Bonjour, on our last morning at the Outdoor Lodge at Glen Sutton we said our goodbyes. All of the others in our group had elected to stay the optional last night. It was a drizzly, rainy morning when we left. After four days of hard riding we were glad to have the day off. The rain helped to reinforce that feeling. Mary and Mark and Merri also elected to take the day off from biking. We drove in two cars to attend mass at Saint Benoit du Lac Abbey. The monks at the abbey are Benedictine in order, but they celebrate mass using Gregorian Chants. The service, of course, was conducted in French. After mass we and the rest of the congregation descended to the basement and not for just milk and cookies. We purchased dark chocolate coated blueberries and let me tell you they are to die for. They are even mentioned in the Fordor’s guidebook that I had brought. We also bought cheese for lunch.
By the time we all exited the abbey’s basement, Karie, Stu and Nancy had arrived by bike. Phil was doing his own thing that day, so we did not see him. We bade them all farewell and started our journey north to Montreal. On the way, we stopped in the town of Magog. We walked to a park by the lake and enjoyed our cheese and crackers and some of our chocolate covered blueberries for lunch. As we approached Montreal we became ensnared in a horrendous traffic jam. On this rush hour drive we saw the darker side of our Gallic host’s nature.
After finally getting into Montreal, we quickly found where we were going to be staying, the Hôtel de l’Institut or more formally le Institut de tourisme et d’hôtellerie Quebec (ITHQ). It is the school for the training of hotel and restaurant workers in Quebec. The place is very nice and I highly recommend it. One of my Team Kaldis teammates, Christian, who hales from Quebec has an uncle who teaches at l’Institut. We would have tried to look up his uncle, but there was a sign in the lobby indicating that the teachers would not be arriving until after we had left. We ate out that night at a very cheap, but still quite nice Vietnamese restaurant, Bambou Bleu and then walked around Saint Louis Park again, which just happens to be across the street from l’Institut.
The l’Institut is only a couple of blocks south of Anne Ma Souer Anne, where we had stayed the previous weekend. Anne Ma Souer Anne was nice also, just not as nice as l’Institut. Both places are in Le Plateau-Mont-Royal district of Montreal. I also highly recommend that you stay in this part of town. Most of the buildings, like Anne Ma Souer Anne, have the interesting architectural feature of a tall stairway that leads up to what we would call the second floor. This is the main entrance and the second floor is the main floor.