As I have done since I've done TC diaries, I'm going to subject you to a sampling of the photos I took while on vacation last week, in Quebec City and in Montreal. So get out the NoDoz. From under the whir of the slide projector, you'll note that the lights are being dimmed.
But First, A Word From Our Sponsor:
Top Comments recognizes the previous day's Top Mojo and strives to promote each day's outstanding comments through nominations made by Kossacks like you. Please send comments (before 9:30pm ET) by email to topcomments@gmail.com or by our KosMail message board. Just click on the Spinning Top™ to make a submission. Look for the Spinning Top™ to pop up in diaries posts around Daily Kos.
Make sure that you include the direct link to the comment (the URL), which is available by clicking on that comment's date/time. Please let us know your Daily Kos user name if you use email so we can credit you properly. If you send a writeup with the link, we can include that as well. The diarist poster reserves the right to edit all content.
Please come in. You're invited to make yourself at home! Join us beneath the doodle...
|
So we began our journey by going (as we almost always do) to the Old Songs Festival near Albany New York on the last full weekend of June. It's my favorite folk music festival, and this year's lived up to it's usual standard. The only photos I took at the festival were of a carnival organ. First, see the front, and through a door in the back, you can see where the music is coming from. The guy who played the thing called it among the early forms of digital music.
After the festival, we took off for Quebec City. It's a very lovely and old city. The old portion of the city is surrounded by old-fashioned walls in order to protect it from, um, us, of course. Here are some photos of the walls.
And here's a view of a newer part of the city from the top of the wall.
The streets of the old city are narrow, though in the walled portion, they are still open to cars. The old buildings are charming.
There is a portion of the old city outside the walls, by the river, which I believe is even older than what's inside the walls. Here's Notre Dame des Victoire in the square of the lower city.
There were a couple of trompe l'oeil paintings on the sides of buildings in this part of the city. Here's what I thought was the most interesting.
Climbing back up to the walled portion of the city, I got this shot of the Hotel Frontenac (where we did not stay, by the way).
From the vantage point of the hotel, there are marvelous views of the St. Laurence River.
Our first morning in Quebec, because it was rainy, we went to the Museum des beaux arts, which had this interesting sculpture near its entrance.
There was a show in the museum about the work of women surrealist artists called In Wonderland, which was really excellent.
Enough of Quebec City! I've got lots more, but at some point, we need to move on to Montreal.
In Montreal we stayed at a B&B in the gay district, which is called the Village. This is on an 8 or 10 block section of Rue Ste. Catherine which in the summer is limited to pedestrian traffic. Cafes and bars install decks that spill out nearly to the street, where everything is going on at once. I think I mentioned that we arrived coincidentally (and completely unplanned) with the start of Montreal's Jazz Festival. As it happened, there was also an art festival going on in the Village, so there were canvas tents placed along the street where artists could offer their wares.
We spent our first full day in Montreal at the botanical garden. While I don't want to spend too much time on this, there are a few shots I'd like to share. Below is a bonsai tree that was listed as being 445 years old.
They had what seemed like an unusually large collection of bonsai trees. Below is one of their flower gardens, though it's kind of hard to see any actual blooms.
Here's a shot from the Chinese garden.
Across the street from the botanical garden is the Olympic Stadium from when Montreal hosted the Summer Olympics back in 1976. It was a boondoggle that never worked the way it was supposed to, and I think the city still hasn't paid of its debt.
Next day, we walked around the old city: more narrow cobblestone streets:
There were two weddings going on in Notre Dame, so all I could get was a shot of the outside.
Finally, we climbed Mont Royale and got a few shots of the city from above.
Okay, so the lights are coming up again, and we shut down the slide projector. And that means it's time for... the comments!
TOP COMMENTS
July 6, 2012
Thanks to tonight's Top Comments contributors! Let us hear from YOU
when you find that proficient comment.
From your humble diarist:
In terrypinder's recommended diary "Vouchers can be used for Muslim Schools? OOPS!", sayitaintso starts a thread imagining all the possible non-Christian religions that could start schools and collect taxpayer money through vouchers, all of which would give the good Christians who passed this legislation a bad case of heartburn.
And while we're on the subject of religion, in weatherdude's recommended diary Church of Scientology Allegedly Leading Campaign To Censor Web Comments, Claudius Bombarnac starts a funny thread about somebody we're not supposed to know about, while JesseCW asks a pertinent question.
|
TOP PHOTOS
July 5, 2012
Enjoy jotter's wonderful PictureQuilt™ below. Just click on the picture and it will magically take you to the comment that features that photo. Have fun, Kossacks!
|
[