montreal 1
Jul. 6th, 2009 10:04 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
kirkcudbrightSpent the weekend in Montreal. In meetings. Okay, not entirely in meetings, but the reason for going up there was the final Worldcon concom meeting.
If I'd really thought about it, I would have stayed home. I'm editor of the souvenir book, which I eventually defined to mean content-wrangler. For better or worse, it's out of my hands now; Jim is furiously laying it out, and it goes to press any minute now. I'm also laying out the restaurant guide, but Jo Walton did all of the heavy lifting in![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-community.gif)
antici_food.
If I was still intent on going, and thought about it, I would have finished and printed out the initial layout, or at least printed out the contents ofantici_food, so that I could (easily) fill in a few missing addresses, note which restaurants are closed on weekends, etc.
Oh well, I went anyway, filled up several notebook pages, and had fun, dammit.
This is a picture-heavy post, so it's not only cut, but divided into at least two posts.
I booked at the last minute (Thursday afternoon for Friday check-in), and I didn't feel like paying downtown hotel prices (say, where the meetings were happening), so I ended up a couple miles away, up Rue Ste-Catherine, at the aptly named Hôtel Ste-Catherine, because it was cheap and close to the Metro.
Outside. Note that the nice storefront lobby they show on their web site is now a bureau de change. The actual entrance is up a steep flight of stairs, and there's no lobby to speak of. My room is the top left, with the window open (hotel windows open in Canada!).
Inside. This is exactly as big as the room is; I'm backed up against the wall to take the picture. Note the pathetic art, the bare-bulb lamp, the holes in the wall. This is a smoking room (in a nominally non-smoking hotel), so there's an ashtray on the night table, and cigarette burns everywhere.
The bathroom. The sink cabinet is plywood. The toilet area (where the pic is taken from) is just as narrow.
The room entry, mostly to show the wiring for phone and cable TV. To be fair, a lot of older hotels have similar retrofits.
OTOH, it was in the heart of the (imaginatively named) Gay Village (bars with names like Rocky, Campus, Tool, Bar Le Stud, and (my favorite) Priape). Furthermore, this 12-block section of Ste-Catherine is closed to traffic all summer, and was hosting an arts festival this weekend. I was intending to take the Metro downtown to the meeting, but ended up walking the whole way.
Right outside the hotel:
This is the only building left in a block that is otherwise a parking lot.
Front of same:
A little further down Ste-Catherine, I wandered into the Jazz Festival (no one was playing at the moment).
BIXI bike rental. Check a bike out in one spot, return it to another. I saw a number of people riding these, mostly on Sunday in the old town. Dunno if they were locals or tourists.
The Metro stations also have public art, but not in a place you can see from the platform. (Papineau station)
OTOH, at least some stations have at least some decorative lighting.
I found this interesting: Next to the regular train rails, there was a narrow concrete platform, allowing the trains to run on pneumatic rubber wheels instead of the usual steel train wheels. I don't know if it's more efficient or anything, but it's probably quieter.
Saturday we toured the Palais de Congrès, where the con will be held.
Large empty exhibition halls are large and empty.
The west side of the Palais has these colored windows, which do interesting things with a shiny wall and shiny floor.
It also has this forest of pink trees on the first floor, for no good reason.
Enough of that for now. Next: dinner with![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
lyonesse and pywaket led to fireworks, oh yes.
If I'd really thought about it, I would have stayed home. I'm editor of the souvenir book, which I eventually defined to mean content-wrangler. For better or worse, it's out of my hands now; Jim is furiously laying it out, and it goes to press any minute now. I'm also laying out the restaurant guide, but Jo Walton did all of the heavy lifting in
antici_food.If I was still intent on going, and thought about it, I would have finished and printed out the initial layout, or at least printed out the contents of
antici_food, so that I could (easily) fill in a few missing addresses, note which restaurants are closed on weekends, etc.Oh well, I went anyway, filled up several notebook pages, and had fun, dammit.
This is a picture-heavy post, so it's not only cut, but divided into at least two posts.
I booked at the last minute (Thursday afternoon for Friday check-in), and I didn't feel like paying downtown hotel prices (say, where the meetings were happening), so I ended up a couple miles away, up Rue Ste-Catherine, at the aptly named Hôtel Ste-Catherine, because it was cheap and close to the Metro.
Outside. Note that the nice storefront lobby they show on their web site is now a bureau de change. The actual entrance is up a steep flight of stairs, and there's no lobby to speak of. My room is the top left, with the window open (hotel windows open in Canada!).
Inside. This is exactly as big as the room is; I'm backed up against the wall to take the picture. Note the pathetic art, the bare-bulb lamp, the holes in the wall. This is a smoking room (in a nominally non-smoking hotel), so there's an ashtray on the night table, and cigarette burns everywhere.
The bathroom. The sink cabinet is plywood. The toilet area (where the pic is taken from) is just as narrow.
The room entry, mostly to show the wiring for phone and cable TV. To be fair, a lot of older hotels have similar retrofits.
OTOH, it was in the heart of the (imaginatively named) Gay Village (bars with names like Rocky, Campus, Tool, Bar Le Stud, and (my favorite) Priape). Furthermore, this 12-block section of Ste-Catherine is closed to traffic all summer, and was hosting an arts festival this weekend. I was intending to take the Metro downtown to the meeting, but ended up walking the whole way.
Right outside the hotel:
This is the only building left in a block that is otherwise a parking lot.
Front of same:
A little further down Ste-Catherine, I wandered into the Jazz Festival (no one was playing at the moment).
BIXI bike rental. Check a bike out in one spot, return it to another. I saw a number of people riding these, mostly on Sunday in the old town. Dunno if they were locals or tourists.
The Metro stations also have public art, but not in a place you can see from the platform. (Papineau station)
OTOH, at least some stations have at least some decorative lighting.
I found this interesting: Next to the regular train rails, there was a narrow concrete platform, allowing the trains to run on pneumatic rubber wheels instead of the usual steel train wheels. I don't know if it's more efficient or anything, but it's probably quieter.
Saturday we toured the Palais de Congrès, where the con will be held.
Large empty exhibition halls are large and empty.
The west side of the Palais has these colored windows, which do interesting things with a shiny wall and shiny floor.
It also has this forest of pink trees on the first floor, for no good reason.
Enough of that for now. Next: dinner with
lyonesse and pywaket led to fireworks, oh yes.
![[identity profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/openid.png){kind=small}
no subject
Date: 2009-07-07 02:37 am (UTC)Some of the Paris Metro lines have that rubber-tire setup, which is where Montreal got the idea. They're actually noisier as well as less efficient, but they offer a smooth ride and have better traction, allowing for faster acceleration, steeper grades and shorter headways. But they don't deal well with wet surfaces, so the lines have to be entirely underground.
I wonder how well that bike-rental idea would work in Boston.
no subject
Date: 2009-07-07 02:47 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2009-07-07 03:29 am (UTC)Michelin developed the tire technology in the '30s. Budd licensed it in the US, and built a grand total of 4 diesel railcars using it before WWII, running on rubber but using steel flanges to keep the cars on the rails. None kept their rubber tires more than a couple of years (this isn't mentioned in the Wikipedia article, but Trains magazine had an article about it in the 1990s).
no subject
Date: 2009-07-07 08:02 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2009-07-11 09:36 pm (UTC)Also, I wonder if the trains ever get flat tires?
(yeah, I've had this post tabbed for a while, waiting for a chance to really look at the photos. It looks like you had a great time.)