June, and another weekend trip has come and gone. This month had me doing a few different and out of my comfort zone types of things.
I took a trip to Montreal Canada for the Canadian Grand Prix at the Circuit Gilles Villeneuve, Formula One race. I stayed at the Delta Montreal, a Marriot property. I roomed with an internet friend, who is from Calgary Canada, my outside my comfort zone item, I have never roomed with anyone outside my family.
Fridays work day ended early as we had a customer cancel for the week. I had five and a half hour drive ahead of me, barring any traffic issues. It was a nice, clear day, giving me a comfortable drive. The roads where mostly traffic free. I made a couple of stretching stops along the way. The first spot where I hit any kind of traffic or backup was at the border. It took me a little over forty five minutes to get through the border. Not a big deal, I had my passport ready, answered a few questions to the border guard and I was on my way through the last stint of my drive.
The biggest traffic I hit came just outside of Montreal, crossing the big bridge going into the city. Traffic was due to a lot of road construction going on the bridge and cost me a good half hour of just putting along.
Arriving at the Delta, I parked in the underground garage of the hotel, and there is where my car sat for the weekend. The package that we got included unlimited usage of the transit system. Along with the transit pass our package included a room with two beds, two sets of weekend tickets to the race, two copies of the race program, two lanyards, a calendar which I gave to my friend and few smaller items. I thought the whole package was a great deal.
My friend arrived before me, got us checked in and got the room comfortable. When I got there, it was about dinner time, a quick shower, a check with the concierge for a local restaurant, we decided on Italian, and out the door we went. In this early part of the evening the city was alive, crowds of people just streaming along everywhere. Because it was a race weekend in the city there were all sorts of events going on about the city. Unfortunately, because it was such a busy night, the restaurant we went to was way to busy, with a long wait time. After walking around for a little over an hour and finding the same thing everywhere, we decided to go back to the hotel and check the on premise restaurant, and if it was too busy we planned on ordering room service.
It was around 9:30 when we got back to the hotel. We found the restaurant still open and rather quiet, we were seated immediately. After ordering beverages and our dinner, I got a pulled pork sandwich and my friend ordered the burger. The order took a bit longer to arrive than we had expected. The pulled pork sandwich was alright, came with an order of fresh cut French fries. My friend said the burger was the best he had ever had, and is still talking about how good it was. This started a trend for the weekend for us, we ended up eating in the hotel restaurant for the entire weekend.
Saturday we spent the day walking around old Montreal, admiring the architecture, browsing souvenir shops and enjoying the local foods. I had not had eaten poutine before and had planned on trying some whilst I was in Montreal. We found a nice little restaurant that served poutine, and another local favorite, Montreal Smoked meat sandwiches. Had an enjoyable day walking around and talking with my friend.
Saturday brought us to the race at Circuit Gilles Villeneuve. We had awesome seats, right across from the pit lane. It was fun being able to watch the cars come in for their pit stops. The race started out with a bang, a lap one. A big incident on the first corner that took out the local driver, Lance Stroll. It was kinda sad to see this happen.
After the first lap, the race was not to very exciting, but it was still fun to be at the race. I was glad to see Sebastian Vettel win the race, putting him in the lead for the season. After the race we walked around the track, more for avoiding the crowds headed to the subway than any other reason.
Back to the hotel for a relaxing evening, talking about the day with another friend of ours that was planning on attending with us but somethings happened that made him cancel his trip with us.
After a good nights sleep we got our selves ready for our respective trips home. I was driving and my friend was flying home to Calgary. After a little over six hours of driving I arrived home, safely.
Random Thoughts 