.  Lizzie was super brave, as she's afraid of heights, and the stairs were rickety and the drop precipitous.  We made it to the top, though, and continued on our way, stopping only to note that the patriarchy is everywhere.

We walked for a very long time, and then stopped at a restaurant, where we waited at the hostess station, politely, like normal people, for about 5 minutes, to be sat.  This obnoxious group of four French Canadians shoved in front of us, and when the hostess came, tried to cut us off.  I channeled my fabulous Aunt Debbie, and said "No, we were here first." and he said, in French, "We have a reservation!" so I said "well it doesn't matter if you wait your turn, then, does it?"  He continued to ramble angrily at us, but I had just had enough with the rudeness, and collected the plastic swords from the bar that we armed our paper dolls with, in case I needed to poke someone's eye out.  Seriously, though, any Canadians in the house?  Can you tell me if everyone in Quebec is an insufferable asshole, or is the province just having a bad weekend?

Unrelated, did you know there is a Canadian Football league?  There is, and they have fierce names like the Edmonton Eskimos, the Hamilton Tiger-Cats, and the Montreal Alouettes.  An alouette is a lark, which is not a very fierce mascot, nor is it accurate.  They could be the Montreal jerkface magees.

Pumping Iron

Before we left for Quebec city, we stopped to re-hydrate and have snacks.  Do you even lift, bro?

Folk Art

 Lizzie and I created self-portrait paper dolls.  That's me in the green holding a crepe, and that's Lizzie in the blue with a stake having murdered our enemies.  We discussed opening a restaurant called "Steak n Crepes."  Later, after a quick visit to Mont Royal, Lizzie and I left for Quebec City, where we got these fabulous swords for our doppelgangers to use.

Governor Ramezay Welcomes You to His Chateau

Wherein Lizzie and I take a seat, and check out tiny tunnels.  Chateau Ramezay is a historic building/museum, and upon entering, we listened to a voice actor pretending to be Govenor Ramezay tell us about his beautiful chateau, while his harpy wife chimed in to remind him that it bankrupted him, and that she, the daughter of a rich fur trader, had to beg! Zut alors! Also, in 1775, the house fell into the hands of the, GASP, AMERICANS, and good ol Ben Franklin stayed there, long after M. Ramezay had died, of course.  The chateau also housed Montreal University's Faculty of Medicine, then fell into disrepair, and was bought by an Antiquarian society which restored it into its current museum form in 1895.  It has lots of lovely Canadian historical art and artifacts, and also houses a folk art museum, including a space where children visitors can create their own art by coloring paper-doll magnets.

The Constant Gardener

 First stop at the Chateau Ramezay was the gardens.  We pressed the button by Pierre, here, and learned about his, oh, I'm sorry HIS MASTER'S garden.  There were no potatoes.  Only squashes, and some gourds, and maybe a goat fountain, per the pictures below.  There was another recorded info lecture by a young lady, Suzette, the house maid, who told us all about how she really liked smelling Madame's flowers.  ;)

Vieux Montreal has Crepes.

 This statue is called "English Pug/French Poodle."  There is a lot of English vs. French tension and Montreal, and Lizzie and I sort of wondered if this was why everyone was rude to us, but even when we weren't talking 'Merican, people were jerks, so it's a mystery.  I'm pretty decent with French, though, so I was ready to swear at people in their language of choice, should it be required.

We left our hotel around 10 (after watching French Anne of Vert Gables), and walked to the old city part of Montreal.  WITHOUT GETTING LOST!  YAY! We admired the "Mary Queen of the World" cathedral, saw Victoria Square, and stopped for delicious crepes, where I had to ward off a yellow jacket that wanted in on my maple syrup.  (I HATE BEES).  After getting fooded, we continued exploring, eventually wandering to the garden of Chateau Ramezay, drawn in by these gorgeous trees.

