Montreal for a Weekend

For Labor Day, Mr. CT Lawyer, Chloe (our pup), and I went to Montreal in Canada. We were planning on going to get some tasty food, explore some pseudo-French culture, and relax in another country for a while. Sure, it was the start of fall and it was rainy and cold for much of our trip, but we still had a pleasant time.

I had been to Montreal a decade before for the Jazz Festival, and I recalled Montreal as a vibrant, buzzing city full of culture, European style, and buzz. What I didn't realize was that a lot of my perceptions about Montreal were actually about the festival. Montreal as a city was still charming, but a lot smaller and quieter than what I had remembered. It felt French, yet American at the same time; I am still not sure how that is possible. In a way, it reminded me of the quiet, subtle urban sprawl of Portland, with a bit of the tired industrial look of Cleveland or Detroit.

We both have varying levels of French knowledge (I used to be quite fluent), but we struggled with the Quebecois French. It didn't sound like French at all to me! Almost everyone we interacted with there initially spoke to us in French rather than English, which was fine except I would speak in European French and apparently spoke well enough that they would start spinning away in Quebecois French. Soon afterward I became lost and confused about what I was hearing (was that FRENCH?!) and sheepishly asked the same question in English. We gave up trying to converse in the local language and advertised our foreign tourist-ness for the rest of the trip.

We had hoped that Montreal would be more dog-friendly, but aside from two VERY dog-friendly cafes (Le Doggy Cafe and Hot Dog Cafe), there were limited options for us to bring our pooch. We improvised with a lot of chilly outdoor walks - such as going up Mont Royal to the lake and meandering in Old Montreal's cobble-stoned streets - to keep her active and part of our little adventure.

We had some fun highlights to our trip without Chloe:

• We explored the Biodome's animal habitats for a few hours.
• We went to a bustling local market - Jean Talon - and ate delicious crepes, cheese, and bought some amazing fresh strawberries and ciders.
• We had really good food at two notable restaurants: Elda was a nice local bistro where (we got a sandwich and a beef dish) and Toque! was fancy and whimsical food that was delicious (we got a price-fixed meal with a duck dish and some other stuff).

The highlight of the highlights was our adventure to a food truck festival. We stumbled upon the event - there were dozens of food trucks and a swarm of people in lines and drinking/eating on little plastic chairs and tables around the stadium. Most of the food trucks offered poutine (the Canadian specialty and favorite - french fries with gravy and cheese), which we tried and politely moved on. We also got some pretty amazing lobster dishes, ribs, raclette, and ice cream. It was a delightful evening and helped us better see the local culture in a more authentic way. People were pleasant, clumped in their groups of friends, and very interested in beer and poutine. As we left, we found ourselves paying $10 to go into an ax-throwing truck (where you throw axes in the truck at targets a few times) and really enjoyed failing at ax-throwing (okay, well I sucked). Only in Canada would this truck work out.

Would we live in Montreal? Neither of us felt a confident "yes" to that question, but neither of us said definitely "no", either. Montreal has some cleaning up to do on its infrastructure, the "francophone elite" culture clashed with the overall Canadian-friendly vibe, and it seemed like they have more in common with Broken Industry America than they wish to admit. We found this article that better expressed some of our not-so-swell observations of the area. That said, the people were pleasant, the vibe was peaceful, and we would both happily come back for another visit.

Nepal

Pokhara Lake

In July Mr. CT Lawyer and I went to Nepal to see two of my friends from grad school (one Nepalese, one American) get married. Since we were going a far distance for a wedding, we decided to also take some time to explore the mountainous country.

Unsurprisingly, Nepal resembled a lot of cultural similarities as India...only perhaps with a more reserved culture. When I think of India, I think of a place packed with people, all shoving and vying for attention and help. Nepal isn't as packed, so I felt that while it had a similar desire/urge for "more" (whatever that means), they had more wiggle room and breathing space.

