10 days of royal treatment on the Emerald Princess

Let’s face it, cruising is all about being spoiled from the minute you get up in the morning, until the nightly chocolate (left on your pillow) melts in your mouth, as you are rocked to sleep by the ocean’s waves. Anyone who has the nerve to complain about ANYTHING, is simply too spoiled to begin with. Seriously. The ship is opulent, the staff, are outstandingly courteous, the entertainment first class and then let’s not forget the food.

If you are averse to being spoiled, or if you are antisocial, or if you are not in favour of eating at least three (four course) meals and at least two snacks and a few alcoholic beverages a day, this may not be for you. If you are not satisfied with organized excursions, or are not organized enough to organize your own land tours, or you are not happy just hanging out on the ship, just say no to cruising.

But if none of the above applies to you, a cruise is one heck of a way to “Escape Completely”, which is Princess Cruise’s new tag line. A brilliant piece of marketing I must say.

Before I share with you our ports of call, I thought I would post a few photos of the ship, for those of you who are new to cruising, or have not experienced one of Princess’s large ships.


The Piazza located mid ship, connects floors 5, 6 and 7 with beautiful winding staircases. From each floor you can view the entertainment below. Coffee shops and bars surround the staircases on each floor where you can relax, listen to music, sip on a cocktail, espresso or beer. Nightly, there are a variety of performances for your listening enjoyment.

If you prefer formal dining, lunch and dinner can be enjoyed in three dining rooms. Each day there are new menus featuring four course meals.

Ceiling detail in the Piazza.

Mid ship, there is a beautiful cafe featuring beautiful salads, sandwiches, quiches, and desserts.

We were entertained by a wonderful string quartet each evening in the Piazza before dinner.

Of course there is also a Casino for those who are so inclined. Just to encourage us all, we were forced to walk through the casino on our way to dinner!


We were treated to a cooking demonstration by the head chef. Felt like we were on a cooking show!

This was our third cruise. We decided when we finished our last cruise (to Alaska), that it would be our last. Now that we have finished this cruise of Maritime Canada and New England, we have again said it would be our last. But frankly it is a love/hate relationship we have with cruising. Being spoiled can be hard work. Saying no to the amazing food and beverages and desserts on board takes a lot of willpower and determination. Finding your way to the gym to try to keep all of that under control is even harder! Yet, the chance to be pampered and entertained by a ship full of men and woman at your beck and call 24 hours a day, is kind of priceless.

On the road (well really water) again ...

This creative photo courtesy of Devora!

We arrived back in North America (Hawaii to be exact) on May 6th 2012. Which means we have been BACK from the big adventure for just over five months. We have done a lot since then. A different kind of adventure, but an adventure none the less. Because I have been lax in documenting most of it here, it is kind of like it never happened. I hardly took my camera out these past months. I thought about it many times. Mostly I thought about the shots I had missed and how that meant there would not be a blog post about whatever it was I should have photographed.

I gave myself a holiday from blogging. Now I am kind of sorry, and kind of sad, but there is no use crying over spilled milk as they say. And just like spilled milk, there is no way to put it back or relive the moments that are gone.

We flew out of New York for Israel on October 29th last year. Today, October 16th almost a full year later, we are boarding a Princess Cruise ship headed for Quebec City with stops in Newport Rhode Island, Boston MA, Bar Harbor Maine, St John New Brunswick, Halifax and Sydney Nova Scotia, and Charlottetown Prince Edward Island.

We are still unplugged, homeless and really really happy. My camera is charged and my blog vacation is over.

Stay tuned for the next chapter!

Keep on Rockin' In The Free World

Some of you may have noticed a short blog post two days ago, as Marc and I made a last ditch effort to get into the lottery for free tickets to a benefit concert in Central Park, being organized through the The Global Poverty Project. We spent literally hours trying to figure out how to get the proper amount of points to be eligible for the possibility of getting on the list for the free tickets (which were actually given out weeks ago, but we thought we would give it a try).

The headliner for the concert was Neil Young, in a reunion concert with his amazing back up band Crazy Horse, which he has not played with in nine years.

Wouldn't you agree it was worth a little extra effort to see this concert under the stars in Central Park?

