Canada – Où il est toujours hiver: Introduction

Index:
Introduction
Delta T4 Expansion Opening
The Wet, The Windy, The W
Départ

Introduction
Ah, Montreal…all of the benefits of France with the pleasure of getting there in a Delta Connection regional jet.  Or something like that.

Last year when I went to Montreal on a whim for New Year’s Eve 2012, I made the decision after exploring the city bundled up in a parka that I would come back in the Spring or Summer and get to enjoy the city in more comfortable weather and enjoy another side of it.  This time I planned a few weeks out before Memorial Day, booking an award ticket on Delta that would also allow me to connect through Delta’s JFK hub on the day of the opening of the new Terminal 4 Expansion project (which also signaled the end of operations out of the historic Terminal 3 Worldport, formerly occupied by Pan American and known for it’s flying saucer design) and the new flagship Delta Sky Club.  It also allowed for another attempt at a 767-300ER with the lie-flat Business Elite seats on a domestic leg, so with those considerations, I secured my ticket and started planning out the details.

I had these grand plans of walking around Vieux-Montréal, sitting at a sidewalk café, exploring several of the markets, enjoying a bit of nature in the Parc du Mont-Royal and exploring some of the other neighborhoods and surrounding areas.  Unfortunately, the weather did not want to cooperate one bit; for starters it was cold.  I mean like 45F (or 7C for those in Canada or pretty much everywhere else in the world) cold; all the Montrealers were dressed in parkas and scarves and were bundeled up as if it was still Winter.  Oh, and I only brought my zip-up hoodie as a last-minute addition to my bag, so I probably lucked out by doing that (now if I had only taken a rain jacket…).

It wasn’t just the cold that got to me, but the rain.  If it was just cold, that would have been fine.  If the sun is out, you can still enjoy everything, but with rain it kills any desire to be outside and quite honestly, with me, I just get really lazy.  Obviously, not what you want when you’re wanting to run around a city; I can be lazy in my own apartment back home.

That being said, I wasn’t going to let anything get in my way of enjoying the weekend; you just have to make the best of the situation.  And it’s not like this hasn’t happened to me before on a trip.  Sometimes it just opens up new opportunities that you wouldn’t have considered before hand.  Actually, as a side note, that is why I tend to not to plan my trips out very much other than to get there and a hotel.  There’s a lot less disappointment if you don’t have crazy expectations of something.  Of course for this trip I did…

Just as with my last trip report, this one is a little bit of a different format than what I’ve historically done in the past.  It’s not the day-by-day, minute-by-minute log of my events (I’m trying to get better at this whole writing thing, you know), but should be a bit easier to read…or so I think.

While everyone waits on part two; here’s a few samplers of the weekend:

The Long Awaited Sky Deck at JFK T4

A Wet and Windy Vieux-Montréal

Bonjour

Cyclin’

 

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