Montreal Day Four - An Artsy Amble

I woke up relatively early this morning in preparation for the first day of the conference. Went down and had the breakfast buffet (again) – no muffin this time as I opted for the apple Danish instead. Had no problems getting to the Palais des Congres as I had already sussed it out... in fact it was actually easier to get to then originally thought as there was actually an entrance from the Metro directly to the Palais (how I missed it the first time I don’t know!).

I followed the crowd to the registration desk, where I registered for the conference and got my bag, program, name tags and abstract book. After this I went and sat down outside and tried to make head and tails from my program and abstract book – it seemed to be organised in a very confused manner. While I was sitting there who would come along but my Supervisor, AC. Had a chat to AC for a few minutes and he pretty much told me that today was not very relevant for us do we could probably take the day off. After he had registered we decided to both grab a coffee.

We headed to Eggspecation (Yes they have a lot of egg dishes) where we each grabbed a cafe latte (which came in like small steins?!) as well as an apple crepe to share between us. Interesting, instead of stewed apple the crepe was filled with small slices of fresh apple!! Though overall it wasn’t too bad. Over the course of the conversation we both decided to go see some of Montréal’s art galleries.

We first headed to the Musée D’Art Contemporain which is at the Place D’Artes. We both hoped onto the Metro to make our way there – was a little confusing getting from the Metro station to the actually gallery but once we were there we discovered they were actually between exhibitions!! However they still had some things showing but it did mean the price for entry was 50% off ($4 instead of $8).

Musée D’Art Contemporain

In all honesty I think the best exhibit was probably in the entrance gallery right next to the stairs. I’m can’t remember who it was by, but it was two tv screen, side-by-side, probably about a metre apart. The videos were mirror images of each other, showing the top half of women, not saying anything – just sort of blinking and fidgeting and sighing etc. However no matter where you were it always seemed like at least one of them was looking at you... all the time. Slightly disconcerting actually.

After that we decided to head to the ‘fine arts’ gallery called the Musée des Beaux Arts de Montréal. There are actually two buildings that house this gallery – one an older building (seen in the picture below) and there was actually another modern pavilion and they both connected to each other underground. There were a few temporary exhibitions however we decided just to see the permanent collections and they were actually FREE, which I thought was fantastic. There’s quite a large permanent collection – we were there for probably around about two hours and got nowhere near to seeing everything. They were definitely some familiar names popping up such as Monet, Picasso, Rodin, Cezanne and Dali, there was also a few unfamiliar ones. There was an entire gallery focused on one Canadian artist, Marc Fontaine, who painting I thought were amazing, even though I had never heard of him until then!!

Michal and Renata Hornstein Pavillion of the Musée des Beaux Arts de Montréal

Once we had tired from all this gallery walking we decided to have lunch and at the restaurant in the museum. While neither of us were really hungry we still managed to have a three course meal!! However we didn’t actually have any mains! I had the Soup of the Day, which was watercress, leak and PINEAPPLE which was actually VERY good and you could definitely taste the sweetness and tang of the pineapple. I then had the Beef Carpacio with a Rocket salad and some parmesan cheese which was quite good... though I do wish I had appreciated earlier that the beef was raw. I then finished off the meal with passionfruit crème broluee which was OMG fantastic!! AC paid, which was very nice of him, and we then decided to head our separate ways.... unfortunately we didn’t realise it was POURING outside!! We did hang around outside (under cover) for at least 10 – 15 minutes, however it didn’t seem to be getting any better, so in the end we had make a run for it. I headed to the nearest Metro station, however on the way I got waylaid by a panhandler named Natalie. Actually she was quite nice, if a lil strange, telling me to go get married and have lots of babies... or even don’t worry about marriage just have babies... however she did tell me the direction to the nearest Metro which I sprinted to (going from cover to cover).

Headed back to the hostel and had a bit of a nap. Decided to actually have dinner in the bistro at the hostel, where I got the Le Burger Maison or the House Burger, which as actually pretty good. After that I headed to bed to be up nice and early for tomorrow’s morning sessions.