We managed to get our points by posting on my blog, facebook and twitter and then we waited in vein for the next 24 hours to see if miraculously we would receive the coveted email with a link to free tickets.

The gates were to open at 3:00 with the concert beginning at 5:00. Around 4:00, with no tickets we headed uptown to see if we could at least get close to the concert. We followed the crowds until we got to a place where we saw concert staff shouting at the crowd to hold up their ticket print outs.

We stood around feeling very dejected. I even rummaged in my purse to see if I had printouts of any kind in there to at least flash quickly so that we could join the line of ticket holders. But there was nothing to even create a rouse.

Then we noticed someone calling out "Any extra tickets?".  Miraculously someone stopped and gave him a printout. Not a scalper, just a young man who had an extra ticket.

Humm ...

Now it is not in our nature to do this kind of thing and I was pretty embarrassed (since the average age around us was about 21, but we were already there and could smell the concert from where we were standing (oh sweet maryjane). We had to give it a try.

Marc took one corner and I took the next and we called out "Any extra tickets?" and in about 10 minutes we had success! We proudly waved Nicolas and Andrew's tickets in the air and entered the long procession to the Great Lawn where the Black Keys were already on stage. In another 15 minutes we were there with 60,000 other fans, totally amazed that we had actually made it in to a huge concert in Central Park being broadcasted around the world.

We are in!

Black Keys

Foo Fighters

Over the two hours, listening to the Black Keys and later the Foo Fighters, we worked our way up to the fence, which was the closest we were going to get to see Neil Young with our free ticket status. If we had payed thousands of dollars towards the benefit, we could have been on stage with Neil, but then we would have had to forfeit our ear drums. So we were fine just where we were. His 70 minute set was electrifying to say the least. I could go into details, but I have found two links that I think do the concert justice. This one about the music, and this one about the background for the benefit concert.

The finale with all of the bands on stage. link

The finale with everyone onstage, was a moving rendition of "Keep on Rockin' In The Free World". It was very sobering to hear the lyrics to this song juxtaposed with clips of needy children from the developing world.

The concert ended at about 10:00 pm and we, and the 60,000 other fans filed out of Central Park and onto the subway trains dispersing us to our apartments, brownstones and homes all over the five boroughs and beyond. Within an hour we were back in our apartment on Ocean Ave as if it had not even happened.

On our way in, during, and after the concert, we both looked at each other and said "Can you believe we are in Central Park listening to Neil Young live?". Our conclusion each time was that in New York anything can happen. Luckily for us, that is where we are!

Get involved

We are trying desperately to get ticket to an amazing concert in Central Park tomorrow night. It is a free concert, but the deal is that you need to jump through three hoops in order to get the free tickets. One of the hoops is to post about the event. So here goes.

Here is a link to the concert!

Thanks for clicking!

Bob’s Place

We met Bob on December 8th 2011 in the outdoor restaurant at the famed Hotel Tibet in Katmandu. As many of you may remember, we moved to the Hotel Tibet to hook up with all of our fellow “off the beaten track” travelers that day to begin our 82 day odyssey through Nepal and India.

We had quite a few things in common with Bob from the get go. First of all, he is old, (even older than us if you can imagine!). He is Canadian. And he is a non-smoker. He also was crazy enough to be doing the full 82-day trip! But the most amazing thing about Bob, we soon learned, was that he had been travelling around the world four to six months at a time for the last six years — and after all of that, he still had a smile on his face and was looking forward to any kind of adventure Dragoman could throw his way. And I have to say with complete honesty and admiration, that the smile never left his face all through our trip in India. Even through all of the — shall we say — trying experiences that I described (in detail) on the pages of this blog, even through all of the interpersonal reality show like drama on and off the bus, Bob was always the positive glue that kept us all connected and grounded.

I often had to ask myself if he could possibly be human. No one could be that positive and so genuine.

But when you hear the stories he has to tell about his experiences around the world (and personally see them happening in real time), the connections he has made and the unique encounters he has had, you can see that he is — very human and very special. It became my goal to learn from this man. Be more open, I tell myself. Be nicer to people, if I can. Take chances. Believe in people. It is impossible to be as good as Bob, but we should all try, because life according to Bob, is so full it overflows.