Kathmandu
I landed in Kathmandu and stayed in Thamel for a few days before heading off for the wedding in the eastern part of the country.

Everyone who had been to Nepal before had only described Kathmandu to me as "dusty". I initially scoffed at this description, feeling like people were not trying hard enough to relay the vibe to me. When I got there, however, I realized that I, too, could only find one word to aptly describe the country's capital: DUSTY! And maybe noisy. The city is coated in a thick layer of dust that permeates everything and saturates the air ". If I could find a way to market dust in a desirable way, I felt that I could definitely help Nepal with part of its economic woes. Without a good business idea for selling dust, Kathmandu survives on many tourism opportunities.

On the first day there, I hired a car to show me the main tourist spots. We started with a beautiful tour of the Monkey Temple, which is covered in peaceful prayer flags and stone steps that lead up a hill overlooking much of the bustling urban sprawl. Of course, there was a colony of monkeys playing and running around the temple area. As the town woke up, we proceeded to visit Durbar Square where I got a taste of how the city may have looked a long time ago without the new concrete jungle around us. Much of the square was damaged after the 2015 earthquake, but there was a lot of rehabilitation activity around the beautiful wooden buildings and temples in the confined square area. There was still a lot to explore despite the construction, and I enjoyed climbing through the little doors and peering through windows into more open areas, discovering little coves of architecture and curious pieces of intricate artwork hiding from the main thoroughfare. Did you know that the Nepali style of columns is the thinnest type of columns? Now, you do!

I was slightly annoyed during my tour and ended it before I was done; I had become somewhat of a "tourist attraction" to a  group of Bangladeshi men who thought that seeing a white girl in the area was amazing and worth stopping her from her explorations for pictures. I tried hiding behind trees and construction boards, but I was found by them every time and found myself being held a little too tightly in their pictures over and over again.

After hiding from Bangladeshis, I was driven to the serene and sacred Buddha Stupa that we walked around clockwise in a big circle. It was peaceful, but the square around the stupa has been very much overridden by tourist shops and hostels. I asked for a quiet, local Nepali lunch with the driver, so we went to get a thakali (which is like a cousin to the Indian thali) in a little house off of a side street nearby. The last place we visited that day was Pashupati - a temple and cremation site locals. It was nice to visit and busy with tourists weaving between locals who were there for meditation or remembrance. For me, though, it was also hard to be there, watching bodies burn on the waterfront (since it had only been a few months after my mom died and was cremated).

The rest of the time in Kathmandu I spent shopping around Thamel for nice artwork, scarves, and hunting down tea shops for reading and momo restaurants for eating.

Dharan
After a day or two in Kathmandu, I took a plane. With the reputable Buddha Air. And I need to pause to talk about flying in Nepal. Finding airlines in Nepal wasn't too difficult - any Google search will show you a list of local airlines there. The challenge was finding an airline without a track record of crashing! When researching, we found out that arguably half of the world's least safe airlines were in Nepal. To be fair, Nepal is a very difficult country to fly around because of all of the different altitudes and treacherous terrain, coupled with small landing strips in hard-to-locate places and cloudy days. Buddha Air had only crashed once in its history; therefore, it was our choice flyer for the majority of the trip. Yeti Air was the second option, as it was popular and had a lot of flights.

Fortunately, all of our flights were successful, and the view of the countryside during the flights was beautiful and was full of rolling green and spiked tops.

Once I landed on my first plane, we drove through a flat area that are part of the Terai plains (I never realized that Nepal was anything but mountains!); the flight was going to the surprisingly flat region of Dharan. From the small airport, I was driven to my girlfriend's house to attend the evening's wedding preparations - I was able to make it in time to join the women's' henna drawing activities and got a delicate design painted on my hand.

The next day was the wedding. It was loud and energetic and confusing and awesome. It was an all-day affair that started at 6am with sari wrapping (I had been given a sari to wear for the day) and makeup...and ended near midnight with dancing and heavy rain that flooded our simple guest house accommodations.

The whole day was an unforgettable experience.

