Our little apartment is cute and clean and not rustic! Yay! And well located. We're in a cute neighborhood that looks like student housing surrounding a university, about two blocks from the metro stop.
When they tell you that Montreal is English speaking, that is a damn lie. The folks may speak it, but their signs and roads and everything else are in French and most of the time French only. I'll have to dust off my rusty skillz...
Tonight we went across the street to - wait for it - a Mexican restaurant. The menu was in French. Our Mexican host and his young waiter spoke Spanish, French, and English. (I can order a drink, call for the check, and inquire about the restroom in all three languages, so I'm good to go.) They greeted customers with "Boujour!" We can't even get our Mexican immigrants to speak English, and Canada has theirs speaking TWO extra languages. Damn show offs.
The chow was like Mexico, not like US Mexican restaurants. Proper "street" tacos, not Ortega hard shells, with chopped veggies and shredded meat. The posole was super hearty and garnished with radishes, onions, and shredded cabbage. Oh, and the margarita was killer.
The drive here was beautiful, but somewhat harrowing because we lost GPS mapping at the border and had to kick it old school with a paper map. Our phones blipped out as well, so no hope there. Seeing a red warning sign and sending my brain back 32 years to decipher it was fun.
Kilometers per hour, not miles. The GPS was still tracking our speed, so a simple switch to kph made us not go 100mph on the autoroute. "Why are all these other cars going so slow??"
AND I am currently the proud possessor of $100 CAD. Admire it while it lasts because we are just a few blocks from what is supposed to be an amazing European style marketplace and it is a lie that they widely accept US money in Montreal. The places that do accept $$ hose you hard on the exchange rate.
So far we have a good impression.
When they tell you that Montreal is English speaking, that is a damn lie. The folks may speak it, but their signs and roads and everything else are in French and most of the time French only. I'll have to dust off my rusty skillz...
Tonight we went across the street to - wait for it - a Mexican restaurant. The menu was in French. Our Mexican host and his young waiter spoke Spanish, French, and English. (I can order a drink, call for the check, and inquire about the restroom in all three languages, so I'm good to go.) They greeted customers with "Boujour!" We can't even get our Mexican immigrants to speak English, and Canada has theirs speaking TWO extra languages. Damn show offs.
The chow was like Mexico, not like US Mexican restaurants. Proper "street" tacos, not Ortega hard shells, with chopped veggies and shredded meat. The posole was super hearty and garnished with radishes, onions, and shredded cabbage. Oh, and the margarita was killer.
The drive here was beautiful, but somewhat harrowing because we lost GPS mapping at the border and had to kick it old school with a paper map. Our phones blipped out as well, so no hope there. Seeing a red warning sign and sending my brain back 32 years to decipher it was fun.
Kilometers per hour, not miles. The GPS was still tracking our speed, so a simple switch to kph made us not go 100mph on the autoroute. "Why are all these other cars going so slow??"
AND I am currently the proud possessor of $100 CAD. Admire it while it lasts because we are just a few blocks from what is supposed to be an amazing European style marketplace and it is a lie that they widely accept US money in Montreal. The places that do accept $$ hose you hard on the exchange rate.
So far we have a good impression.
I'm sure this will pass over the next few days...or not. I read French much better than I speak it anyway, and I don't understand spoken French at all. 
I appreciate Montreal's thoughtfulness in making their metro easy for tourists to use.
It was not a BBQ place, but a gritty diner in a less desirable area, with a decidedly blue collar clientele and probably gets a lot of late night drunkards. For $31 CAD ($25 USD) Monello had a smoked meat sandwich with an enormous pile of amazing fries and coleslaw that was dressed with oil & vinegar instead of mayo, and I had a huge delicious plateful of spaghetti topped with meat sauce and then topped with chopped smoked meat. (Smoked meat is very similar to thick cut pastrami, like if you made it yourself instead of getting it sliced at the deli.)
The good news is that the second I get that deer in the headlights look, most of the people I interact with switch to English. 