As I mentioned, Bob spends part of each year traveling around the world. When he retired at 55 after a successful career as a high school teacher (literature was his subject), and after some time volunteering his services to a variety of causes, he decided to take advantage of his good health and prepared to see the world. When he is not travelling, he spends most of his time at his cottage on Lake Huron; two hours drive from Kitchener, Ontario. When we said our tearful farewells in Bagdogra, India in February 2012, we promised to rendezvous at “Bob’s Place” in July. And that is exactly what we did!

Bob picked us up at the bus station in Kitchener, and we spent the two-hour drive to the cottage catching up on the last few days of the Dragoman trip (Marc and I left the trip a few days early), Bob’s trip to Hong Kong and the rest of our adventure in Southeast Asia. Bob, of course, had been to all of the countries we visited this trip, so there were many notes to compare and experiences to share. Before we knew it we had arrived at “Bob’s Place” nestled among the trees, on the rocky beaches of Lake Huron. I had to laugh when I saw the sign. We all thought he was kidding when he called his cottage “Bob’s Place”. But there it was, the sign at the entrance to his drive way. “Bob’s Place” indeed!

True to his persona, Bob was the best host anyone could hope for. He had all of our meals planned to be as quick (but of course healthy and delicious) and easy as possible so that we were not wasting precious time on food preparation. He had tentative plans for outings each day and even a selection of movies (all based in countries we had already travelled in or want to travel to!) to keep us entertained each evening. And we of course sat outside each night to see the sun set over Lake Huron. Bob was quick to tell us that National Geographic has rated the sunsets over Lake Huron to be the most beautiful in the world and we definitely agree.

After 70 odd days together through sickness and health, endless 12 hour bus trips over harrowing roads, mystic experiences in India’s holy sites, private city tours in Calcutta, climbing mountains in Kerala, dining together on the beaches of Goa, tiger sightings in Bandhavgarh (and the harrowing jeep ride afterwards) and endless other shared experiences — Bob is family. He didn’t let us leave without a promise that we will be back next summer, this time for a longer stay, so that we can fit in an overnight canoe trip and a long hike or two. We promised him we would be back — and really, how can we stay away? Because being with Bob is, well, not only enjoyable, entertaining and educational, but always an inspiration!

War, Civilization and Food in the Canadian Capital

Cyndy picked us up at the bus station in the height of the heat wave that had been ravaging Ottawa for the last 30 days. Although there were going to be nine people for dinner at her place just a few hours later, she shuttled us off to her favourite lunch spot where we settled into catching up over bagels, salad and smoked meat (I know we are not in Montreal anymore, but we are still very close to the Province of Quebec!).

Cyndy’s partner David’s brother Eli was arriving by plane soon after we arrived, and the Berman Shabbat dinner was being hosted at their place. I was thrilled. I had met the rest of the Bermans on my last trip to Ottawa and I was eager for Marc to meet David’s parents and siblings. Friday night with the Bermans is full of tradition and a lot of fun. When we returned home and got settled, I set to work with Cyndy to set the table, figure out where to place the Sabbath candles where they would not blow out (fans and air-conditioning were blowing everywhere to cool down the house), take the sidur (prayer book) and the kipot (head coverings) out of the drawer and generally figure out the seating arrangement. I was given the honour of blessing the bread, David’s mother would bless the candles and David would lead the service.

Cyndy was practically fainting from the heat in the kitchen, but she still managed to produce an amazing meal with many ingredients fresh from her garden. Shirley and Shire (David’s parents) arrived with fresh challah and a home made triple layer chocolate cake. Eli’s birthday was a few days away and this was a great opportunity to celebrate with the whole family since he was going to be in town.

An hour later the whole family had arrived and the Berman siblings were in deep conversation and we were in similarly deep conversation with Shirley and Shire. They are cut from the same cloth as my Uncle Osher (of blessed memory) and Aunty Irene. They did a lot of the same things at the same time in different parts of Canada. When I told Shirley their names, she immediately said “Osher from Winnipeg right? Oh my god! I didn’t know him personally but I knew of him!” I felt very proud that my uncle was so famous all the way from Winnipeg to Montreal!

It was a wonderful evening from every perspective. Amazing food and great company. What a perfect first night in Ottawa.