Montreal Has an Attitude Problem

 Salut mes amis!  Ca va bien?  I am muthafuckin' cultured.  So this weekend, Lizzie and I decided to make good on our plans to go north to Montreal and Quebec city.  We left Friday afternoon, drove up through New Hampshire and Vermont (stopping to use the fantastic botanical pee greenhouse in Sharon, VT--the sewerage ran through a series of plants to reclaim the water.  Poor pee plants) up into Quebec.  Once we crossed the border, we got a little lost, and drove through the countryside, encountering lots and lots of olfactory adventures (mostly cow shit) before finally arriving at our hotel in Montreal,  Novotel, which Lizzie had pre-booked for us.  LOL FOREVER!  The fine folks at Novotel had overbooked, and decided not to honor our reservation, so we had to drive over to the Sheraton and pay a MILLION MORE DOLLARS (Canadian) in rates and taxes.  The joke's on you, though, Novotel, because now the four people who read this blog will never book with you.  Seriously, though, the clerks at the Novotel were hella rude, and I hope they get cursed with a plague of termite/bed bug hybrids.  Unrelated, our Garmin's French accent is hilarious.

At the Sheraton, we went up through the stabby garage (there was a staircase to no where--we had to go back down and find the elevator) and then landed at the bar.  As Lizzie and I drank away our troubles (as you do) this stunning young woman sat down two seats away from us, and had just began to enjoy her glass of wine, when the creepiest man in all of Montreal, named Ted, incidentally, sat down next to her, and gave her this bullshit story about how he was a producer for Big Brother, and that he normally wouldn't do something like this, but he was going to give her a private audition because she was so beautiful--she'd be perfect for the show.  He then implored her not to tell anyone, because he was going to murder her, er, I mean, he wasn't supposed to invite people personally to audition, and invited her up to his room.  (Note--Lizzie and I were surprised that he didn't give us this spiel, but altered slightly to invite us to audition for the Biggest Loser.)  This was some serious To Catch a Predator business, and at first I thought she was falling for it, but then I realized she was just placating him so she could escape.  She took his card, which looked like it'd been made on a laser jet printer, promised not to tell her friends, and excused herself, after which Ted sat alone at the bar, scrolling through his Facebook, completely unaware that the chest hair sticking through the top of his zip-up sweater from 1993 was whispering run while you can to all the women in a 10-km radius.

Just as a refresher: if a woman is sitting alone at a bar, it is not an invitation for you to sidle up like a a creepy mccreeperston and hit on her.  If she is flagging interest, go ahead, but if her body language says "leave me the fuck alone.  I just want a goddamn glass of wine before bed," then FUCK OFF.

Note--the Sheraton in Montreal kept charging our card with piles and piles of incidentals, and when Lizzie called to check on what these were, the front desk clerk was also curiously hostile about explaining them (it was basically a hold, in case you were part of a bachelor party, for instance, and projectile vomited all over, well, everything) and it turns out, rudeness was a running theme in dear old Montreal.  It's hard to tell who were tourists, and who weren't, but everyone was pretty consistently douchey.  People usually talk about Parisians being rude, but I've been to Paris, and the people there are lovely and polite, whereas the folks we met in Montreal were the rudest asshats we've ever encountered.  It smacks of desperation, like "being aloof and dickish is cool.  We will be le coolest."  You are not.  You are not Paris.  I'm sorry, but you're going thave to deal with your inferiority feels.  Any city that takes jay-walking as seriously as Montreal does (ask my friend Lisa) needs to engage in some self-reflection.  (Lizzie and I are going to put together a "how to walk on the sidewalk" primer for the citizens of this fair city as well.  Why are you so hung up on jay-walking when no one knows proper sidewalk protocol?!?!)

Can You Solve the Mystery of the Six Beeps?

