This morning I located a post office counter (hurray! the internet is a wonderful thing, and works much better than people) inside a drugstore in one of those underground places, and was able to buy stamps even though it's Sunday.
Following that success I went to the museum (Musée des Beaux Arts de Montréal). I started with a very charming exhibition of Christmas trees decorated by various community organizations - a slightly darkened hall with them all lined up in rows, all with little white lights on them, so that as you walk in through the atrium (the Hall of Mirrors) you glimpse hundreds of little lights through the glass-panelled doors. Then I went upstairs to the modern Canadian art. Should you find yourself passing by, I recommend that you take a look at Philip Surrey's Night (1942) amongst the paintings there, and also at the Inuit art room which has some fantastic carvings. Then I saw everything else, of which there is a lot, and it's good stuff. Most importantly, I revisited the Barry Flanagan statue in the entrance hall, a very smooth and classical-looking horse with an altogether more wild and animated cougar sitting side-saddle atop it.
Goodness. Look at that. It seems that there is one in the Setagaya Art Museum. I used to live near there, but I don't remember seeing it. Not that I'd heard of Barry Flanagan at the time - in fact, it was the following year that I was so struck by the Nijinsky Hare in the National Museum of Wales. It was on display in the café, and you could drink your coffee while looking at it, which I did at every opportunity I could find. There's a Small Nijinski Hare in the Montreal museum too.
By the time I'd finished in the museum it had started to rain outside, gently as I walked back past my lodgings, and then in buckets once I was further away. As I was walking up Rue Saint-Denis past all of the interesting little shops that line it I thought - wouldn't it be good if one of these upcoming shops turned out to be a hat shop? And lo! There was a hat shop. Now, that would never happen in Denver. There aren't streets full of interesting little shops, for one thing, and there aren't any hat shops (which always seems strange to me - as well as being cold in winter, it's sunny all year round, we're right up there in the sky next to the sun and we all know about the increase in the incidence of skin cancer. So why is it so difficult to buy a decent hat?). I am now the proud owner of two new hats, and can cast off the black fleece one I hate so much but have been wearing for the past couple of years. Even a new hat wasn't enough to keep off the rain, though, and by the time it was running past my ears and soaking in through my knees and through my toes, I decided it was time to call it a day. I bought some bread and cheese and olives and wine and came back to my room.
Now, this B&B is pretty nice, but it has two drawbacks so far. First, the wall between my room and that of the man across the hall is not so thick, and every night he has his television turned up loud until late (I'm cursed! Who did this to me? Who decreed that I should never have another peaceful night until... until what? Tell me, and I'll willingly do what is required. Fetching water from the well at the end of the world? Lining a stable with feathers each from a different bird? Getting the sword of the light from the Giant of the North?); and secondly, though I know we're allowed to put food on the guest-shelf in the fridge (and to cook too, if we're clean and careful), it turns out that the fridge has a big combination lock on it. So we can only access it during office hours, then? What good is that? What good is it to my Roquefort, currently suppurating in my warm bedroom?
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