Canadian War Museum (courtesy of the Internet)

If there was a theme for our trip to Ottawa, I think we would all agree that it was museums and food. Both aspects of our visit were very satisfying, well presented and educational. Since the weather was quite unbearable, hanging out at the air conditioned War Museum made perfect sense for our first full day of touring the city. The museum itself is huge and packed with exhibits taking you chronologically through the pre history and history of Canada through the lens of the wars fought, the reasons for them, Canada’s role in them and the fall out. Although I had some “design” issues with the overwhelming bombardment (no pun intended) of information, we were both moved by the things we saw. The main message I took away with me was that history is not something that just happens. We are all part of how it unfolds. The last exhibit is a multimedia slide show of images of the conflicts around the world today. Each museum guest is encouraged to speak out about the things they disagree or agree with. Postage paid postcards addressed to the Canada’s Prime Minister, The President of the United States and Members of Parliament line a long shelf on the way out of the exhibit hall. The museum strikes a good balance between the horrors of war, the commemoration of our war heroes and the importance of being informed about the conflicts our Country is involved in. Well done Canada!

Parliament Buildings (courtesy of the Internet)

When the Museum closed for the day, we walked from the Museum down Wellington until we hit the Parliament Buildings where we waited in the shade for Cyndy to pick us up. Once in her car, we were transported from War to haute cuisine in short order!

We did not have reservations, but Cyndy was relatively sure we would be able to get a table at the Side Door, an Asian Fusion restaurant on York street. The maitre de took his time reviewing the reservation list, to make it clear he would have preferred it if we were better organized, but did find us a quiet table in the lower level of the restaurant. The restaurant menu style is based on small sharing plates, so we all perused the menu and came up with a selection of delightful delicacies that brought us back immediately to the delicious meals we had in Vietnam and Thailand. The surprising ending to the meal was an assortment of beautifully decorated sugared donuts presented on a long narrow black slate plank that literally stretched the width of the table. There were seven donuts and three of us! Our waitress was giggling in the background as we found the strategy for dividing up the different flavoured donuts to everyone’s satisfaction.

Hogsback Falls

Our second day in Ottawa, we visited Hogsback falls with Cyndy (barely a trickle due to the drought) and then David joined us for the official tour of Sussex drive including passing the residence of our Prime Minister Steven Harper and the various embassies and memorials in the area including a visit to Rideau Falls, unfortunately less than gushing due to the heat and lack of rain.

But the main attraction was the Zen Kitchen, a vegan restaurant we had reservations for that evening.

The restaurant décor was a hit with me right away. The quiet restaurant was decorated with masks made of found materials. Each one more interesting than the next. I spent the first few minutes in the restaurant taking pictures of them! Everything on the menu sounded amazing and when we had made our choices, none of us were disappointed. The chef came to our table and we talked a bit about our time in Thailand, as she had a trip planned for this winter.

The grounds of the Museum of Civilization

Inside the main hall of the Museum of Civilization

Day three was the Museum of Civilization, a beautiful building in an incredible setting full of very interesting exhibits. I found two of the special exhibits especially interesting. The first was called God(s) a users guide (http://www.civilization.ca/gods) You can read about it here. Marc and I did not have the same impression of the exhibit. He felt it was not a topic that deserved that much time or space in any museum. I argued that in fact it is a topic that is central to the way our world works and the exhibit was a way for people to think about the roots, the symbols, the books and the conflicts and the place God and Religion play in our lives. What was most clear to me after visiting the exhibit (beautifully presented in my opinion!) is that the way we practice our religions, the symbols we use and the traditions we all hold on to, have more similarities than differences. If we could all spend more time appreciating the similarities and accepting that we are all brothers and sisters, the world would certainly be a much better place. If you get a chance to see the exhibit, I would love to know your thoughts.

Right next to it was an exhibit of the life work of an Aboriginal artist named Bob Boyer. I particularly liked a series of paintings on blankets and here are a few examples. You can read more about him here.

Year of the Rat stamp series

Christmas stamps

Olympic stamps!

