Thank you to one and all friends for the attendant and hearty Facebook congratulations in celebration of VanRamblings’ august 61st birthday. Such warmly expressed salutations are appreciated, as anyone who is familiar with the inimitable and gregarious Mr. Know-It-All has long realized.
Although we’ve truncated our stay in Montréal — due to pesky real-life, if you will, considerations — this is, after all, our most anticipated celebratory birthday (today!), and despite those ‘real-life‘ considerations we have every intention of enjoying ourselves during our 8-day stay in la belle province.
We will set about to explore Montréal, duly recording our experiences on photo and video (the photos due for a Flickr slideshow presentation mid-week next week). As we have not had our morning coffee, after the jump we will briefly — the term ‘briefly‘ constituting a relative term when it comes to describing VanRamblings’ perambulations, he of ‘long of wind’ and an adherent to the philosophy, “Why employ 100 words when 1000 deliciously exploratory observations will satisfy just nicely, thank you.” — relate the events of yesterday, and today’s early morning hours.
Steady yourself. Up next, we’ll explore our August 10th Montréal flight.

Continue reading The Birthday Jubilee Doth Commence With Minor Tribulations →

If it is 9 a.m. and you are reading this first travel post covering our journey to Montréal, we are somewhere over the Rocky Mountains, aboard WestJet Flight 366 (on a Boeing 737-800, seated near the front of the plane beside a window, in seat 6F), heading towards Toronto, where (the gods willing) we’ll arrive at 3:20 p.m. Eastern Daylight Savings Time, before continuing what will be our Québec adventure. We will arrive in Montréal at 5:10 p.m.
VanRamblings has brought along two cameras: our trusty Panasonic Lumix FZ28 and our somewhat newer Canon Powershot Elph 300 HS, both of which shoot photos and video in glorious HD. Over the course of the next 8 days we hope to record anecdotal photos and video of our experience in la belle province. Yes, we’re going to take in the sights: old Montréal; the world famous Schwarz’s Deli (hey, VanRamblings is Jewish; oy vey, like we’re not going to partake of an authentic smoked meat sandwich); the Notre-Dame Basilica; and … well, you’re just going to have to come back to VanRamblings either later tonight or tomorrow morning for a couple of photos, and maybe, just maybe, a brief, illustrious and spectacular video.