{"id":35659,"date":"2017-04-09T19:13:35","date_gmt":"2017-04-09T23:13:35","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.raecrothers.ca\/blog\/?p=35659"},"modified":"2017-04-09T19:13:35","modified_gmt":"2017-04-09T23:13:35","slug":"lunch-at-cafe-stash-and-a-play-at-the-centaur-theatre","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.raecrothers.ca\/blog\/lunch-at-cafe-stash-and-a-play-at-the-centaur-theatre\/","title":{"rendered":"Lunch at Caf\u00e9 Stash and a Play at the Centaur Theatre"},"content":{"rendered":"

Thank you to everyone who checked in to ask if I’m still alive. Work has been a tad… busy. But I decided to take today off so as to accept my cousin Lee’s invitation to join her for a play this afternoon. She’s the cousin who visited me in Maz my first winter there. She has\u00a0a season’s pass to the Centaur Theatre<\/a> and with that, she gets one complimentary guest pass for any show. Aren’t I lucky that she invited me?! The Centaur Theatre is an icon on English Montreal and the premiere English theatre in the province. I hadn’t been in about 20 years, but used to go often when I lived in the area.<\/p>\n

To my surprise, there are hourly buses to Montreal from Chambly on Sundays. I was \u00a0meeting Lee and a friend at noon for lunch and had a choice to leave at 10:05 and arrive around 10:40 or leave at 11:05 and arrive around 11:40. I picked the first option so I’d have a leisurely stroll from the bus station to the restaurant (about 20 minutes) and then be able to walk around the neighbourhood.<\/p>\n

On the way, I saw that construction is underway for the replacement to the Champlain Bridge. I cannot believe\u00a0that the bridge is already obsolete when we were paying tolls until 1990 to use it.<\/p>\n

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Approaching the terminal at 1000 de la Gaucheti\u00e8re, the building I think looks like a carpenter’s pencil.<\/p>\n

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Doesn’t it?<\/p>\n

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From there, I headed down Mansfield towards Old Montreal, parts of which look a lot like Europe. There are buildings dating back to the late\u00a01600s!<\/p>\n

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I found my lunch destination, Caf\u00e9 Stash<\/a>, without any difficulty. I was a full hour early, so I made a note of the location and then continued down rue St. Paul Ouest to a caf\u00e9.<\/p>\n

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I settled myself with a cup of coffee and one of the trashiest newspapers in the city, Le journal de Montr\u00e9al. There was an interesting article about Cuba courting Quebecers for medical tourism. Healthcare here is so bad, with terrible wait times and many people not having a family doctor (I was something like 157,000th in line for a family doctor in Quebec the last time I tried to get one, circa 2004). I’ve been looking at basic (emergency) health coverage in\u00a0Mexico and while most Canadians find it inadequate, Quebecers generally praise it.<\/p>\n

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A bit of good news is the the drought crisis in California is officially over.<\/p>\n

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I lingered at the caf\u00e9 a full 30 minutes and then went out to enjoy the first sunshine I’ve seen in about a week.<\/p>\n

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This is the Pointe-\u00e0-Calli\u00e8re archeology museum. Last time I visited was way back in 2010<\/a>.<\/p>\n

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A very European-looking alleyway.<\/p>\n

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I loved the contrast of new and old here.<\/p>\n

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Isn’t this a pretty building?<\/p>\n

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I finally met up with Lee and her friend at Caf\u00e9 Stash. She and I were famished and went with the “table d’h\u00f4te,” which is a set menu for a fixed\u00a0price. I’m sorry I didn’t take pictures, Vicki, but here’s what I had:<\/p>\n

-barszcz (beet consomm\u00e9, which was unbelievably deliciously. Nothing at all like the thick Russian borscht I was expecting);<\/p>\n

-two kielbasa sausages (served with Dijon mustard) with boiled potatoes (that I doctored with sour cream) and sauerkraut;<\/p>\n

-coffee<\/p>\n

-apple crumble.<\/p>\n

Lee had their sampler meal with a bunch of different things and graciously passed over one of her precious pierogis for me to try. She went with the peach crumble for dessert. By the way, she considers Stash her favourite restaurant!<\/p>\n

Her friend had two cabbage rolls with beet salad (cold) and boiled potatoes and said his food was excellent.<\/p>\n

My menu was priced at $25, but, of course, you have to add 30-35% to prices when eating out in Quebec (15% for taxes and a 15% to 20% tip) so my total was $33, which I found to be really good value!<\/p>\n

We then had a very short walk to the Centaur Theatre. It really hadn’t changed since the last time I was there.<\/p>\n

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The play we saw was “Clybourne Park,” which is both a prequel and sequel to “A Raisin in the Sun.” It is a tale of race relations, gentrification, and how the more time progresses, the less things change. It was funny, shocking, and sad. I’m actually surprised by how much I loved it, considering I knew nothing about the source material. Most surprising, I came out of it even more certain of the kind of expat I do not want to be when I settle in\u00a0Mexico.<\/p>\n

The play finished around 4:15, so I didn’t have time to make the 4:35 bus home. With the next one being at 5:35, I decided to accompany Lee and her friend to a nearby Tim Horton’s by a m\u00e9tro.<\/p>\n

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There, I picked up a wonderful Earl Grey tea to go since Lee and her friend decided to walk with me to Place Bonaventure since her friend was catching a bus from there as well and Lee could take the m\u00e9tro. By the time we arrived and said our goodbyes, I only had about 20 minutes left to wait for the bus and there was free wifi.<\/p>\n

I took the above photos with the camera on my new-to-me iPhone 6, which I was able to get since I got a free flight home to SK with my travel reward points and therefore had some space in my budget. I cannot believe how much of an upgrade this already obsolete phone is! I was out all day with it and didn’t even lose 50% of my battery capacity. It is very responsive and has some nice features like iTouch (signing in with just a fingerprint), a bigger screen than my 5C, and Apple Pay. I’m super happy with it and glad that I’ll have a reliable phone for my upcoming insane journey across two of the biggest countries in the world.<\/p>\n

So it was a great day in downtown Montreal. My time here is winding down, but I have a full week left. The way things have been going, it’s going to be pretty much nose to the grindstone the rest of my time here!<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Thank you to everyone who checked in to ask if I’m still alive. Work has been a tad… busy. But I decided to take today off so as to accept my cousin Lee’s invitation to join her for a play this afternoon. She’s the cousin who visited me in Maz my first winter there. She […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[632,810,719,635,718,3,8],"tags":[796,45,792,794,779],"class_list":["post-35659","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-canada","category-chambly","category-montreal","category-north-america","category-quebec","category-travel","category-work","tag-city-tours","tag-moving-to-mexico","tag-religious-sitescemeteries","tag-restaurants","tag-theatres"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.raecrothers.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/35659","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.raecrothers.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.raecrothers.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.raecrothers.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.raecrothers.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=35659"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"http:\/\/www.raecrothers.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/35659\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":35692,"href":"http:\/\/www.raecrothers.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/35659\/revisions\/35692"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.raecrothers.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=35659"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.raecrothers.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=35659"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.raecrothers.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=35659"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}