I had no idea that the Museum of Civilization housed the Archives of Canada Post. However, when I got to the third floor there it was. Near the entrance is a big round room with all of the commemorative stamps Canada Post has produced. It is like a museum in miniature. Hundreds of masterpieces no larger than 2” x 2”, displayed by year and by topic. My heart was pounding as I walked around looking for the stamps Violet and I designed beginning in 2003 and ending with our Olympic stamps in 2010. They were all there according to year and topic. I was all alone in the room, so I couldn’t share my excitement when I found each stamp. I instead took pictures to send to Violet and sat down with my computer to write a note to Alain Leduc at Canada Post without whom we would not have had the opportunity to be involved in these amazing design projects. Violet and I have worked on thousands of projects together, but the stamp projects were our most exciting and rewarding. Knowing that all of our designs are displayed in the Museum of Civilization was a huge source of pride.

I was a bit overwhelmed at that point, and there wasn’t much more in the Museum I was going to be able to fully appreciate. Luckily it was almost closing time!

Cyndy picked us up and we picked up a few groceries and headed home for yet another great dinner. Fresh fish and grilled vegetables on the barbeque! The weather had cooled and we set the dinner table on the back porch. Cyndy, like Violet, is an amazing gardener and our view while eating dinner was her beautiful garden.

Cyndy's garden

We all enjoyed every morsel of the dinner we prepared together. And that is what it’s all about really isn’t it? Good friends, spending time together, breaking bread together, making good food together and drinking good wine together. At that moment, I couldn’t imagine a more perfect scenario.

There was more great food and more activities, but I think I have touched on the highlights. We hugged our friends goodbye on Tuesday morning and Cyndy delivered us to the Ottawa bus station where our bus to Kitchener, Ontario awaited us.

Strangers in a strange land

We crossed the border by train. After 10 months away, we were looking forward to being back in Canada, but not surprisingly, filling out the customs form was a bit daunting. They ask all sorts of questions that are usually easy to fill in, but after being away so long, it was hard to remember the right answers, and we were sure the customs agent was going to wonder why we had been away so long. I got particularly nervous when the gentleman in the seat ahead of us on the train was asked politely to follow the officer to the customs office …

The very polite man in uniform looked at our forms, looked straight at me and asked with a puzzled expression on his face, “You left Canada how many months ago? And you have nothing to declare? Not even any souvenirs?” What is it about customs officers that make you feel guilty even if you are perfectly innocent? We had of course bought a few things since leaving Canada, but they were safely in New York and not in the bags we were bringing into Canada. “No room” I said innocently pointing to our bags. “OK” he said as he looked up at our travel bags, shook his head and moved to the next row of travelers. There was a big sigh of relief in our row as he moved past us.

The 12-hour train trip returned us immediately to travel mode, so it felt very normal being in a city where we could not speak the language or read any of the signs. Again we were strangers in a strange land, ready to learn about the culture and see the sites — but then we remembered we were in Canada!

For a few moments we were angry, with Quebecers for being so strong-minded about preserving their culture, and at the same time, with ourselves for not knowing French. After all it is the official second language of Canada! But almost immediately, the overwhelmingly friendly and helpful Montealers made us feel so at home that we forgot about the French business almost entirely (OK not entirely. It continued to bug us that we couldn’t read the signs or understand the announcements on the metro, or read the menus in restaurants, or the signs in the supermarkets – C’est la vie!)

By the end of our trip in SE Asia, I was a pro at finding hotels using Agoda.com, but now that we were back in North America, I had to hone my skills in another marketplace. Using expedia or hotels.com seemed too commonplace so I looked for other options. Our friend Guylène in Montreal sent me several links to bed and breakfasts, and I started to investigate myself online. One of the first sites that appeared in my search was a website called airbnb. Conceptually it is one step up from couch surfing. You rent a whole apartment or a room or a couch in an apartment for a price. Airbnb takes a cut and looks after the e-commerce part. You can list your apartment/room/couch or you can find someone else’s apartment/room/couch for a variety of prices (and comfort levels). It is buyer beware for sure, and after reading some very bad reviews, I was a bit leery of giving it a try, but I thought hey, this is Canada, not India. How horrible could it be?

