Fireworks!

As you may already know, this year is the 25th year of the Montreal International Fireworks Competition--officially, L'International des Feux Loto-Québec, after the main sponsor, the Quebec lottery.

Each Saturday at 10PM during the summer, a contestant from one of a number of countries puts on a fireworks show over the St. Lawrence River. This Saturday's (August 8th's) contestant is from South Africa.

I found a fan site which describes good viewing places, if you don't want to pay to go to the Six Flags: La Ronde amusement park to sit in special seating. (We did this one year and it was fun, but mainly because bedfull_o_books loves rollercoasters and spent the day riding them.)

Their "Where to view" site is at http://www.montreal-fireworks.com/pyro_map.html, and includes useful maps.

Get there early. We didn't, a couple of weeks ago, and settled for an ok view from some distance off.

Oh, and chocolate.

Suite 88 Chocolatier, 3957 St-Denis (between Roy and Duluth, not too far from Sherbrooke Metro). Also does gelato.

Juliette & Chocolat, 1615 St-Denis (at Émery, near Berri-UQAM Metro) and 377 Laurier West (near Hutchison). Caught my eye with the quote in their window: "Une journée sans chocolat est un journée sans soleil."

More Montreal ice cream places to try.

Havre aux Glaces, in both Jean-Talon and Atwater Markets (how did we manage to miss that?).

Le Péché Glacé, 2001 Mont-Royal East (at Bordeaux).

Léo le glacier, 1179 Bernard West (between Bloomfield and Champagneur) and 916 Duluth East (between St-Andre and De Mentana).

Some restaurant streets.

These streets are semi-pedestrianized dedicated restaurant streets: rue Duluth just east of St-Denis (Orange line between Mont-Royal and Sherbrooke), rue Prince-Arthur between Square St-Louis and St-Laurent (Orange line: Sherbrooke), and de la Gauchetière in Chinatown by Clark and St-Urbain (Place d'Armes Metro).

Chinatown has mostly Chinese and Vietnamese, Prince Arthur has mostly Greek places, while Duluth has a variety of restaurants, with a couple of Italian ones right at the beginning near the corner of St-Laurent. I think of the spaghetti alfredo at Eduardo's at 404 Duluth every time I walk by the place. Mazurka, at 64 Prince Arthur, has inexpensive Polish food; great on a cold day. The specials there are good value.

The streets are a bit touristy, as you'd expect, but nonetheless nice.

Cafe Santropol.

Cafe Santropol is a "terraced garden cafe" serving "sandwiches, herbal teas, and coffee" at 3990 St-Urbain, on the corner of Duluth. It's kind of between but not particularly close to either Sherbrooke or Mont-Royal Metros on the Orange Line. The 55 bus from St-Laurent Metro (Green line) is probably a better bet.

Their menu is at http://www.santropol.com/pages/rmenu.html. There are plenty of vegetarian options. Great for a light meal, although some of their sandwiches are pretty big.

Information about their organic and fair trade certified coffee blends is at http://www.santropol.com/pages/bblends.html.

Open daily, 11:30AM to 10:00PM. Cash only.

Some Montreal food links.

Here are a few links so you can do some more research on your own. There are a lot of places to eat in this town.

http://www.cim.mcgill.ca/~jer/visit/rest.html Jeremy & Vinita's Montreal Restaurant Guide (thanks to seabound for the pointer!)

http://montrealpoutine.com/ The ever-opinionated guide to poutine in the city.

http://www.midnightpoutine.ca/ is more an city arts, music, and film blog, but it occasionally does food, and has an amusing series called Metro Roulette, where they send a blogger to write about a random Metro station and its surrounding neighborhood.

http://www.montrealfood.com/

Enjoy!

I thought I'd posted about the pączki from Patisserie Wawel, but I hadn't.

Patisserie Wawel does pączki year-round, in three flavors: traditional prune, apricot, or cream. Go early because they make them fresh and they do run out towards the end of the day. And their other pastries are also tasty.

Five locations around Montreal:

1413 Saint-Marc, near de Maisonneuve (Green line: Guy-Concordia)

2543-A Ontario East, at Frontenac (Green line: Frontenac)

7070-A Henri Julien, in Jean Talon Market (Orange and Blue: Jean-Talon)

5499 Sherbrooke West, at Girouard (sort of near Orange line: Vendome)

7401 Newman (Carrefour Angrignon Mall, sort of near Green line: Angrignon)

For more details, Midnight Poutine did a writeup, with photos, at http://www.midnightpoutine.ca/food/2007/10/baked_in_montreal_wawel/

International balloon festival, August 8th to 16th, St. Jean-sur-Richelieu, QC.

Conveniently located on Rt. 133 on the way back from Montreal to Boston is the town of St. Jean-sur-Richelieu, QC. Between Saturday the 8th and Sunday the 16th, they'll be hosting an international hot-air balloon festival.

For more information, check:

http://www.montgolfieres.com/ (warning, flash animation) the main site

or

http://corpo.montgolfieres.com/en/index.asp the English language portal

I thought I'd post that just so people were aware of why all those balloons were in the sky when they go home from Worldcon. :)