well i just got back late last week from montreal. i enjoyed it so much back at the end of july, i decided to spend a little more time there before the holiday season gets into full swing here. this will be the last time until january that i'll have much time to myself...
i like montreal. it's a beautiful city full of charming people. there are plenty of things to do & see and the restaurants can be quite good if you take the time to sniff them out.
montreal is also crammed with bookshops which is right up my alley. new & old, english or french, i visited every one i passed and came away with some wonderful books. i managed to find a french copy of evelyn waugh's "vile bodies" which has long been one of my favorite novels. it was funny to read it in translation as i found that there really isn't a proper french translation for the term "bogus". still it was most enjoyable.
there was one second hand shop on the rue saint denis that i particularly enjoyed. if memory serves it was called "la librarie mona lisait" - a cute pun if one is quick at conjugating french verbs (which i am still not). it was just the kind of book shop i like most - large, airy with shelves PACKED to the ceiling. i spent quite a bit of time checking all the titles (and found a few very interesting volumes). then i noticed high behind the register, an incredibly rare monograph on the works of leonor fini which i tried unsuccessfully to buy. i gathered it wasn't for sale because the charming woman who ran the place was pretty much saving it for her retirement. disappointing for me but not surprising...
i think one of the reasons that i spent so much time in that particular shop was its smell - i noticed it the second i walked in the door. the odor was so similar to my "in the library" and yet somehow slightly different. i couldn't tell exactly why it should be but i loved it all the same. so i put the books i did buy there in zip-lock bags and have sniffed them every now and then since i got back. some day perhaps i'll figure it out...
coincidentally when i returned, i found there were orders for two new stores in canada - one shipped while i was away and the next is set to go out this week. "gravity pope" in edmonton should have my perfumes any day now and hopefully by the end of next week, "hazel" in toronto should be stocked up as well.
very nice! since i've never really been to canada much (apart from the 2 excursions to montreal) maybe visiting those stores in future will give me a good reason to see more of the country.
i'm particularly interested in visiting toronto. i've been told by numerous people that "it's just like new york" which as far as i'm concerned is NOT a selling point. however, i was also told by all & sundry that montreal was "just like paris & very european". well i can say that montreal, although marvelous in it's own right, is nothing like paris and apart from the majority speaking french, is clearly a north america city with very deep european roots. so i'd imagine that toronto, like montreal, is not simply a smaller version of somewhere else but a wonderful city with it's own unique personality.
we'll see.