It was good to visit Montreal, not just to see rysmiel, excellent as that was, but for the city itself. I realized soon after arriving that I was soothing homesick parts of myself: walking from the bus to rysmiel's apartment, the air just smelled right. About 90% of that smell was clover, and I'm not sure of the rest—and there's clover out here, too. But Montreal has subway trains, and people handing out free copies of Metro outside the subway stations, and the trees and plants look right. (There are deciduous trees here, too, including my beloved maples, but the mix is different.)

So I figured I might as well indulge that feeling of being back at home, and visit familiar places. I'd have done some of that anyhow, I think, like going back to Au Bulle en Carre for the crepes; I might even have gone to Kam Fung for dim sum by myself on Monday while rysmiel was at work. (Sure, there's less variety than with company, but more variety than in a lot of meals: their excellent sticky rice, a few seafood dumplings, and a stuffed crab claw.) I would have gone to Marche Atwater for fruit and yogurt anyhow, but any other visit I wouldn't have bought apples in July; this time I did, because one shop had the northeastern varieties I like, and a few stored Cortlandt apples (they looked better than the Macintoshes) appealed as much as the berries and champagne grapes and red plums—which I also bought. I eat a lot of fruit this time of year. Rysmiel and I went to Juliet et Chocolat for dessert twice, and I had the chocolate raspberry brownie with a balsamic reduction both times, because it was so good the first time. I may even try to figure out how to make the reduction, which I think would go well with any good chocolate brownie.

What I wasn't homesick for was heat waves, but I got one; Montreal averages cooler than New York City, and I think it was even hotter in New York that weekend, but this was humid and oppressive, and papersky and rysmiel have no air conditioning. During the worst of it, I was lying flat on a bed, wishing the fan was more effective and thinking "rule 1, stay hydrated," because I didn't have much focus for more than that. Fortunately, the Musee de Beaux Arts is air conditioned, and we'd wanted to see their Chihuly exhibit anyhow.

On the way back from lunch after the museum, we stopped at Camellia Sinensis so I could buy some green Darjeeling tea, which they hadn't had in at least two years. I knew from their website that they had gotten it, but I wanted to at least smell the tea before buying. I have now brewed a cup, and it is good. I don't think I can really compare this Happy Valley green Darjeeling [yes, I know, I didn't name the tea garden] with the Selimbong I got years ago, even though I still have little bit I'd been hoarding, just because of the age difference. On the other hand, I might try brewing a cup of each, rather than just tossing the Selimbong or letting it continue to age in my cupboard.

One morning while rysmiel was at work, before the weather got horrible, I made tea and then sat on the balcony with a book, reading and thinking fondly of sitting out there the previous summer, with cattitude, papersky, and rysmiel.

The travel between Seattle and Montreal was long but otherwise not bad. The Seattle-Vancouver leg on Air Canada Express is half an hour in the air in a Dash-8 turboprop. I'm weird: I like the Dash-8. Coming back to Seattle, I had a window just forward of the wing, so I spent a happy half hour looking at ocean and islands and eventually Mount Rainier; you can see at lot more from 12,000 feet than from the heights the big jets go at. That said, the smaller planes are also more subject to turbulence, and at the Vancouver end it's stairs to/from the terminal for those little planes, rather than a ramp like Seattle. Which was two flights of stairs I hadn't thought about when I decided to leave the house with rysmiel Tuesday morning, walk with them to the patisserie, and go back to their house, rather than stay home until it was time to leave for the airport. (They live up about a flight and a half of stairs, and the walk to the patisserie involves a pedestrian underpass, so more stairs. And there were a bunch of stairs in and out of metro stations.) I had a bit of knee pain, but I'm definitely doing better than I was a couple of years ago.

Part of why I went to the patisserie was that there's not much worthwhile food in the domestic departures area at Dorval. So I got a chocolatine to have with tea before I left, then went to the airport with a small leek quiche and an assortment of fruit, so I was all set for lunch and snacks and just bought a cup of tea. I felt downright smug sitting on the plane, with berries and the last of my apples, when the flight attendants came through selling not-very-interesting food.

It would have been nice if someone had told me that my bag was checked through from Montreal to Seattle; on the trip up I had to claim it in Vancouver, take it with me through Customs, and recheck it. I assumed it was the same in the other direction, so and I spent 15 minutes in Vancouver first worrying about where my bag was, then getting an explanation and fretting about whether I would be on time for my flight, since YVR has what seem to be endless corridors leading to US Customs/Immigration. I might even have had time to get a cup of hot tea, instead of a bottle of iced. Ah, well.

The other oddity there was that US Customs is replacing paper forms with a touch-screen system. The agent walked me through using the touchscreen, printed out a form based on what I'd entered there, and threw away the one I'd been handed when I checked my bag at Dorval and filled out in the air (because I thought it would save time).