Montreal - Day 1 - Fatigue, Near Death Experience, and a Questionable Airport Happening.
So here I am. Sitting at the Montreal Marriott Chateau Champlain. Let me tell you, I'm tired. So, in German fashion, let's start from the beginning.
Today was almost the trip that wasn't. Last night I was under the impression that my flight was to leave Nashville, TN around 10AM. I'm really bad with checking up on flight schedules, but luckily around midnight last night I decided to recheck my itinerary. Turns out I was to fly out at 7AM. I wasn't even planning on waking up until 7:30. Phew!
So, this changed things...I had to wake up at 4:30AM to make it in time. I felt bad that Elizabeth had to wake up with me in the morning. We both got approximately 3-4 hours of sleep. Not good...
So, we get a nice wafflehouse breakfast in and she drops me off. My first flight went out on time. Unfortunately, this wasn't a direct flight, so I had to fly to La Guardia airport in NYC. Flying into new york was excellent as I had a great view of the city while landing.
You gotta love NYC. Every time you're there you get a feeling that you only get when you're there. All the different cultures, everyone running around at mach 5, food everywhere. it's great.
One of the more notable things that happened at the airport was when I was waiting for boarding. While in somewhat of a daze I noticed two women (one cleaning lady that only spoke Spanish and one flight attendant who only spoke English) yelling at each other. I guess the cleaning lady was getting into this restricted cabinet behind one of the counters and the flight attendant wasn't having it. They started getting physical and pushing each others arms away while slamming each other into the cabinet. The flight attendant starts yelling for security and about 5 NYPD officers came in to separate them. I guess the cleaning lady wasn't supposed to be in the cabinet...so the cops started questioning her. Next they investigate the cabinet and find this secret compartment under everything in there. If you think that's weird, next the officer pulls out a dr. pepper bottle full of some weird blue liquid. in addition there was this small glass container with a brown powdery substance. Not sure what either of them were but they removed them from the area in no time. kind of creepy, really.
Anyways, moving on..I boarded my plane, tired as can be, and made the 1 1/2 hour flight to Montreal. I didn't realize the airport was so far away from the city, so transportation was a hassle. Luckily i ran into a couple colleagues and we all split a ride into town.
Our driver was hilarious. He's this dude from Beirut that made it over here in 1988 just before it got real bad over there. This guy was opinionated...and that's an understatement. He told us stories that ranged from "laughing in the face of bombs", Muslims converting to Christianity in vast numbers, him becoming the "new slave", and how messed up big oil is (from both sides of the aisle). He pretty much talked for about 25 minutes straight. He also told me that the island of Montreal has over 3.5 million people on it and that there were only 46 violent crimes reported last year. not sure if that's true...I'll have to look it up.
Anyways, my hotel is real nice and spacious. I'm on the 16th floor (which is about half way up the building). Here are two pics of my view:
This old church is kitty-corner to my hotel.
I didn't get too much done today due to being exhausted and sign-in being closed by the time I made it to the conference.
I mainly focused on walking around and acclimating. Everything is in French...it'd be nice to have Elizabeth around to help me understand everything...and to keep me from getting killed. seriously, what's up with my travels and near death experiences? So I'm crossing the street today...kind of doing a kitty-corner type of deal and this car nearly blindsides me. I mean, it was close. Luckily this other guy jumped in front of the car (?) in an attempt to stop it. Somehow that worked...but i don't really see his logic. I probably would have been hurt real bad. We had a good laugh about it and I told him that I have his back on the next go-around.
Other than that, i pretty much walked around and returned to my hotel room. I'm going to try and have an early night. We'll see how that goes...
Till tomorrow,
br
So here I am. Sitting at the Montreal Marriott Chateau Champlain. Let me tell you, I'm tired. So, in German fashion, let's start from the beginning.
Today was almost the trip that wasn't. Last night I was under the impression that my flight was to leave Nashville, TN around 10AM. I'm really bad with checking up on flight schedules, but luckily around midnight last night I decided to recheck my itinerary. Turns out I was to fly out at 7AM. I wasn't even planning on waking up until 7:30. Phew!
So, this changed things...I had to wake up at 4:30AM to make it in time. I felt bad that Elizabeth had to wake up with me in the morning. We both got approximately 3-4 hours of sleep. Not good...
So, we get a nice wafflehouse breakfast in and she drops me off. My first flight went out on time. Unfortunately, this wasn't a direct flight, so I had to fly to La Guardia airport in NYC. Flying into new york was excellent as I had a great view of the city while landing.
You gotta love NYC. Every time you're there you get a feeling that you only get when you're there. All the different cultures, everyone running around at mach 5, food everywhere. it's great.
One of the more notable things that happened at the airport was when I was waiting for boarding. While in somewhat of a daze I noticed two women (one cleaning lady that only spoke Spanish and one flight attendant who only spoke English) yelling at each other. I guess the cleaning lady was getting into this restricted cabinet behind one of the counters and the flight attendant wasn't having it. They started getting physical and pushing each others arms away while slamming each other into the cabinet. The flight attendant starts yelling for security and about 5 NYPD officers came in to separate them. I guess the cleaning lady wasn't supposed to be in the cabinet...so the cops started questioning her. Next they investigate the cabinet and find this secret compartment under everything in there. If you think that's weird, next the officer pulls out a dr. pepper bottle full of some weird blue liquid. in addition there was this small glass container with a brown powdery substance. Not sure what either of them were but they removed them from the area in no time. kind of creepy, really.
Anyways, moving on..I boarded my plane, tired as can be, and made the 1 1/2 hour flight to Montreal. I didn't realize the airport was so far away from the city, so transportation was a hassle. Luckily i ran into a couple colleagues and we all split a ride into town.
Our driver was hilarious. He's this dude from Beirut that made it over here in 1988 just before it got real bad over there. This guy was opinionated...and that's an understatement. He told us stories that ranged from "laughing in the face of bombs", Muslims converting to Christianity in vast numbers, him becoming the "new slave", and how messed up big oil is (from both sides of the aisle). He pretty much talked for about 25 minutes straight. He also told me that the island of Montreal has over 3.5 million people on it and that there were only 46 violent crimes reported last year. not sure if that's true...I'll have to look it up.
Anyways, my hotel is real nice and spacious. I'm on the 16th floor (which is about half way up the building). Here are two pics of my view:
This old church is kitty-corner to my hotel.
I didn't get too much done today due to being exhausted and sign-in being closed by the time I made it to the conference.
I mainly focused on walking around and acclimating. Everything is in French...it'd be nice to have Elizabeth around to help me understand everything...and to keep me from getting killed. seriously, what's up with my travels and near death experiences? So I'm crossing the street today...kind of doing a kitty-corner type of deal and this car nearly blindsides me. I mean, it was close. Luckily this other guy jumped in front of the car (?) in an attempt to stop it. Somehow that worked...but i don't really see his logic. I probably would have been hurt real bad. We had a good laugh about it and I told him that I have his back on the next go-around.
Other than that, i pretty much walked around and returned to my hotel room. I'm going to try and have an early night. We'll see how that goes...
Till tomorrow,
br
posted by Flyin' Brian at 8:37 PM
1 Comments:
Next time stay awhile in NYC so we can hang out and maybe I can finally meet Elizabeth and all that jazz.
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