I was surprised that I was asked to be in the wedding - the guy friend from the US didn't have a lot of family on his end who were there for the wedding, so I was asked to represent part of his family. I happily obliged.

The music at the wedding was a cacophony of instruments that mimicked animals sounds - from elephants and monkeys to birds and other animals I couldn't pinpoint. The wedding was Hindu, and as Hindu weddings are typically a few days long; as the wedding had to be packed into a mere day (the US crowd had flights to catch), everyone scrambled everywhere to make sure all of the necessary ceremonies and celebrations occurred. I think we checked all of the boxes by the end of the day - we had rice paste pushed onto our foreheads, we offered plates of food to the right people, we ate ample food, we danced, we respected some solemn marching, and we witnessed a lot of pouring of water on the betrotheds' feet.

The day after the wedding the boyfriend and I tiredly grumbled out of our flooded room and rolled into a car that drove us back to the airport so that we could take 2 more short flights to Pokhara on the other side of the country.

Pokhara
Though the wedding was our favorite experience of the trip, going to Pokhara and the deadly Anapurna Mountains may have been the most breathtaking part. It was a heavily touristy place (we found all of the white people we hadn't seen elsewhere), which made sense because it was so beautiful. We were there in the off-season and the clouds hid the snowline of the mountain peaks surrounding us, threatening rain the whole time...but a few times we were lucky and the clouds lifted to present us awe-inspiring visions of immense crags and mixtures of gray and white. We were staying in a gorgeous boutique hotel with a balcony on the lakeside of the mountain range, so a lot of our time was spent sitting and admiring the rolling and jagged mountains surrounding the town. No wonder a lot of Tibetans find refuge there.

We started our tour of the town with a tranquil row around the lake to see the different views of the hills and mountains. We got off the boat once at a Hindu temple in the middle of the lake and took our time soaking in the beauty around us. We then found ourselves trying Thakali food - a regional type of food - and it was delicious (and spicy).

One day we felt bold enough to go on a car ride to a fancy resort sitting alone on a mountaintop to see the views. The concierge at our hotel politely mentioned that the roads would be a bit bumpy, but I believe he did not sufficiently describe the danger we were putting ourselves in. "Off season" in Nepal (much like India) means Monsoon season (aka rainy season). Unlike some countries with strong infrastructures, Nepal's roads are largely unpaved, and that especially goes for the hillside and mountain rides hugging the higher altitudes. The roads were rough - really rough - and it was clear some minor landslides were in process or had already happened recently. The roads were not wide enough for our Jeep, let alone sharing with the mopeds and busses that slowly navigated around our car. It was death-defying, and I was sure we were not going to make it up, let alone back down.

Once we finally made it to the resort, I genuinely needed a glass of wine to calm my nerves and regain the courage to go back down. I asked one of the staff how they made it to the hotel every day, and she explained that they lived at the resort during monsoon season to avoid the roads. Also, during that period of time most guests seem to arrive via helicopter. Noted.

At least the views of the valley below coupled with the mountains were as dazzling as we had hoped and kept us company until I had regained my nerves for the ride back. Despite the terror of the roads, the view was genuinely worth it. On the ride back we got to see people going up the same roads, only sitting outside on the top of the busses.

We stopped by at Begnas Lake on the way back to the hotel. It felt like a nice community spot that just happened to have breathtaking mountain views 360 degrees. People were swimming and rowing in the lake as the sun started to go down. I could see myself going there with friends for a friendly evening, as well.

Sadly, I had to cut our trip a day short due to a stupid error by the airlines. We scrambled to the airport early and boarded a plane to get us back to Kathmandu. We checked into an iconic hotel for the boyfriend (and for me to shower, feeling irritated I couldn't stay there the night we had planned) and ate a heap of buffet food there before I darted to the airport for my long flight home.

Ghana

Berekum, Ghana

It's been months since I went to Ghana. I've been wrapped up in the grief of losing a parent and the whirlwind of a changing job. I'll try my best to recollect my trip to Ghana, though I'm sure a lot will have been warped with the months. But later is better than never?

