So, it’s been a week since you all have heard about Montreal. I’m sure you’re totally excited for more of the story, right? Of course you are.
So, Part Five!… in which the boys discover poutine, Shawn finally showers, and the final member of our party arrives.
So we got back to the hotel and Brent and Ryan are just getting up.
Shawn lay down. “Should I shower? I’m hungry.”
“You should probably shower eventually,” I told him. “I guess I’m kind of hungry too though.”
We asked how Ryan’s nap was and it was apparently awesome, but Ryan was also hungry. So the three of us went down to the food court. There may have been free wi-fi down there. Shawn thought about bringing down his computer because he’d gotten an email on his blackberry yesterday from one of his professors that the day of the week his class was meeting had changed from Wednesday night to Monday night. Shawn ultimately ended up choosing not to bring his computer down with him.
We wandered around the food court. We thought about maybe getting A&W burgers, then we saw a breakfast place, but I don’t think it was Chez Cora.
“Fuck cafes, we’re eating breakfast right here in our hotel tomorrow.” Shawn was still bitter about our walk that morning, I think, when he had to keep pointing out every breakfast place we passed because he was starving. (Actually, he kind of sounded like me and my bad habit of reading random signs on the road, which is what led to the beaver on a stick incident on the way up.)
We kept wandering around the food court until we found Jiggs’ fritterie…
“What’s a fritterie?” the two boys asked.
“Jiggs’ fry place.” I started laughing. I think it’s because “fritterie” doesn’t really translate well. How awkward does “fry place” sound as a restaurant name? I mean, it’s awkwardly awesome… But still awkward.
So we studied the menu and there was something that looked like greasy french fries called “poutine” which sounded awesome, so we decided to try it. Ryan got it with sausage (look, I remembered what Ryan ate finally, yay for Ryan), Shawn got it with beef, and I just got the fries only version (but Shawn let me try some of his beef poutine).
Poutine was pretty darn delicious. It reminded me of nachos, but they were french fries… It was crazy. The boys compared it to a garbage plate, which is an upstate New York thing I guess? Apparently they toss mashed up hot dogs on mashed up fries and onions and toppings and stuff. I don’t really know. I don’t like hot dogs, so that sounds kind of disturbing to me. But if there was a non hot dog version that tasted like poutine, I guess that would be alright.
Shawn decided that the poutine pretty much cured his hangover and he was so glad that we weren’t Montrealians, because he was fairly certain he would weigh three hundred pounds if he could eat poutine all the time. Ryan agreed. (Thirty hours since Shawn has showered).
After that, we went back to the hotel room and Shawn and I took a nap. We woke up around five twenty or so and Shawn asked when we were heading to dinner. He finally decided that thirty-one hours later it was finally time to shower.
While Shawn was showering, Anthony was getting in touch with Brent. He had apparently left early that morning, but had gotten held up at the border. I didn’t get to hear the full story then, but it sounded awesomely hilarious (side note, it was awesomely hilarious). The sad part was, unfortunately, that it seemed that because of his hold up that Anthony would not be able to make it to the city in time to join us for dinner.
So as soon as Shawn finished showering and getting dressed again (in the same clothes he wore all day while he was unshowered….), we all headed out to a restaurant we found that morning…
The Keg.
That’s right, we totally had a steak dinner in Montreal. We got to sit near a window again. I like to think it’s because we’re a good-looking group. If you sit pretty people near the windows, more people will want to come in and eat or something? That sounds so narcissistic! I meant that whole display of narcissism in the nicest way possible!
Everyone else had a beer, but I picked out a nice glass of wine for my steak, although it was white, but I just really felt like some white wine.
All the guys order their steaks in Keg size which are larger and thicker. Blair ordered a chicago style well done (charred on the outside and well done in the middle) surf and turf and all the guys were upset about it. They said it was steak blasphemy. None of them could understand why she would want a charred steak. Then they talked about her haven eaten dogs again.
You know, we seemed to have a few main topics of conversation throughout this trip, looking back on it:
1. Blair has eaten dogs.
2. Me saying “Shawn that’s not…” and explaining things while Shawn is being obstinate.
3. Seth and “A-mur-i-kan”
4. Poutine
5. The weird noises Blair and I made.
Topics six to ten coming in the next installment!
Anyway, so we all order our steaks, I had a teriyaki style steak and a baked potato with garlic butter and it was the most amazing baked potato and steak ever. I need to figure out how to make garlic butter because it was so delicious. Blair asked for veggies of some sort instead of the baked potato, and everyone else had the bake potato because of the amazing sounding garlic butter. I don’t remember what kind of steaks the guys got (but I think Shawn had a teriyaki steak too), but like I said before, they were the bigger and thicker cuts.
The Keg size steaks all also came with side Caesar salads, which were much larger than a side salad. Shawn ended up sharing his salad with me.
Blair ended up not liking her steak. She said it wasn’t cooked enough. The boys all blasphemed her again because it was charred on the outside.
I’m pretty sure Ryan even asked her “How could it be more cooked? Do you want it charred all the way through?”
The boys laughed, but Blair pretty much decided that was an awesome idea. The boys proceeded to be dumbfounded.
Brent had a hard time finishing his steak. He said it was amazing, but he was feeling so full.
“Would you like me to finish your steak?” Shawn asked him patronizingly.
At the end of dinner, we were waiting on Brent to finish his beer.
“Would you like me to finish your beer?” Shawn asked in the same patronizing tone.
Shawn chugged the rest of Brent’s beer. “I’m happy to finish your beer and steak… But you should really be man enough to finish them yourself.” And Shawn gave Brent the shit-eating grin. The other guys laughed and chided Brent, but it wasn’t as much as they chided Seth over his pint the day before. Although I think a girl finishing her steak before a man is more “shit-giving” worthy than a girl finishing a pint before a man, but I don’t really know. Maybe that beer was that important.
After dinner we wandered around Old Montreal a bit more, since Ryan and Brent hadn’t been with us earlier, and found a science museum. The boys all commented on the giant poster of a naked man and woman. Seth wanted to look around. Seth was shot down because museums cost money. Isn’t this a lovely pattern?
We found another SAQ and I bought more Absolut. Shawn offered to get it, but I was insistent about wanting to contribute to the alcohol fund. He protested a bit, but finally agreed as long as he or one of the other boys paid for my drinks while we were out (you would think that meant that night only, but his look definitely implied the rest of the weekend). The boys weren’t really feeling the hard liquor today and the only thing we were out of was the vodka anyway. We still had Brent’s maple whiskey and the Beefeater (gross). The boys tried to figure out where we could get some beer and one of the SAQ employees suggested a corner store down the street.
We then walked down the street and found the corner store. We replenished our Orangina and Pepsi and the boys were looking for beer in the coolers, but wanted more than a can or two. Then they found the back refrigerator full of cases of beer. I think that more than anything else, that finding the walk-in refrigerator made their night.
So we start walking back to the hotel, Shawn offered to carry the alcohol for me in the Orangina/Pepsi bag while Ryan was carrying a thirty rack of Blue. Shawn offered me his hand while we were walking.
At one point the bag broke and the Pepsi fell out, but not the glass bottle vodka, thank goodness. At that point, Shawn had to carry the bag in his arms (mostly to protect the vodka from falling), so he offered me his elbow instead. He complained about his ears being cold and I offered my hand as ear muffs, but he shrugged it off.
Right when we got back to the hotel was when Anthony finally arrived, so it was perfect timing. We took the alcohol back to the red card room.
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