Travel Takeaways from Montreal

Old Montreal

Recently I wrote about 7 Things About Travel That Stress Me Out.  Little did I know how prescient that post would be for my trip to Montreal that weekend, where I experienced numbers 4, 5 and 6 from my list of 7 stressers.  I also realized I missed one:  When the unexpected derails your best-laid plans. When travel throws you a curve ball, the most important thing to remember is: Don’t panic.  The second most important thing is to (try to) learn from your experiences.  Here’s what I took away from my weekend in Montreal:

Lesson #1:  Always assume the drive will take longer than you think.

I kind of knew this one already, but had never experienced it on this particular drive. Normally, it takes 2 hours to drive from Burlington to Montreal.  Between a 30 minute wait at the border and a 30 minute delay due to an accident on the highway going into Montreal, my drive took three hours.  Had I been on a schedule, I’d have missed it by a mile.  Thank God I stopped to pee halfway there.

Lesson #2: Always bring your own toilet paper into public restrooms.

Coming home from Montreal, I urgently had to stop for a potty break at Martin’s Store and Mobil Station in Highgate Center (off exit 22, on the Vermont side of the Canadian border).  The unthinkable happened:  The bathroom was out of toilet paper. And me without any on me. Rookie mistake!

Lesson #3:  Always call a day or two ahead to confirm your lodging arrangements.

Via email exchange a week before my trip, I had arranged to stay with my friends Jeana and Marc, who live in Verdun.  When I arrived at their house, guess who wasn’t home?  Turns out Jeana thought I was coming the following weekend. . .and as it turned out, they were out of town until Sunday.  She offered to have a friend meet me with a key to their house, but I decided to just get a hotel room Downtown instead.  No harm, no foul.

This incident could have been avoided had I called a day or two in advance of my trip (the way I always do when I’m staying at a hotel) to confirm my arrival time. We would have realized the date conflict and I could have changed my plans to come up the following weekend. Lesson learned.

Lesson #4: Don’t panic, just fix the problem.

I had my credit card on me, so getting a hotel room wasn’t anything to panic about.  When I realized Jeana and Marc weren’t home, I’d gone to the only other Montreal location I had programmed into my GPS, the Hyatt Regency (where I stayed last year).  I had gone downstairs there to the Underground mall to use the bathroom and get some food.  After that, I went upstairs to see if I could get a room.  At first, the clerk told me they were full because of Pride Weekend. But when she found out there was just one of me, she found me a room. (Sometimes, it pays to travel solo!) Once I had moved my car to the parking garage and settled into my room, it was just like any other weekend away in Montreal.  Had I panicked about the last-minute change of plans, I’d have stressed myself out for no reason.

Lesson #5: Make sure you always have plenty of cash on you.

I brought $40 Canadian with me on my trip.  I figured that would be plenty if I paid with my credit card for most of my needs.  Trouble is, I kept paying with cash. I spent Saturday afternoon and evening hanging around Montreal with bloggers Jeannie Mark of Nomadic Chick and Lauren McLeod of Globetrooper and two of their friends, Felipe and Daniel. We all wound up at a microbrewery that night, where I discovered that I should have withdrawn some more cash from an ATM earlier in the day.  After buying lunch, dinner, a mid-afternoon drink and cookie, and a one-way metro ticket, I had maybe $10 cash left on me and the beers here weren’t cheap.  I asked if they took credit cards, and the waitress said only if I had a $25 tab. No way was I drinking $25 worth of beer and then trying to find my way back to the hotel.  It was their loss more than mine, as I was perfectly content to sit and sip tap water; I was there for the company, not the beer. Still, lesson learned. More cash, just in case.

Lesson #6:  Bringing a flashlight only works if you have it on you at all times.

#6 on this list references #6 on my list of stressers (I’m nightblind)  By midnight, I had a hard time keeping my eyes open.  The metro shuts down around 1am, and I had a sneaking suspicion my young friends were not going to be going home any time soon. So I got directions from Lauren to the nearest Metro station and said my goodnights and headed out. Almost immediately, I cursed myself for not remembering to transfer my pocket flashlight from my big knapsack to my mini-backpack. The walk was very dark in places, including past a deserted park.  But there really wasn’t anything to do except keep going.  I walked with purpose, as if I knew where I was going, and made it to the Laurier Station just fine. Still, that flashlight would have made it a lot easier.

Lesson #7:  When buying a metro ticket, buy the return ticket as well.

When I bought my first metro ticket earlier that evening, I just bought a one-way ticket, assuming I could buy another one-way ticket home later on.  Unfortunately, there was no attendant at the Laurier station when I arrived, just a ticket machine.  I tried swiping my credit card to pay for a ticket, but the machine wouldn’t take it.  Thankfully, I had just the right amount of coins in my pocket from the change from my dinner tab to purchase one one-way ticket, but if I hadn’t, I really have no idea what I would have done, except walk back to the bar in the dark and hope my friends were still there.  I should have just bought both tickets at the same time earlier, or bought a day pass.

Lesson #8: Avoid parade weekends at all costs.

I like going to Montreal on the weekends, because traffic is generally much lighter than during the work week.  Not this weekend. This weekend the city was hosting its very popular Pride Parade, which brings a lot of people into town. I should have done my research ahead of time and gone a different weekend.

When I checked into my hotel, they let me know that Rene Levesque (the only exit route from the hotel for anyone driving) would be blocked off on Sunday from 1-3pm.  I checked out of the hotel early on Sunday to move my car south of the parade route, finding a spot on St. Antoine, just off University, my escape route from the city.  I thought I dodged a bullet.

But traffic got progressively worse. It wasn’t just Rene Levesque that was blocked off.  Many of the side streets leading down the hill from St. Catherine Street were also blocked off, causing traffic on the remaining open streets to be jam-packed with vehicles. After lunch with Marc and Jeana (who were back in town by now), we realized I was 10 minutes over the expiration for my parking ticket. Had we been able to find a pay meter that covered the same area, I could have added extra money, but we couldn’t get near one.  Traffic was very heavy and being detoured away from the parade route.

Jeana and I finally got out of the car and crossed the parade on foot, leaving Marc to struggle with the traffic.  We were in luck.  With all the parade craziness, the meter maid hadn’t been to my car yet and I didn’t get a ticket. However, it was bumper-to-bumper traffic on the street where I’d parked. I couldn’t turn around to take my planned route out of town. (Here’s where #5 from my list of stressers comes in.) So Jeana jumped in the car and rode with me for several blocks, long enough to point me toward an alternate route out of town.  (Good thing she did.  At this point, my GPS was useless.  As it did last year, it kept telling me to turn around and go back into Montreal. I kept telling it to shut the hell up.)

In between all this craziness, I had a fabulous weekend with old friends and new ones, wandering around Old Montreal, taking pictures, and enjoying some great meals.  Was it more stressful than a weekend at home?  Sure.  Was it a lot more fun than a weekend at home?  You bet!  The most important lesson I learned this weekend was that yes, travel can be stressful when things don’t go as planned.  But as long as you roll with the punches, it’s still totally worth it.

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