Truck Rest

Archive for September, 2010

To get about as European as you can get in North America, visit the great city of Montreal. There, they speak French, but are much nicer than their unwelcoming Parisians in Paris. Montreal is distinctly French, not in terms of sites, but in terms of culture. Montreal is Paris’ mini-me sans the Eifel Tower.

All the directional signs are in French and are rarely in both English and French. If you don’t speak French and you’re staying at any of the luxury hotels Montreal provides their visitors, let them know immediately that you don’t speak French, otherwise they will think you know French and will continue talking to you in French. Once they know you only speak English, they will speak English with a great French accent. It’s not that they are like their counterparts in France; it’s just that French is the official language of Montreal.

Montreal is so Parisian that there are bicycle stations on almost every corner of the city that you can rent and most restaurants serve a 5-course meal. The city has a very homey feel to it, so much so, it leaves an impression that you are actually in Europe. During the summertime, there’s a festival almost every weekend. If you happen to be visiting the city during the summer months, try to catch the Festival of Laughs ; it’s one of the most fun festivals of Montreal.

Montreal has numerous parks of varying sizes to be enjoyed by residents and visitors alike. In addition to providing beautiful gardens and scenery, the Parcs offer year-round recreational activities. The easiest to access from the main Montreal hotels are Parc Lafontaine and Parc du Mont Royal. LaFontaine is known for outdoor theatre, boules, and baseball in the summer and lake ice skating during the winter months. Parc du Mont Royal overlooks the entire city and has amazing views of not only downtown Montreal, but the Eastern Townships and the Saint Lawrence River. It contains hiking and bike trails to take full advantage of the various prospects.

For those seeking beach activities, Parc Jean-Drapeau is situated on two islands in the St. Lawrence while Parc Maisonneuve is home to the Jardin Botanique de Montreal, one of the world’s largest botanical gardens with 16 themed greenhouses and gardens, an Insectarium, and the First Nations Garden. Parc Jeanne-Mance features baseball diamonds, tennis courts, beach volleyball courts, and a soccer/football pitch. In the winter, there’s an ice skating rink. Parc de i’lle-de-la-Visitation is a regional park the offers a cycling tour along the Riviere-des-Prairies. The site of the city’s first water reservoir is Square Saint-Louis with beautiful trees and a charming fountain.

Those willing to venture further out can explore Parc Angrignon and Parc des Rapids in Le Sud-Ouest or Parc Rene-Levesque which features river surfing and extensive bike paths.

The art scene in Scottsdale is one that behaves according to waves, like any art scene possibly, with ebbs and flows that respond to many unpredictable factors. Yet for all the urban centers in the metropolitan Phoenix area, Scottsdale has always enjoyed a bit more economic activity than other areas. The luxury hotels Scottsdale offers are one sign of its vital presence, where visitors come from all over the world. Some come to enjoy the lovely climate when the winters are hard most everywhere else, and some come to see the art.

There are local and international artists whose works are represented by some of Scottsdale’s most exciting galleries, and for new developments in contemporary art, Chiaroscuro has a curatorial staff whose eyes are set on the future, and this makes it a lovely place to visit in the present.

One might have the chance to see an exhibition by the Phoenix-based Paticia Clark . She works as a professor at ASU, and her video installations have been shown widely. Her main theme is Cuba, which is something of an obsession for this visionary artist, and her work often ties local concerns with those of the island off the coast of Florida, and the intersections reveal hidden traces of common and uncommon languages. It, too, speaks of the future, firmly and with compassion to those occupying a very complex and compelling present moment.