I got off of the 10-hour plane ride (riddled with crying babies the whole trip) and found myself walking into a wall of heat. It was like my welcome to the country included an invisible welcome crew who cloaked me in a layer of heat that would stay with me the whole trip. My office's driver met me in the front of a sea of people, looking around confused and tired for their arriving guests. Once he found me, he escorted me to the office truck and shuttled me to the office (because I got in too early to check into my Airbnb).

The office is a large 2-story house, converted into office spaces and hallways for our overwhelmed Ghanian colleagues. It was a similar situation in Rwanda, so I wasn't very surprised that it was a practice elsewhere. People were surprised with me, though, because I was in the office as soon as I landed. I didn't have much choice!

Once I got to the Airbnb place around lunchtime, I did crash into a nap for a healthy amount of time before returning to the office. It was a huge apartment with a few rooms that were rented out to short-term guests like me. The amount of money we were spending per day for such a large (and very polished) place made me feel like we should have insisted on paying more, especially given our living conditions in NYC. The complex where the apartment was had a good-sized gym I paid for every morning so I could sweat on the cardio machines with the other well-to-do Ghanaians and non-Ghanaians before going to work, which was a 5-minute car-ride.

While driving around the area with the office drivers for lunch and dinner, I was highly amused while reading the restaurant names we passed - or rather, most of the storefront names for any kind of business. We got Turkish food that was named DNR (surely, an innocent abbreviation for doner, though still alarming!), God Is Great, and (my favorite) Jesus Made It! Restaurant. This was a constant source of entertainment for me while I floated around Ghana for the 10 days - I was constantly amazed by the inspirational business signs I would see. Apparently, the culture deems shop naming as a way to express religious enthusiasm.

What's more, I was surprised to see numerous healing signs for local witch doctors. These signs were amusing in design (a serious image of a man holding strange objects over people's heads, or simply posing with a drum) as well as the list of ailments that were stated curable by these magical people. The signs would range from topics such as "get rich quick" to "HIV/AIDS problems" or "barrenness". Or even something so medically reasonable as "snake bites".

Foodwise in Ghana, I was always served far more than I could stomach, and the flavors of the country were okay but not always things I enjoyed eating. I went to an upscale local dining place in the center of Accra called Buka for groundnut soup and banku (mashed up/balled up fermented maize) and found that the food was decent, but I am not quite used to the aftertaste from eating gelatinous balls of carbs. This was a common characteristic of the meals I ate. In particular, locals found it especially amusing to watch the random foreigner swallowing down fufu (mashed up/balled up plantains and cassava), which I found rather tasteless.

I quickly found out I was not eating their food appropriately, though - banku and fufu are not made for chewing, they collect flavor from stews and then are supposed to slide down the esophagus in a rather effortless way of filling up. The feeling of not chewing and gulping down something gooey was odd for me (and a bit confusing)...I admit it was not my favorite thing in the world. That said, there was always ample food in my stomach and I was stuffed most of the time.

I didn't spend a lot of time traveling around Accra - I went to field visit some of our stations nearby in outer Accra areas for a day or two, but I didn't tour the city to see what was going there.

In fact, on my weekend I took a domestic flight to Kumasi to visit my graduate classmate Salley and his family. I understood that he lived about a 3-hour bus ride away from Kumasi, but I found out it was more like 6 or 7 hours on the way to his home (closer to the Cote d'Ivoire border than anywhere else) in a rural part of Berekum. It was very hot there in the rural area with chickens and farms hung out. His family was very sweet, and invited me into their house with open arms and hearts. It was simple living there, with unfinished rooms lingering in their newly-purchased plot of land, but we had a nice time.

