Now, let me just preface that Montreal was lovely, and much of our plans went off as intended. ARR went off to my parents on Thursday evening, thoroughly exhausted; then we got to the airport and to Montreal without a hitch. We enjoyed crepes and hot chocolate at Juliette & Chocolat and wandered around downtown (and bought a book from a “giant stacks” style used bookstore. We explored the underground mall, then wandered about in the snow taking pictures and looking into art galleries until we had a spectacular five-course dinner at Les 400 coups.
On Saturday, the temperature dropped into the negative teens, but we went on an ice wine bus tour, so we spent very little time outside and a lot of time tipsy. We had ice wine, and a smoky red wine Jethrien bought a bottle of, and the most herbal-tasting Riesling I’ve ever tried, and ice cider and “fire cider”; and we learned how they were made. There was cider taffy and a lovely lunch, too. The only hiccup was that I started feeling unpleasantly congested over the course of the day, and my mom told me that ARR wasn’t feeling well either.
Sunday we were supposed to go skiing, but I felt like death and the temperature was still in the negative teens. (Apparently, one of the mountains we considered going to hit -114 degrees that night.) So instead we went to the Archeology museum and learned about the history of Montreal and about Agatha Christie (whose second husband was an archeologist and who worked at several dig sites with him). Then we saw Deadpool and ate smoked meat, ribs and poutine at Reuben's. Not our original plan, but a very pleasant day despite needing a lot of DayQuil to get through it.
It wasn’t until 11am on Monday when things took their turn. We got trapped in the Montreal airport when they cancelled our flight to Newark, and then cancelled our flight to Hartford later that day. Oh, and then directed us to a one-person-staffed customer service desk. It took us over an hour to be told, “Oh, you just need to go through that door.” #$&^#$%# That door? It took us through customs, because apparently even if you don’t leave Canada, you still need to wait in line and do paperwork to leave the airport. Then there’s a different desk and wait to actually get your bag.
Fortunately, I had called Avis while we were waiting and reserved a one-way rental car. We then drove for nine hours (arriving around 2am) through the snow/ice storm to get home. We slept, my parents started here with ARR, Jethrien returned the car, I was feeling better and thought everything would be okay…
And then I discovered that a water pipe had frozen and burst, and our basement carpet was "squooshy". I've spent a lot of today on the phone. (But if you need a contractor in Jersey City, Infinity Maintenance is fantastic. They got here in less than three hours and fixed the pipe and entire wall.) Now I need to get the carpet dried and replaced, and get the insurance company to pay for it. I’m missing another day of work tomorrow to deal with that; I’m hoping that ARR will be well enough to go to school (he was good until 6ish today, then crashed, but I think some of that was residual sickness, lack of nap, and homesickness).
Oh, and that cold that ARR and I had has been passed to my parents and my sister, because no good babysitting deed goes unpunished.
Next time, I want to swap the order and have the best parts of the vacation at the end.
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