What I did on my summer vacation....

For whatever reason, I have various loops of Cheech & Chong running through my head as of late, hence the titele of this post. Sargent Stadenko, Sister Mary Elephant, Dave, the whole thing. Anyway, on to the adventure.

I should offer at the outset that by the end of this post I very well may sound like the poster child for the city of Montréal and potentially Québec to boot. Regardless, both are beautiful and if you are ever afforded the opportunity to visit, do not hesitate.

Various observations:

Coldplay at the Bell Centre. Admittedly a guilty pleasure for me, but the F.A. is an absolute freak for them. They put on one hell of a show and good luck trying to see them. Everything is sold out. Could have done without the 'Fair Trade' propaganda at the merch tables, especially in light of the expense I incurred seeing them. $135-US for 2 tickets, and $40-CA for a damn T-shirt. Fair what? Also, the visit to the Bell Centre was my first to any hockey arena. Quite comfortable and pretty much good seats everywhere.

SAQ Signature - Montréal. Seriously one of the most amazing shops I have ever been to. Visually, the space is stunning. Spirits on street level (Armangnacs back to 1929, Ports back to the easrly 1800's) and wine downstairs. A couple of curious things of note.

1. This was the only store in both Montréal and Québec City that had 'Parker Points'. There may have been others but I didn't see them if there were. More importantly, there were points on only a few wines. When I asked the clerk why, he laughed and said 'They sell the wine.' But out of the 400-500 labels in the store, there were ratings on maybe 30 of them. Why don't the Canadians feel the need to have their selections deemed worthy of drinking? In all honesty, my impression of this store and evry other one was that the mere presence of the wine in house was all the validation needed. To say it another way, if it wasn't good, it wouldn't be there in the first place. This is a feeling that I try to present in my store although I'm not so sure how effective it is.

2. Back labels. Or more importantly, a lack thereof. A great deal of wines that I picked up had none of the obligatory 'goes great with chicken, blah, blah, blah'. Is one to assume that Canadians are smarter about wine than their American counterparts? Hmmm.

3. When looking around at various vintages available, almost without exception, they were from 2000 and 2001, especially when it came to Burgundy. I inquired about the 2002's (most of which have come and gone here in the States) when we were in Québec City, and the clerk sort of giggled and then said 'No, they are still in France. We hold them there. They may get here towrads the end of 2006.' Holy Shit. What a novel concept. A retailer acutally going through the effort to hold back the wines, giving them more bottle age and therefore making them a bit more agreeable earlier in life.

One day was spent in the Laurentians. Absolutely stunning.

The food was stellar. Eveything from fast food to shopping at the IGA. Unfortunately, time precluded me from visiting fellow blogger The Caveman's various restaurants. I promise that will be different on the next trip. I hope to see the Habs (that's the Canadiens for non-Québecers) play a match this season.