I will note that foreigners are not a common occurrence in the area, though -we took a trip to the local market to pick up food for dinner, and I turned somewhat into some kind of walking spectacle for the community. People wanted to touch me and interact with me in some way, though I didn't know how to speak with them (they spoke Twee, I don't). I sipped on an apple juice box while we traveled around the area and it seemed to cause quite a reaction with people who stared at the car; some people started to laugh and run with the car, others pointed in shock. I guess it's not common to see random white folk sucking on juice boxes.

On my way back to Accra for another week of work, my plane got canceled due to rain and we got stuck in Kumasi for a night. We walked around the newly-opened mall in the area, which was pretty much the busiest and most chaotic shopping experience I've witnessed outside of Black Friday in the US. We got nearly smothered in a grocery shop - where people were in full gowns there shopping for cheese and tea - and I nearly wept at the number of people who kept on barreling into me as we looked around.

A final note, Ghanaians are some of the nicest people I think I have worked with yet. Whoever I met or approached was extremely pleasant and accommodating to me while I blundered around the hot, new country.

Puerto Rico

Mr. CT Lawyer and I went to Puerto Rico about 2 months ago with his friends for a birthday celebration. A lot has happened since then (my mom passed as soon as I returned) and it feels like ages ago, but it was such a wonderful trip I want to make sure I document somewhere, so if I forget again that I went, I have this place as a reminder.

I arrived in San Juan late and after a turbulent flight. I wanted badly to sleep in for a long tim - and the rain before, during, and after our trip beckoned me - but we had a flight the next day to another island in the region, the naturally beautiful Vieques. Luckily, when we woke up and looked out the window, the mess of the constant rain and annoying flights were erased by the opulent blue we saw at the resort's beach, and all across the horizon.

The next morning, we grabbed our backpacks and took a cab to the small domestic airport in the middle of town. There, we were placed on scales and assigned one of the 7 seats available on the prop plane we were taking to get to Vieques.

A note to appreciate the tiny prop plane we took - our trip there was a delightful float to Vieques. We were below cloud level the whole time, and our 30-minute trip was a wonderful tour of the coast of San Juan and the dazzling blue waters that surround it. Our older pilot was a real gentleman type (with the coiffed hair and dress all in the appropriate classiness), and our little noisy plane dutifully tooted over to Vieques with his attentive switching of switches and watching the radar screen. The flight back, on the other hand, was turbulent and like being in a toy boat during a storm, rocking and zigzagging in the air while we beat the rain and rough low clouds. One of the ladies on the flight back got sick and I prayed for an emergency landing the whole 30 minutes in the air.

Anyways, Vieques.

Vieques is an island that boasts being the least touched by the modern world in a bunch of places (save the nuclear testing happening on one end of the island that kind of ruined parts of the island off limits to others), and we loved it for that. We arrived at the little airport to a beautiful smell of tropical trees and fresh rain, with the temperature being lower than the main island. We took a cab and drove to Esperanza on the southern side of the island (where the small tourist town was) and admired the lush green going past us as we drove. Vieques has a large National Park on it, but even the area where we were staying felt peacefully rural and low key. The roads aren't repaved because of the stormwater runoff impacting the beaches, and there is not a lot of light pollution. There are (what I believe are wild) horses roaming the streets of the tourist area, chilling out in a truly laid back beachy vibe that encompasses the whole island. For the very brief day we visited, we loved it!

Our Airbnb wasn't much to write about, so I won't. And it was raining a lot while we were there so I won't go too much into the tourism there for the one night we stayed there, for there wasn't much that we did or ate (except at a little joint named El Rancho Choli, where we were given tasty but huge portions of local pork and rice).

We were in Vieques for a very specific reason: bioluminescence. I have wanted to see bioluminescent waters for a while (since I found out about them, probably), and Vieques is supposed to be one of the best places in the world to see them. So when Mr. CT Lawyer mentioned his friends trip to PR, I almost immediately started to research how to kayak in the bioluminescent bays. We were fortunate that we were in the area for the appropriate time of the month (during a new moon), or else all of our trips would have been for naught. And apparently Vieques can fill up quickly, so we were extra lucky we booked it so early on so as to avoid missing out.

