On the Road Again

Pete and I have been in Montreal, Canada, for the last few days. Pete has been attending a conference on Positive Psychology and meaning, some of the top people in this field were presenting there ...  I came up for the ride. Most of you will know that Pete has a great love of learning ... and he loves the whole positive psychology arena and how to have a life with more purpose and meaning. We stayed in the Hotel Bonaventure in central Montreal, which was walking distance to everywhere. I am a big Trip Advisor user where I found our hotel and I love doing reviews of places we stay ... in the Trip Advisor world I am famous!

Montreal is a very diverse city ... I never got sick of hearing French, it is such a beautiful sounding language. I was really wishing Lucy was with us, it is easier when there is someone that speaks the local language ... it can also be an excuse to not engage, or be a bit lazy. Montreal is really bi-lingual ... people speak French and English in the same sentence. There is something about language ... it connects people to an identity, a history, a sense of belonging. Montreal is French first and everything else second.

I took a bus tour round the city which was a great way for me to get my bearings. I seem to really lose my sense of direction when travelling, I feel completely disorientated when it comes to north and south ... I know east from west by following the sun rise and sun set. I got off the bus at one of the stops to wander along a delightful looking street and stopped of at a cafe and had a crepe, stuffed with apple and melted soft cheese and this hot chocolate. Neither were very nice ... this was one of the worst hot chocolates I have had in a while. It was mostly cream ... very milky ... and tasted like a weak Cadbury's hot chocolate ... I do not like Cadbury's hot chocolate and I hate a bad hot chocolate as many of you know.  I have found the perfect ingredient for a 'very good' hot chocolate in NZ ... Puhoi half milk and half cream, it is even delicious on porridge!  I had such high hopes for Canada ... I was very disappointed. I made the fatal mistake of asking for a bowl as well!! I gave up.

I have been trying to be very thoughtful about what I photograph this time ... it is easy to photograph lots of buildings that don't really mean anything to anyone. My photography is dreadful anyway ... I am a point and shoot photographer and if I am not wearing my glasses it is hard to know what I am taking a photo of. Having said all that about buildings here is a building that I liked. Some architecture is so beautiful, like works of art. The building materials and the construction looks so artistic. There are quite a few beautiful buildings like this in old Montreal.

I saw this tower hidden by these rather tall modern buildings surrounding it ... I wonder if this is how the Christchurch Cathedral could end up looking ... the remains of something nostalgic and historic drowned out by the modern and sometimes ugly.

I hopped of the bus at Saint-Joseph Cathedral ... I love going into old churches and looking around ... they are so beautiful and have such amazing art work ... for many nothing has been spared in their construction. I love the colours and texture in this painting that was hanging at the back of the Cathedral. Saint-Joseph was a priest that was known for his miraculous healing of people. People would come from all over the world and wait to be seen by him to be made well ... as a result of these healing's he received many substantial financial donations that he gave back to the Church and were used to build the Saint-Joseph Cathedral ... it is quite contemporary in it's interior design and art work compared to the Notre Dame. 

As I was walking around the church I saw this reflection of colour on the floor, reflecting through a beautiful stained glass window ... I thought of Marigold immediately ... Lucy showed me a painting that Marigold had painted and I am sure these are the colours she used. They are definitely Lucy colours!!

I loved this stain glass window, I love the sharpness of the figures. There were some beautiful blends of colours in these windows ... green and red ... this one red and blue. These remind me of Lucy's printmaking days at Hagley High. These are quite a modern in contrast to stain glass that I have seen in other churches of similar vintage.

I heard this yellow Lamborghini before I saw it ... it sounded thrilling!! Fast, loud and proud. It pulled up to the lights next to the white, highly modified Nissan ... then they dragged each other of at the lights. It was a fun moment.

In contrast to speed, the very next block, up pulled this beautiful blue gangster car, with loud music blaring out of it ... I felt like I was on a movie set of The Fast & Furious!

One of the tour buses I travelled round the city on ... I am embarrassed to say that it took me a while to figure out how to get on. I assumed the entrance was at the front ... dah! Of course it is at the back, everyone knows that ... right.

Notre Dame ... this Cathedral is stunning! I love how light is used with the colour blue and the beautiful effect of light and space they give when blended together. As as I walked through the front doors of the Cathedral I found this sight breathtaking.

