Montreal Blogging!
By - Since I’m wont to complain about travel misadventures, I should note that I was able to get a room in an elegant (if aging) 4-star downtown hotel for a ridiculously cheap rate (about the same price I paid for an awful hotel in a worse area last year), and the clerk generously gave me a suite. And Delta, unlike the fine folks at Air Canada, not only didn’t cancel the flight randomly but it even left on time.
- The availability of good, cheap hotel rooms at this time of year is incomprehensible, however. I’m amazed by how many long-time northeasterners have never visited the city. Some people pondering a visit to Canada seem to be persuaded by the profoundly embarrassing pretensions of some Torontonians that their city (which I’m sure is a nice place to raise a family and all) in some way resembles New York. A lobotomized, sterilized Chicago, maybe. Don’t be fooled: if you want to see urban Canada, Montreal is what you want. (If a smaller, romantic-getaway type place is more what you’re looking for, Quebec City is nice.)
- My hotel offered free copies of The National Post, which is always good for a laugh. The apparent idea, I guess, is to be the Wall Street Journal to the Globe and Mail‘s New York Times. The problem is that while the WSJ’s news coverage is better, story-for-story, than the Times, the National Post is–with the exception of some third-rate attempts to imitate the WSJ’s quirky lifestyle stories–written entirely like the WSJ’s op-ed page. Today’s paper contains “news” stories saying that the Canadian’s Medical Association’s support for private add-ons to the single-payer system is a “historical development” (wow–doctors wanting to be able to sell more services for more money–what are the odds?) and that a right-wing think tank wants to cut taxes. Wall Street Journal, hell-I’m not sure the Post rises to the level of the Moonie Times.
- I am appalled that somebody has ripped off McGill’s most gifted alumnus. An even worse betrayal than his fictional brother.
- Before I head to get my new visa, I would like to mention what a bang-up job Al Gonzales has been doing lately…