Ten Fun Facts About Montreal by MGG

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This past weekend I was in Montreal for a bachelor party. Here are 10 fun facts about Montreal:

 

1. Montreal Sucks.

We had a fun time but it didn’t have much to do with Montreal. Sometimes people asked me if I had fun in college, and I usually say, “Yes, but it had nothing to do with my college.” That’s kind of what happens in Montreal. I’ve been there twice now, and I’ve gotten drunk and gone to strip clubs. If you like drinking and strippers, you can certainly get drunk and see strippers in Montreal. But you can do that anywhere. Being drunk and seeing naked boobies is fun, but it has nothing to do with Montreal. In fact, the bars and strip clubs are kinda lame. There were redeeming characteristics, but overall Montreal kinda sucks.

2. Montreal has bountiful pickles and French fries.

If you go eat somewhere in Montreal, they really don’t fuck around with portion sizes for pickles and French fries. We went out to a nice steak dinner (Dorothy Mantooth did not attend) on Saturday night and there were huge bowls of pickles on the table that they constantly refilled. And they were awesome pickles. I also got sandwiches twice that came with a huge portion of mediocre French fries. But, there were a lot of them. Perhaps even more interestingly, at the nice steak dinner, they put out a bowl of bacon bits.  Why? I do not know. But, we put it on our bread and it was fucking fantastic. Pickles, Fries, and Bacon Bits, all in the win column for Montreal. Unfortunately, if those 3 food items are all I can put in the win column; your culinary society is in trouble.

3. Every stripper in Montreal is from Montreal and not hotter than the strippers in America.

I found this odd because strippers in America are rarely locals. Every single stripper told us they were from Montreal. Not a single Russian or American in the bunch. Weird. To dispel a common rumor that my mom brought up, she asked me, “My co-workers want to know if you went to Montreal because they have the best strippers there?” There is a lot of strip clubs in Montreal, and we went to a pretty big/popular one on St. Catherine Street called “Sex Express”. The girls were not that hot, and they were actually fairly annoying even for strippers. One told me very bluntly that I was “coming upstairs with her to heaven!” I told her that I would be sitting in the booth drinking my $9 beer, thank you very much. I eventually got a lap dance from a 26 year old girl named Alexia who was decent, but I shit you not during the lap dance the strip club played “No More I Love You’s” by Annie Lennox. It was the definition of awkward and unintentionally hilarious. By the way I told my mom that I went to Montreal to celebrate French provincial culture as well as my friend’s nuptials. She probably bought that.

4. The Montreal Casino (Casino de Montreal) Sucks.

This is by far the worst casino I’ve ever been to (twice). The floor-men at table games openly root against you, the setup is awful, you can’t drink on the casino floor, and the casino is totally isolated from the rest of the city. I wandered around for a while before I put $100 on the craps table and proceeded to lose $99 in about 7 seconds. I threw craps about 4 times myself and the casino employees were laughing and saying “nice throw” etc. In addition to this, the casino is about 7 different floors, and there’s no real reason why. Slot machines are randomly splashed around on different floors, amidst a maze of escalators and elevators. One cool thing was they had electronic poker, which is the same thing as real poker, but there are no cards, chips, or dealers, and you’re just using a computer screen to play against the people at your table. It took me a while to figure out, but it was fun. But there is no free booze for gaming. Also it’s a 15 minute ride from anywhere else in Montreal to go to the casino. “Casino de Montreal” sucked last time I was there, and it sucked this time, too.

5. Canadian Beer is delicious, yet expensive.

We went to a local “Irish Pub” and beers were $7.50. In lieu of the exchange rate, this sucked (see below). And it wasn’t just this one place. The standard price for beers was $7-8, and the cheapest we paid for any beer was $8.99 pitchers at some random place that we were too drunk to drink at. Cheapest bottle of beer we had was $5 at the steak house. I didn’t get very drunk any night that I was in Montreal and still spent about $400 over two nights eating and going out to bars and drinking moderately.

6. The exchange rate for currency sucks.

The exchange rate is pretty much even money. When I went to Montreal about 5 years ago, and you were drinking a $7 beer, the exchange rate was about 1.5:1, so the beers were only about $4.50 American. Now, they did not adjust the prices at all, and the beers are still $7. Stupid American income.

7. The process of getting to Montreal sucks.

Thursday I took a bus from NJ to NY, and then the train from NY to CT to meet up with the bachelor. Friday morning we took a 12 seat passenger van with 8 total dudes to Montreal, and made it there in a little over 6 hours. Sunday, we got into the van at 10:30 am in Montreal. I walked into my house in New Jersey at 10:30pm. Not only that, I spent about $200 getting there to contribute to renting the van and paying for gas.

8. There are some very cool bars in Montreal, although the expensive-ness is a hindrance to that coolness.

Below is a picture of Crescent Street, which is packed with like 20 bars. 20 very expensive, overcrowded bars. If some of the bars were like 20 decibels quieter, 4 dollars less expensive for a beer, and not as full of disgusting slobs, this would be an incredible bar scene. Instead, most of the bars we went to on Crescent Street on Saturday night were deafeningly loud, had $7.50 pints of beer, and an overabundance of girls who weighed a deuce and a half wearing scantily clad dresses. Also, said girls were dancing on the dance floor to Timbaland. It was not an environment conducive to drinking $7.50 beers. It was an environment conducive to going home early to wake up for the awful car ride home.

 

9. They speak French in Montreal.

Seriously. Not only does Montreal have the BALLS to use a language that I don’t speak, but the French word for “states”, like United States, is “etats”, which is state spelled backward, so that’s kind of a thinly veiled ‘fuck you’ if you ask me. Also it made me feel dumb that every Montrealianiteoan spoke both French and English. Don’t mock me with your bilingual superiority!!!

10. Border cops entering Montreal are awesome. The border cops re-entering the US: Not so much.

On our way across the border, the cop joked around with us and even gave us the names of some strip clubs to go to, and let us through within 5 minutes. On the way home, we got pulled over by customs and they used a drug sniffing dog to search our totally inconspicuous white 12 passenger cargo van. They made us stand outside and tried to play mind games with us, like one of the cops telling us that the van “reeked of dope”, and asking “when was the last time that weed was in the van???” It was really dumb. I understand that they are just doing their job, and our van looked shady as hell, but would we really bring 8 guys to smuggle weed? Plus I had to go to the bathroom. It was number three. Shaving. It was a shaving emergency. (yes, that was a Sifl and Olly reference,  you’re welcome.) 

So, in conclusion, I had a good time in Montreal but it was mostly because I was with fun people who wanted to get crazy. Montreal did not necessarily facilitate our good time, it just so happened to be the soil that our fun happened on. As a side note, if you want to go to a really nice city and shop, and go to bars for one beer, Montreal is a beautiful place. However, for a drinking/gambling/strippers vacation, I would suggest you consider visiting Brew Dawgz’ underground “Mint Julip Shack/Go-Go-Rama” located conveniently in the heart of Brooklyn, NY. Try the clam strips!!!!

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Filed under Booze, MGG, Strippers, Travel

Tags: canada, life, montreal, pickles, Strippers, Travel