Up the River

June 18-20

After a brief stop at the post office, which we found Sunday night while we were looking for Le Maison du Magret, we climbed the hill to the cathedral, La Basilique Notre Dame de Montreal.

This is a very pretty place with a long history, going back almost to the start of the city in 1642. The cathedral is of course much newer, and dates to the late 19th century.

We had a brief tour, but most of it I couldn’t hear because of background noise and my bad ears. It was mostly about the history of construction. I had hoped instead to get information about the windows and some of the other furnishings.

When we came out of the church, I told Joanna that I remembered a place where we ate dinner last time in town. We were on the sidewalk when a cloudburst hit. Along with everybody else, we ran inside carrying drinks and dinners. It was a lot of fun.

I thought it was right around the corner from the cathedral.

Joanna’s memory proved better. We went down a couple of blocks more toward the old town to St. Paul St. East and turned left. A few blocks away it turns into a walking street.

It’s where Joanna saw the three bronze ladies gossiping.

The place I remembered is called the Keg, but it was still closed when we got there. It doesn’t open till 3.

There’s no shortage of other bars to try, so we went to the Vieux-Port Steakhouse. We shared a caprese salad with surprisingly full-flavored tomatoes. Fresh tomatoes this far north are usually hothouse-grown or shipped in. In either case, they usually lose flavor. But these were good.

They were not covered with fresh basil but with something else, two small oblong leaves on a red stem. 

We also had escargot. These snails were cooked in a garlic sauce and then baked under a covering of cheese. It still holds true: Never meet a snail I didn’t like.

A short distance from there Rue St. Paul comes to Place Jacques Cartier, which has a park topped by a column celebrating Lord Nelson. It was put up in 1809, four years after he was killed at the Battle of Trafalgar. This neighborhood is where city hall and the courthouses are.

The Place is lined with shops and restaurants. We stopped in at Galerie le Chariot, which specializes in Inuit art. 

Most of the works on display are carvings of jade-like stone ranging from green to black. The pieces were variations, I guess, on traditional motifs: seals, owls, and polar bears, oh my. There was one carving of a shaman who was also a hunter, and others of ordinary men and women. 

The forms were generally rounded giving the figures a sense of plumpness, or of insulation from the cold. The store also had narwhal tusks, in case you should need one, with certificates testifying to responsible harvesting.

Dinner was at a Cantonese restaurant, Keung Kee, on the second floor of a building around the corner from the hotel. We didn’t want to travel far because the sky was threatening rain.

We had ordered and were waiting for the food to come when a squall started to blow rain around in sheets. This time we were under a roof and behind a window.

Had we tried to walk to Old Town we would have been caught right in it, and soaked through. It would have been an uncomfortably damp meal indeed at La Gargote or the Keg.

So here we were, high, dry, and feeling lucky, enjoying a hot pot with fish and tofu and Cantonese chow mein.

The chow mein nest of fried noodles was covered by a mix of random vegetables, meat, and shrimp. It had a clear sauce that looked like something you buy in the supermarket frozen meal section. 

But appearances deceive. It didn’t look promising but it delivered nonetheless, a rich and savory flavor that sank right into the noodles.  

The pieces of fish in the hot pot required some care because they were loaded with bones of various sizes. But the meat was tasty. The tofu was fried before it went into the pot, and that’s perfect with fish. 

Tuesday morning we set out for Trois Rivieres, about half-way between Montreal and Quebec City. We have a week and a half before we are expected in Coventry, so we don’t have to push it.

We were following Google directions and so got lost in the eastern outskirts of Montreal. We were trying to reach Autoroute 40 and followed directions successfully till we were on one of Montreal’s several roads named Notre Dame.

There was a signpost up ahead. Not the Twilight Zone, but a red, white, and blue sign telling us to go left for highway 40. Also the same way to Autoroute 25 north and south.

OK. I took the sign at its word.

We drove perhaps a kilometer and saw signs clearly directing us to the right for 25 south and left for 25 north. Nothing about 40, though, so I took the third option, which deposited us on a potholed local street.

After a little bit of that, I turned left and left again to backtrack. This was a bigger street, complete with gas stations, so we stopped at one to fill the tank and ask directions.

The man behind the counter said all I had to do was continue a short way until I came to the intersection with a Shell station. I was to make a right turn there. I would see signs pointing the way.

The intersection did have a sign, but it was for 25 north, not 40. I went that way and, sure enough, 25 north led to 40 east.

The country in southern Quebec is largely a plain, much like the shore area and the Pine Barrens in New Jersey.

You can see for miles and the sky is huge. In some places forest has grown back.

You see a few small towns and maybe there are bigger ones out of sight. There are also huge farms lining the road. 

Highway 40 took us almost to the hotel, which is a few hundred yards—oops!—meters from the St. Lawrence River.

The town gets its name because two large islands divide the St. Maurice River into three streams that join the St. Lawrence.

