Montreal Jazz Festival

Friday after work, I picked up Craig & Jesse, and we started driving north. Got through New Hampshire and found ourselves in Vermont. I never realized how beautiful Vermont landscape really is. I was having trouble driving on the highway because I was so taken back by the scenery that we were going through. Hours of awe.
I felt like I could love this place.
We got off of the highway somewhere in upstate Vermont to a small town in the middle of nowhere called Jericho. We were picking up Aaron, a friend of James from NYU that I had yet to meet. His town was adorable small, and his house was delightful. Aaron is an amazing guy, so I was glad we got to pick him up for the trip. We continued north.
Crossing the border for Canada was interesting (and disturbing) because I didn't quite understand just how french the province Quebec really is. It's french. Very french. Think, the signs are all in french, and people only speak in french. That was a shocker. I was so glad I can understand french.
Aaron guided us into an interesting driving around and into Montreal. After confusedly breaking several quebecois driving laws, we finally found the hostel and a parking place on the road.
The hostel was pretty dumpy. Basically, it provided us bunk beds, and 2 mostly working bathrooms, that we shared with roughly 2o other guests. Not the cleanest place I've ever stayed at, but whatever, it wasn't a homeless shelter, so I can't complain. It wasn't terrible, and it was cheap. And the location was great.
This was my first time in Montreal, and overall I have to say I enjoy that city. It's very clean, and reminds me of Boston in atmosphere and cleanliness. I like that it's an island, and that it has several assorted cultural quarters.
We set our stuff in the hostel and went for a walk to check out what was happening at the Jazz Festival. We found ourselves in a crowd watching a band playing some swing, which was fun to listen to, but I was more compelled to go for a walk. Aaron and I walked around the Jazz Festival to see what was going on, and so I could get my barings.
The Jazz Festival overall was not what I was expecting. I thought I would find myself in club after club, listening to some smokey blues or a jazz club band, with slow crooners and cocktail dresses. However, none of the sort. It was indeed a festival, and most of the music we heard was funk, be-bop, and kind of mainstream jazz. They were obviously catering to a more mass mentality, and they had LOTS of overpriced merchandise to sell in big corporate tents. I did enjoy myself, though.
The four of us started walking more around the Latin Quarter and around some busy strips...I guess we were sight-seeing. Ended up in some trippy goth/metal bar for about 10 minutes, and quickly made a getaway out. We ended up at the water front in the Old Montreal quarter, which was breath taking. The boardwalk was lightly lighted in blues and greens, and there was a park in the middle of the water. Jesse & Craig went back to sleep, while Aaron and I just walked around the waterfront and talked. It was a lovely night, and I was with good company. A great beginning to a weekend trip, as well as a friendship.
Finding ourselves exhausted, we hobbled back to the hostel and crashed, with 10 other strangers.
After a restless night, I got up to find out that there were only 2 bathrooms for all 20+ of us in the hostel area, which was entertaining, to say the least. After a slow morning, we headed out to the festival under the bright hot sun. Needless to say, I acquired a sunburn.
Dixie jazz is fun only for some time, so Aaron and I opted to go walk around some more of the city and to visit McGill University. Closed campuses are odd to me now, being at NYU, so it was odd. Lots of green. Small campus. I liked it a lot, but I was not in love with it. I could see myself going to school there, though. Walked around and grabbed some lunch at Tim Hortons, which is an experience all unto itself.
We walked back to the festival and crashed under some shade for a while before we went to go see a jazz film.
Let me explain this film that us kids went to go see. The schedule said "Ain't Misbehaving ", which I was sure was an old film or documentary, and I knew was a show....we find out that they only wanted to show about a 5 minute 1930's clip of the song, which led into a movie called "Novecento". The film was with a home camera, 1.5 hours long, and all in french. To top it off, it consisted of 1 poor actor who talked to the camera the entire time on an obviously fake boat set, with a fake jazz band "playing" in the background. I understood bits and pieces of the storyline, but most of the time I was confused. The rest of the guys hadn't a clue what was going on. The only sentence I could fully understand was, "La terre est un grand bateau. C'est trop grand pour moi." Translation: The earth is one big boat/ship. It's too big for me. Needless to say, it was hilarious, and I fully enjoyed myself.
Grabbed a french dinner with salmon and esgargot. Went to go watch some more sets, Namori & the Electro Deluxe. They were good, long, but enjoyable. Between the shows, we stopped to watch a modern-ish interprettive-ish dance group put on some french scifi/fantastical goth show about fire, sacrifice, and other assorted splendids. It was very fun to watch, and the dance moves were often impressive.
During the Electric Shox set, Aaron and I walked again. We walked into a crowd for another set for a Mexican band, Sr.Mandril. It was a fun, clubbing-beat band. And fireworks starting lighting up the eastern sky. It was great!
We called it an early night, so we headed back to the dorms.
I felt like relaxing on a bench outside the hostel. A Japanese girl came out from the door and started talking to me. At first, I wasn't really willing to talk, but we got into a great conversation about travel and music. She was a fun person to talk to. We got approached by 2 sets of guys, both of whom tried to speak french at first, then attempted english, and failed. By 2:30, though, I had hit my dimensia mode, and headed to sleep. I was woken up by a few drunk guys from Toronto who were rooming with us. Really cool guys, we had some fun times talking to them (especially when waiting for toilets), but they drank like fish.
The next day was lowkey. We checked out of the hostel, and walked over to one of the McGill strips of shops & whatnots. We ended up shopping a bit, and found ourselves at a bistro/pub called Mars Venus. We stayed there to watch the World Cup Final (Italy vs. France). France played very well, personally I think much better than Italy. It was such a good game! After being tied from the beginning to sudden death, though (and after 2 of France's best were taken off field; Henry for tiredness, Zidane for headbutting an Italian & getting kicked out?), Italy won in penalty kicks. Montreal blew up. Half of the people were walking the streets depressed from a loss, half of the people were rioting on the street in celebration for Italy. I mean rioting. Some guy was waving an Italian flag in the middle of an intersection, intentionally hitting cars with it.
It was a quiet, tired, drive home. But a good time was had by all, methinks.