 These are cell phone pictures.  Not bad, eh?  So remember when I said I like to think of worst case scenarios?  Well this area has no cell-phone reception, no power lines, etc, so I said to Lizzie "what if we came out of the gate, and it turned out that the apocalypse had happened and we were the only two people left?"  We spent the walk strategizing how we'd survive, which stores we'd hit for what supplies, where we'd go, how we'd travel, etc, etc, as the thunder rumbled ominously in the distance.  We were still on this topic when we got back to the car, and started on our way to Athol to get gas.  In Athol.  Athol is known for having gas, so we've heard.  Athol.  Heh heh.  After we got gas (in Athol. heh heh) we looked around for post 6 mile walk refreshments, when all of a sudden this horrific beeping came out of no where.  It sounded like a weather bulletin, but the radio wasn't on.  We had a mystery on our hands!  The beeps always went in a series of 6, with the first and fourth being of longer duration.  At first we thought the radio was picking up some sort of (alien?) static, and then we thought it might be a police signal (we saw a bad car accident) and then we thought it might be a car problem, since it happened after we'd filled up the tank.  We came up with different theories, stopped to tighten the gas cap, etc, but nothing made the beeping stop.  There were no warning lights, and I checked the internet for instances of similar happenings, but nothing (except for one guy who thought a series of 6 beeps was coming from INSIDE THE HOUSE GARAGE)  We stopped to get some diet coke, and after turning off the car, IT HAPPENED AGAIN. SPOOKY.  Actually, it turns out that Lizzie has a new phone, and the phone was reporting National Weather Service bulletins via the loud beeps that overrode the phone's silent mode, so we were sort of right, and sort of horribly wrong.  There's severe weather in Athol, everyone, so be aware.  MYSTERY SOLVED LIKE A BOSS.  We admired our intrepid investigative skills, and learned once again that causation does not necessarily mean correlation.  We probably would've been less freaked out if we hadn't just been preparing for the post-apocalypse.

The Lost Village of Dana

Happy last day of August!  Lizzie and I were going to go to the beach today, but when we woke up, it was raining, and the weather was going to be showers off and on all day, so we decided to go on an adventure instead.  Even though we've lived in MA our whole life, we'd never been to the Quabbin reservoir, so we decided to head down Route 2 and check it out.

The Quabbin reservoir is an impressive feat of engineering, especially so for Massachusetts which seems to be full of engineering disasters (*cough* big dig *cough*).  In the 19th century, Boston and surrounding communities were booming, and the demand for water was easily outstripping the supply. Exercising foresight not common to our state, the government began to explore options for a large supply of clean water.  They began to create reservoirs and aqueducts, the biggest project being the Quabbin. In the 1930s, after creating a series of tunnels and well placed dams and dikes, the Swift River valley was inundated, and the river diverted.  The Swift River valley was not uninhabited, and the flooding called for the disincorporation of four towns, Dana, Prescott, Greenwich, and Enfield.  (David Foster Wallace sets parts of Infinite Jest in a town named Enfield).  The people who lived in these towns were not pleased, obviously, nor was the state of Connecticut which thought the diverted water belonged to them, but Massachusetts was like "Ha ha we do what we want" and Eminent Domained all over the place, forcing the land/homeowners to move and then dismantled the houses, hotels, CEMETERIES, etc.  (If you scuba dived in the Quabbin, you could see old cellars and the like in the flooded towns).

Lizzie and I went to where Dana used to be, which is the only part of these four towns still above water.  Unfortunately my camera died halfway through our walk, but the above video pretty much sums it up.

Dana was incorporated in 1801, and disincorporated in 1938.  Now it's part of Petersham, so we drove out to Hardwick road to Gate 40, and walked the 3 miles to the old town commons.  It was eerie, and there was a loud humming of bugs as we trundled down the choppily paved road.  Halfway through the walk we realized we had to hit the bathroom, and were contemplating which tree to grace with our urine when we exited the thick woods to the commons, and found a delightful portajohn.  Hooray for the department of conservation and recreation!  (side note:  I always think of worst case scenarios, and was like "What if you had to spend the rest of your life living in a portajohn which is under the hot beating sun?"  Noooo....)  After that excitement, we walked through a pretty meadow, down a treacherous hill to the edge of the reservoir.  It was vast and beautiful, and I did not spit in the Boston and metro west water supply.  We climbed back up the treacherous hill, panting, and then walked around the common, which had pictures of what the once vibrant town looked like before.

I had read about Dana, and it said this particular part of the walk was poignant, and I'm super cynical, but moving around the field and looking at the big, beautiful houses, hotels, churches, schools and stores which were torn down to leave this ghost town was really sad.  I understand that the needs of the many outweigh the needs of the few, but all those lives, all that history...so many feels, especially since the land is still there to memorialize its former glory.  Dammit I felt so poignantized. We would have explored more, but thunder was rumbling, and we had to walk back to the car, so we said goodbye to the ghosts and left it to the pinging grasshoppers and crickets.

