bonjour, montreal

client meetings brought me to montreal today! it was my third time there - my first trip was similarly for work back in the winter of 2009 (soooo cold) and the second trip was with a girlfriend for fun in july of 2010. 

a 6:30am flight meant a 4:45am wakeup (snooze snooze), which isn't the greatest way to start the day, but a long, uphill walk in crispy cool montreal in my BIRKS after arriving helped to wake me up! yes, montreal is full of HILLS - how did i forget this? the meetings went well i think - canadian clients always seem to greet you with warmth, which i appreciate.

and for the third time, air canada managed to get me on an earlier return flight and some of our recent training came in handy at the airport. i am becoming a BIG fan of air canada for their service!

due to our busy meeting schedule, the only photo i was able to snap in montreal was my breakfast, which isn't that unfortunate since it was at tim horton's :) i got the maple glaze donut, a small tim horton's coffee with milk, and a bag of the coarse grind since we finished our most recent supply of stumptown.

tim horton's breakfast of champs

best thing: walking through montreal with my birkenstocks! i love seeing a city by walking, but not when it's in 4" heels! thinking back to my first work trip to montreal in the winter of 2009 - there was snow everywhere and i was having trouble keeping up with the salesperson due to his giant strides, on top of it all, was dodging piles of snow and walking uphill on sidewalks in  heels! eek. smartened up this time and wore my black birkenstock gizeh sandals (my favorite shoe of 2014 btw) for the airports and the long, uphill 3/4 mile walk to the first meeting. the scenery looks great when you aren't agonizing over pain shooting from your feet.

worst thing: "prime rib" hamburger at the keg. i'm not going to write too much about this because it was a low point of my day. we brought clients to a somewhat fancy restaurant which had the worst 'prime rib' hamburger ever. when you bit into it, it felt like a pulverized who-knows-what-sort-of-meat (no taste).

smile: one of my clients in montreal, helene, made me smile. i requested a quick coffee with her as not to take up too much of her time, and she led me into a conference room with her pen and notebook with a page full of questions prepared. i had to break out the deck and we spent a full hour discussing indexes and i was a few minutes late to my next mtg! lol, so much for grabbing a quick one.