The evening we arrived, we went to a green store and waited for a bus to drive us to the bay for the kayaking experience. We had hired a local eco-tour group (Jak Water Sports), which turned out to be at our benefit as they only do small groups and use minimal light while we are on the water. The friendly staff got us ready to go and rocked us down the rocky road to the water, and at 8pm we headed off into our partner kayaks to experience the bioluminescent plankton.

At first, we didn't think much of the water that lit up gently while we touched our paddles onto it, but the further we got from the beach, the water sparkled like stars around us. We had a glass bottom kayak, and we could see the little glowing specks rushing past us like we were traveling through space at great speeds. We put our hands in the water and they would be covered in twinkling stars. I threw water on my partner and his back shimmered. And we had perfect timing because as we started to kayak back to the beach the rain started to downpour; we were able to run into the bus quickly. As the rain started, though, the light flickered in the water as the drops hit the surface each time. Magical is the word.

After our fun bioluminescent adventure, we returned to Old San Juan and became standard tourists. I don't mean that in the sense that we wanted to be that way, but it was just easier to be that way, because of our large group and our resort deal and the way PR works. There is a lot of tourism-based shopping and tours and places in San Juan - it was hard to not be a standard tourist. It was still lovely.

We had a day in Old San Juan, where we did the routine pilgrimage to the old and beautiful fortresses that hug the coast and tried to get a feeling of the town. We enjoyed looking at the waters through the 16th-century porticos and walking around the old architecture of big defense walls. We carefully navigated old cobblestone streets and tried to get lost down alleyways in a small strip of land that is Old San Juan. The town's buildings were vibrant colors and closely packed on the old Spanish streets. It reminded me of New Orleans a bit, only with more commercial than NOLA's artisanal local shops laced in between tourist traps. We were surrounded by shops like Ben & Jerry's, Adidas, and Coach - not normally what I think of when I think of Puerto Rico. We were clearly not the target audience.

Foodwise, this trip was a lot less gastronomic than many of my trips have been in the last few years. Sure there, were a lot of food options, and the pork and seafood were delicious, but we weren't having mind-blowing meals every time. Which was fine! The one thing I wanted to try, mofongo, my partner had tried before I arrived and had proclaimed to never wanting to try it again, so I didn't have a lot of time (or options) to go for it in the 4 days we were there.

BUT! We did have two awesome meals while we were there. Let me tell you about those memorable meals.

• Cafe Cortes Chocobar is my dream-come-true restaurant because they incorporate chocolate into everything. Take, for example, the chocolate-infused ketchup we had with our waffle fries, or our chocolate-spiced ceviche. And, of course, decadent chocolate shakes with chocolate shavings! The place was bustling, and we only got snack foods to hold us over for dinner. There was a line waiting to be seated before us, and it was worth it. I brought home some hot chocolate bars they had, and I have to admit they've already been drunk in entirety.
• Marmalade was our fancy romantic dinner date for the trip (because every trip has a fancy romantic dinner date), and we were both blown away by the meal. We ordered way too much (they offered dinners based on 5, 6, and 7 dishes - we chose 6, and were full to the point of popping), but each dish was delightful and fun. Most of the dishes we picked were rich and flavorful (our mistake), but there were a lot of lighter and fresh dishes as well. I had a very nice sangria, and finished off with creme brulee (my favorite). I had to walk outside for a while to get some air after our filling meal, but we already talk about going to Marmalade again when we return to San Juan.

Finally, a lot of our trip, when we weren't kayaking in Vieques or scaling Old San Juan, was stationed at the resort. We were, after all, there for a friend's birthday, and for mandatory relaxation. We spent a night enjoying a lovely birthday party under a colorful sunset on a vanilla sky, and one day we went to the spa for a treatment and massage after lounging around the beach and pools for a few hours. That's not normally how I travel, but I think this time it was glorious and (given the events that happened after the trip) necessary.