I loved this building, it is an apartment block that was built for the Olympic Games ... it was to be the first of its kind ... it ended up being the last of its kind. It houses around 300+ people I believe ... it looks like a lego complex.

I saw these performers as I was on the bus ... Montreal is a city of festivals ... this is part of a Street Circus that is on ... we went to see it but arrived too late.

I am in love with blue at the moment ... for a long time I have loved mustard/yellow ... or marigold as it is called in India. I particularly like deep midnight blue ... I saw this painting in the art gallery and loved it. I love the colour and the illusion that there is someone inside the hood going somewhere or doing something with their life. I became very curious about the person inside the hood.

They had two really good visiting exhibitions ... Jean Paul Gautier was the first one I saw ... I loved it. I loved the fabrics ... the design... the use of colour and space. The fabrics he uses are amazing ... this one is cotton and lace, a crochet kind of style. All his pieces are hand made ... both the fabric and the garment. I love how he uses fashion and design as an artistic statement ... challenging the boundaries of what is masculine and feminine fashion. I have never really looked at his fashion design before ... I love his perfume though ... I think it smells divine!

This piece is all hand knitted ... cable and embroidery ... a lot of hours of knitting here. I love knitting cable ... I am knitting myself a cable blanket (throw) at the moment, I am pretty confident that it would not end up in a Jean Paul Gautier exhibition though.

This is my favourite ... leather and lace ... I think she looks beautiful! So graceful and feminine against the white stretched fabric back drop. He is quite a revolutionary in the fashion world. Quite the contrast to the knitted dress in the previous photo, which seems quite heavy in appearance. I came back to this woman a lot of times as I walked round the exhibition ... I loved the space and simplicity of her.

I had the best time ever at this exhibition ... I waited a long time for the person in the photo to move on and they wouldn't so I took my photo with them in it. This is set in the late 60s early 70's ... civil rights movement, feminism, man walking on the moon, the gay movement, Martin Luther King, assassination of President John F. Kennedy and WOODSTOCK! I loved the music that went along with the exhibition ... Janis Joplin, Jefferson Airplane, Crosby, Stills, Nash and Young and so on. It was such a trip down memory lane ... a good trip.

I think Emma Peel and the Avengers ... Twiggy, the model ...  yep these were the rage at one time.

I had a psychodelic pink dress that I wore as a teenager ... fell into small pleats from the neck ... I loved it! I love this dress ... the beads ... the colour ... the fabric. The exhibition covered six revolutions ... how we look, how we think, how we change society, how we buy, how we live and how we know. I am not sure that much has changed since then ... these are still issues today in some way or other. I thought there was a lot in common with Jean Paul Gautier and Revolution ... both exhibitions were about challenging the status quo ... breaking boundaries ... creating something new.

We came across this Lotus McClaren on the way home from our night walk round the city ... Pete would really like one of these ... maybe he might trade in his Lotus for one. Suits him don't you think.

This is a photo of Pete's mother Margaret Cammock on the left and Helen Thompson on the right. Margaret and Helen were BFFs for many, many years. Helen Thompson joined the church in 1965 ... after joining she wrote to Marg sharing her conversion and a year later Marg, Rob, Pete and later Cathy Cammock joined the church. These two women have been very influential in my life. Ever since I have known Pete I have known Helen and her family ... Helen died a week ago. We will miss her presence. We will remember her as a very gracious, kind, loving, generous hearted woman who has been loved by many in her family and her community. I learnt a lot from Marg and Helen just by observing them.

Lars turned 8 just before we left for Canada ... he is our eldest grandson and only grandson. We bought him a fishing rod which he is taking on our road trip ... he is super excited by it.

Lars wanted a beach party ... we drove two hours to get here ... the Atlantic Ocean ... it is FREEZING! I went in up to my knees and tried to go in deeper but it was way too cold for me ... my feet were going numb as I came out. A very different experience to the Mediterranean and definitely a lot colder than the Pacific. Mike & Chris' friend Jason wanted to buy a unicorn to take to the beach for the children to enjoy ... and they did! Lars and his friends spent hours in the Atlantic on this Unicorn ... Lars would come running back in every so often, slightly blue round the mouth from the cold water ... stock himself up with food and then go back out again. I don't know how they did it. They had a blast!!

Roxcy has set up her sleeping spot in our RV ... Thunder Birds are Go! We are spending 4 weeks on the road with Lars and Roxcy ...