You can get in touch with your host and ask all sorts of questions. If you are good at reading between the lines, this service is a great option. I liked Mylène right away. She was friendly and supplied us with good answers. Her apartment was a perfect size for us and in a good location close to the metro, a park for Marc to run in, good restaurants and coffee shops and a good grocery store. We decided to go for it and it was everything and more than we expected.

Our apartment

Mylène met us at the apartment and gave us an orientation. The apartment was perfect. High ceilings, modern décor, sparkling clean and organized to our taste. She left us with a metro map, Jazz festival schedules, tourism brochures, and a list of the best restaurants and cafes in the area and even a bowl of fresh apples on the table as a welcome gift. As we parted, she set us off in the direction of the 80-bus line that would take us directly to Place Des Arts where all of the Jazz Festival events were taking place.

We spent the next two days taking in free and ticketed concerts. Several outdoor stages were set up throughout the impressive Place Des Arts complex, an area of downtown Montreal dedicated to culture. All the outdoor events were free, and there was a different concert to see every hour somewhere throughout the site. The Festival itself, as all music festivals these days, was very eclectic. We did hear Jazz music, but we also heard every other kind of music, which suited us just fine. The whole area was filled with thousands of “Beautiful People” from mid afternoon until midnight of all ages. At the end of each night, the multitudes of festivalgoers flooded the streets, lining up politely for buses or flowing in a very orderly fashion down the escalators to the underground metro lines.

By day two we were in love with Montreal. Even with the knowledge that there is a lot of “crazy” here (like students rioting out of control about justifiable University tuition hikes, Separatists and Nationalists keeping Montreal’s economy from flourishing by continuing to threaten separation, large immigrant populations that have trouble integrating well, laws forbidding English on signs above a certain point size, and the odd news story about metro civil servants not serving a blind Anglo customer simply because he refused to speak French). Maybe it is the “crazy” that is so refreshing. These people and this city are real. Like New York, the streets are filled with people all the time. There is a buzz of ideas. There is a tapestry of culture. And Like New York is to the United States, Montreal is completely different from any other city in Canada.

We realized quickly that one week in Montreal would barely touch the surface of what there is to see and do here. We decided to concentrate on walking tours and leave the indoor attractions for another trip. Our first stop was Little Italy, which was walking distance from our apartment on Hutchison and Jean Talon. The Jean Talon market was our first stop, where we tasted the delicious sliced fresh fruit set out at all of the produce stands. We bought steamed corn, pickled beets, olive bread, cheeses and assorted veggies and fruit to stock our fridge and also stopped for lunch at an outdoor restaurant serving the most artistically presented salads we had ever seen. The rest of the day was spent walking the streets of Little Italy with its authentic coffee shops and somewhat kitschy shopping area. Just outside its periphery, we hit a Sunday street market. On the sidewalk were racks of discount wedding dresses which drew crowds of, shoppers looking for a bargain. It reminded us of “My big fat Greek Wedding”. There were bridesmaid’s dresses as well, which were quite a sight to see!

There are a few things you simply can’t miss in Montreal. Bagels is one of them and smoked meat is the other. A trip the establishments serving up the best of each of these Montreal delicacies was the next thing on our list. We walked into St. Viateur Bagels on our second day in Montreal and shared a hot and delicious sesame bagel right out of the oven. Then we walked to Fairmont just a few blocks away to o the taste comparison. You can check out the scoop about these two competing bagel shops at this link. I think we both agree that St. Viateur come out on top. It was about a twenty-minute walk from there to Shwartz’s. There was a line up outside as is always the case and it was blisteringly hot outside, but we waited in line for the experience. I simply watched Marc eat his smoked meat sandwich as there is nothing for a vegetarian in this place except for a dill pickle! It was worth it though to see the enjoyment on his face as he savored each bite.

We toured the downtown area by foot on another day and eventually made it to Old Montreal, which was definitely a highlight of the trip. The architecture and cobblestone streets take you back to another era. As we were looking at our map on one of the streets of Old Montreal, a couple stopped us to ask if we needed help (each time we opened a map or looked confused, which was quite often, someone would ask us if we needed help — people here are amazingly friendly and helpful). “We live close by” he said, “How can we help?”