Just Mature Adults Doing Mature Adult Things

 Fact:  Slides are a lot scarier when you're 5'7" and looking down, rather than, say, 2'- 3' and looking down.  Luckily I am a bad ass when it comes to using children's playground equipment.  DON'T STOP ME NOW.

Hilton Park!

 So Spaulding Highway is under serious construction, and after following some detours, we ended up finding Hilton Park, by accident, like it's a fucking zen koan.  We learned about mistakes you can make with your car, and that the tides here are serious.  There are no swimming signs everywhere, but you can fish, and boat, and play on the awesome playground, and disrupt the uncomfortable mating ritual of two older folks who are just trying to hang out on the swings, and aren't interested in hearing you yammer ceaseless at your friend as you yell defiantly "that's right, cry, rusty chains!" as the swing protests at bearing your non child weight.  Anyway, luckily for them (and probably for poor Lizzie, too) the swings make me motion sick after four minutes, so we left the older folks to their mating rituals.  Awww yeah. 

Great Bay National Wildlife Refuge

After lunch, we wanted to go for a walk, and Lizzie had found this fun sounding place called Hilton Park on the interwebs, so we decided to go there.  However, even with the help of our gps, we couldn't find it, and ended up in this creepy place called Fox Point in Newington, where only Newington residents were allowed, and the road turned to gravel and the squirrels and birds were looking at us like "YOU'RE NOT ONE OF US" so we had to turn around and flee before they ate us.  We wandered around until we found this, the Great Bay National Wildlife refuge, and we went for a nice walk around the wooded area, were we saw wild life such as Daddy Long Legs.  (FUN FACT-Did you know those creepy bastards are also known as harvestman?  If you never want to sleep again, click here.)  There are apparently lots of birds there, but we didn't see any, except for one strange bird who was actually a person waiting to take pictures of birds.  He laughed at my funny loch ness monster joke, so it's all good.  Lizzie and I plan to start a logging firm based out of the Great Bay National Wildlife refuge.  Can't wait to get that started.

We decided not to use the GPS to get us back to 95, and we got lost again and meandered through New Hampshire for about an hour, and guess what we magically came across?

(SEE ABOVE POST)

Peanuts and Licorice Are Not Delicious

 After lunch, we cut through the Strawberry Banke museum shop to get back to our car.  I bought this horrible looking peanut candy for 10 cents, because it had been a while (maybe since Idaho?) that we had done a local food experiment.  It tasted like someone had frosted a fiberglass nutter butter with licorice.  I made this face and then spat it out, elegantly, into a bush.  Lizzie commented on how the lovely mashed up orange color contrasted nicely with the green rhododendron leaves it dribbled on to.  I bet the bees will love it.  Also, check out this terrifying ornament that was in the store.  I wasn't sure what to make of it, but Lizzie investigated, and it is actually a Gingerbread Santa combo.  If you put Santa Ginge on your tree, he will haunt your sugar plum dreams.

Hippies Ruin Everything

We decided to take a break from history for lunch, and walked through Prescott Park, which is on the edge of the port.  Part of the park was roped off, because there was a theater performance, which was a combination of Shakespeare and Hair.  The play used Shakespeare's words, but the actors were dressed like dirty hipster hippies, and danced like it was a 1960s rave.  We were embarrassed for them, but they seemed not to be.  Ecstasy is a helluva drug, I guess.  The park, much like Mrs. Gibson's garden was full of bees, and at the very entrance was the "liberty pole" which you see below. 

The liberty pole (heh) was erected (heh heh) in 1833, and was replaced twice, once in 1872 and again in 1899, and commemorates the first "No Stamps" flag which was flown here back in 1766.  Anyway, it advocates emancipation from tyranny, and we wished to be emancipated from the hippies butchering Shakespeare, so we walked over to the Common Man restaurant, and had lunch, concluding with the best bread pudding anyone has ever had in their life.  If you are there, go bathe in a tub of their caramel sauce.  You will not regret it.  Unless you drown, but then you will be dead, and regret will be the least of your problems.  Hell is probably a non-stop hippie performance of Shakespeare where everyone around you is yammering on about how it's a bold interpretation when it really just sucks.  The emperor like, has no clothes, man.