We arrived at the Hotel Gouverneur a little before two. Our room wasn’t ready, so we parked in a municipal lot across the street, next to the local museum. 

On the way to the lot, we passed the museum’s backyard, which was filled with small log cabins and other historical replicas. It looked entertaining enough that we tried to get in.

People were working there, setting up for an event that evening, and the museum was closed.

We saw the spire of the cathedral a block or so away, and made for it. It wasn’t by any means a steeple-chase, but we found our way there.

The Cathedral of the Assumption in Trois Rivieres is neo-Gothic, like Notre Dame in Montreal, but smaller.

The feature that I found most interesting is that the windows are painted glass with very fine detail. They were the work of an Italian-born Canadian named Guido Nicheri. Most of them are dedicated to various attributes of the Virgin Mary: Mother of the Savior, Ivory Tower, Consolatrix of the Afflicted, Queen of Heaven, Mystic Rose, and many others.

The church was dedicated in 1858, 27 years before Nicheri was born, so he windows must have been a later addition.

There’s a social program that I found touching. The Chapel of the Sacred Heart, which is attached to the cathedral, has been reduced by half to make room for a gathering spot open to anyone who wants to drop in for coffee and a little company.

We checked back at the Gouverneur and still no room at the inn. Nominal check-in time is 1600 hours, 4 p.m.

But that’s all right. I had been to church, so it was time for a drink.

Anywhere else in the French-speaking world, there is a bar next to a church and it’s usually named for the same saint. Not here, though. 

So I asked the lady at the hotel desk if there was a bar nearby. She laughed. There are plenty.

We were to follow the street outside, Rue Hart, three blocks to the other end and turn right or left. My kind of directions: fail-proof.

The street we wanted is called Des Forges. Both directions, both sides of the street, steakhouses, bars, coffee shops, grills, and even a vegan joint that sells craft beer.

We stopped in at Le Pot for a plate of cheese and cold cuts and a couple of glasses of Rioja. 

The plate had salami, goat cheese, duck sausage made in-house, blue cheese, and I forget what all. Maybe I was very hungry, or everything really was superior. Even the olives tasted a cut above.

We finally got room keys, tucked the car into the hotel garage, and took a rest.

It was after seven that we went out again, this time to find the river. 

The town sits on a bluff overlooking the St. Lawrence. There are several levels of a promenade with bars and benches. 

One of the unexpected things about Trois Rivieres is a program that posts bits quotations of poetry on plaques through the town—on shop fronts, for instance, and on the wall of the stairwell of the promenade, too.

Many are French, but perhaps half or more are poets composing in other languages, spoken on continents and islands around the world.

The port is still very active. A freighter of Liberian registry was moored at one of the docks.

The Laviolette bridge is a short distance downriver. It is the only bridge across the St. Lawrence on the stretch between Montreal and Quebec.

The photo of the day is Joanna on the promenade.

We explored the area and then walked up Des Forges to a place called simply Le Grill or something like that.

After the big tapas plate at Le Pot, we weren’t ready for a dinner. Instead, we shared an appetizer of coquilles St. Jacques. This is a traditional French pie usually made, in the States anyway, with scallops in a creamy wine sauce topped with a crust of mashed potatoes. 

I love it and have not seen it on a menu for at least 20 years. This version had pollock and shrimp besides the scallops and was served with baked cheese on top. It may have been the same kind of cheese that was on the escargot. Don’t know, but it was damned good.

I tried three different wines—A California Syrah called Seaside, Chateau l’Escart Bordeaux Superieur, and a Shiraz-Cabernet Sauvignon blend from Jacob’s Creek in Australia.

Seaside was the cheapest of the lot, but held up well against the others. 

The Bordeaux was also very good, but wasn’t best I’ve had. I look for a smoky edge in a Bordeaux that wasn’t there.

The Shiraz kept the Cab Sauvignon from taking over the Jacob’s Creek wine, and I liked that.

We woke up Wednesday to the sound of car horns and people chanting. About two dozen people had gathered across the street in front of the museum.

Many were carrying banners for the Syndicat des Metallos. That, I discovered later, is the French name for the Quebec branch of the United Steel Workers.

When we went out later, we talked to their leader, who said they worked for an aluminum company in the area and had been locked out for some time. Non-union workers had been hired by the company to do a job at the museum. They were there to protest it.

We took breakfast at a luncheonette called Binerie Chik, across from the cathedral.

The place is a shrine to Marilyn Monroe, with nods to Elvis Presley, James Dean, Fonzi, and Rita Hayworth. It has an actual juke box that was playing 45s.

I had fun with a yogurt parfait, fresh fruit, a little bread, and a bottomless cup of coffee.

Joanna had fresh fruit and, for the first time in more than a year, crepes. The last time she had them was in Paris.

It’s getting near dinner time and I am a mite peckish.

The strongest thing to drink I’ve had all day is coffee and that was hours ago.

Good night, all. The beer-drinking is about to commence.

Harry