I don’t think we actually needed help at the time, as we were just referring to our map to read about the monument just in front of us. But he was insistent. “We love showing people things they will not find in a tourist brochure,” he continued. “Come this way and we will show you something.” We were standing in front of what once was the oldest hospital in Montreal. He told us a bit about the history of the building and then showed us a zigzag line in the street, which aligned with the edge of the building. “This,” he said proudly, “is the footprint of the building as it stood when it was first built. There were once walls here. That is not in any guide book!” He then smiled at us and said, “We have lived here for 15 years and take a walk in this neighbourhood every evening, and there is always something new to see”. We had only been in Montreal for a few days, but we knew that we would feel the same way. What an incredible place.

As the sun set on a perfect day, we began to see the effects of the street lighting on the monuments and centuries old buildings lining the cobblestone streets. There was a different walking tour for Old Montreal at night in our brochure, which we knew would be exquisite, but after about seven hours of walking, our feet were telling us we would have to leave that for another trip. We found our way to the metro and to our cozy apartment on Hutchison.

The last two days of our Montreal visit were dedicated to visiting friends. We had two friends in Montreal that we had not seen, quite literally, in a lifetime. I had not seen Guylène, a friend I went to art school with in Vancouver, since graduation in 1988. And we had not seen Ron, a friend we knew in Israel on Adamit, since he left the kibbutz in 1978.

My reunion with Guylène was particularly emotional. The sorrow of losing our dear friend Glenda almost two years ago came immediately to the surface. We know that our bond to each other is so connected to her. Her words came out in French and mine in English and we hugged each other tightly barely breathing. Guylène’s partner Nicholas quickly introduced himself to Marc and we all moved to the kitchen where they had prepared a wonderful breakfast for us. The rest of the morning was non stop talking, the guys on one side of the table and us on the other. There was absolute joy in the room. I got a chance to see the work Guylène is preparing for an art exhibit in December and to understand her process. We talked a lot about Glenda and how much she meant to us and how present she is in our lives. Marc, Nicholas, Guylène and I took a walk around the neighbourhood after our wonderful breakfast. They left us in Mont Royal Park where we would continue our day’s walk towards Snowdon Deli where we would be meeting Ron for smoked meat (for the boys) and blintzes (for me) later that day.

I will credit Richie with this quote. While visiting Barbi and Richie in DC (many moons ago), I must have said something like “It is so great to be with you guys!” His answer was quick and to the point, “This is forever”. He was referring then to the friendships and relationships developed on the top of the hill in Israel on the Lebanese border in a small kibbutz called Adamit. Any of you reading this who were there know exactly what Richie was talking about. That afternoon last week in Montreal, when Ron walked through the door of Snowden Deli after 34 years, there was no awkwardness, just friends sitting down for a meal as we did so many times in the communal dining room so many years ago.

Marc remembered fondly tiulim (hiking trips) led by Ron while we were together on Adamit. So neither of us was surprised when he suggested heading out into the country the next day to show us around the Mont Tremblant area a few hours out of the city. He picked us up promptly at 8:00 am with a cooler full of drinks and fruit and off we went. It was a beautiful day and the scenery was wonderful. As an added attraction, there was a blues festival at the top of the mountain that we were able to take in. We had lunch at the top and exchanged tales of trips to the Far East in the 60’s (for Ron) the 70’s (for Marc) and our recent year of travel. As we soon found out, many things stay the same as time passes. Ron continues to travel around the world extensively, but now with a suitcase rather than a knapsack and comfortable hotels and organized tours, rather than hostels and a lonely planet in his pocket.

For dinner Ron took us to a fantastic Greek restaurant called Marvin’s, not far from our apartment. It is one of these places you would walk past without noticing if you didn’t have the inside scoop. Great food and a neighbourhood atmosphere that could not be beat. We were all served a huge Greek salad before our entres arrived. Marc and Ron were in heaven with lamb chops done to perfection. The place was packed with locals as well as take out orders leaving every few minutes. A definite Montreal neighbourhood experience!

Ron dropped us at our apartment and we parted ways. “L’hitraot!” (until next time, as we say in Hebrew). “Give my best to Amiram and Bilha when you see them in Toronto”. And with that our visit with Ron and our trip to Montreal was at an end. Early the next morning we tidied up Mylène’s apartment and made our way to the bus station for our trip to Ottawa where another reunion was awaiting us.