War is Hell

 One of the houses had a war time display with a victory garden outside.  Here is a map with the European theater.  They also had instructions on what you could and could not write to your folks back home when you were deployed, and basically you could not write about anything.  At all. 

Also, I find propaganda posters fascinating, and WWII was rife with them.  This one (sorry about the crap picture) amused me because my brain turned "waste fats" into "waste farts" and I was like "Damn, way to support the war effort."  Anyway, loose lips sink ships, and you can't fight the axis if you don't use prophylactics. 

Victorian era Room with all the fixings

 Lizzie and I decided that the key to living in any time period was/is to be rich.  Even so, I'd still choose my current attic situation over this rich room because CHAMBER POT.  NO THANKS.  Also, look at that decrepit wall paper.  Like sands through the hour glass, so is the decay of our wall paper.

Shooting Hoops

 They had Victorian games to play with, so Lizzie and I shot some hoops.  You basically cross your dowels, like Lizzie is doing here, and then separate them rapidly, tossing the hoop at your partner, who catches, and then tosses it back.  As you can tell from Lizzie's refined face, and my super intense game face, we were really good at this.  So good, that we would have, as Lizzie noted, been recruited for the NHA, but unfortunately, since shit was sexist then, too, we would've been forced to joint the WNHA instead, which everyone would have derided as "not real sports."  Then we would've stabbed our detractors with a dowel, Buffy style, and our careers would've been over. 

Strawberry Banke Forever

 HI! Today was a banner day, because I had been separated from Lizzie for over two weeks, as she had been on vacation with her husband in Alaska, and today we were reunited, and decided to celebrate this reunion, as well as her birthday, up in New Hampshire!  Our first stop was the Strawberry Banke Museum, which, as the website will tell you, is a 10-acre outdoor history museum with tons of gorgeous gardens and "role players" to talk to and bug with your annoying questions.  This here is the Gibson mansion, and that dear lady below is Mrs. Gibson.  I asked her about her gardens to be polite, and because I love gardens, and I remarked upon the GIANT SWARM OF BEES that her flowers attracted.  She told me that she petted the bees O_o and that they were fuzzy.  She said if you pet them in the direction of their wings, that they don't mind it.

Wut?

Okay, probably people who haven't been stung a kajillion times by all varieties of bees/wasps might not have found this to be(e), as the kids say, whack, but once you've been stung six times on the knee because a hornet decided the best possible place it could chill in all the world was in the leg of the ugliest pair of green sweat pants that you own and dried on the line outside because running a dryer is expensive and you are a poor 12-year old, you start to find the little bastards suspicious.  I was stung by so many honey bees when I was over Lizzie's house the first year we met (kindergarten) that her mother thought there was something wrong with me.  I mean, there is, but I don't know what it has to do with bees.  Any how, even though I thought that anyone who petted bees was a weirdo, I remarked upon how she must have a lot of honey, and she gave me such a side eye and said "Oh No, I do not KEEP bees."  MY BAD, BEE WHISPERER.  

Anyway, the house was gorgeous, and they let you touch stuff (see Lizzie iron!) which made me super happy.  They also pretty much left you alone to explore on your own, which also made me happy.  They gave you a little spiel at the beginning of whatever house you entered, and then were like "go to it."  Many of the houses (which smelled of emphysema) held displays on carpentry, and in one, we climbed into the attic to see how the joists et al went together, and I thought we were going to drop through the ceiling.  That's not great for one's self-esteem. We also toured a little herb garden, and I pointed out all the stuff that could kill you or make you go crazy (Foxglove, Tansy, Castor Beans).  Then I got invited to join the northeast herb society (probably because of my knowledge of deadly herbs) but I live in an attic (with a pretty solid floor and awesome joists) so unfortunately that is a dream which will have to wait...