Montreal Trip

I am finally back in California after a wonderful trip to Montreal.  Montreal is a great city.  It was actually recommended as a summer vacation place in Cosmopolitan magazine a few months ago.  It has a distinct European feel (french is the dominant language) and the architecture is absolutely gorgeous.  I spent a lot of the trip at the chemistry conference at the Palais des Congres des Montreal, which is on plenty of top 10 things to see in Montreal lists.

You can't tell by the picture, but it was incredibly humid outside.

My boyfriend and I got to explore a lot of Montreal and experience a lot of great food (and beer).  We definitely went to Schwartz's for smoked meat sandwiches, and I will admit it was the best smoked meat I've ever had.  We also went to Le Saint Bock and Les 3 Brasseurs which were both excellent breweries.  We also found excellent fondue at Juliette et Chocolat.

Two types of chocolate and tons of fresh fruit for under $15 = awesome deal.

 We also found this butane molecule statue at the Montreal Science Centre.

As a chemist, I must inform you that the bond angles for this butane molecule are completely wrong.

Although the trip was awesome, it was a bit tiring.  Montreal is 3 hours ahead of California, and since my boyfriend had a presentation at 8:40am on Monday morning (we arrived on Friday night) I pretty much survived that day of the conference thanks to Red Bull, and the rest of the conference thanks to Diet Coke.  The conference was great and I got to meet a lot of chemists and see a lot of presentations.

The only huge downside was the trip back to San Francisco on Thursday evening, and showcases why I hate flying.  We left for the airport at 2:35pm for our flight at 5:00pm, and it took over an hour to get there via cab (google maps predicted 32 min with traffic, but the traffic was absolutely ridiculous).  Once we got there we found that the line for Air Canada for baggage drop-off was incredibly long.  After that line, we found the line for security was even longer.  My boyfriend and I opted into the ion hand testing to get into the shorter security line, but even then we didn't get through security until 4:25pm.  I was still in my conference clothes, and didn't even have time to change into jeans from my skirt.  Our plane was delayed to Toronto, but not long enough to justify changing.

By the time we got to Toronto, it was already 6:40pm and our flight to San Francisco was leaving at 7:55pm.  It took 25 min to get our bags at the US connections baggage claim, then we had to wait in a 20 min line to talk to a customs agent, then a 10 min line for security.  At this point, we ran to our gate where we noticed that boarding was just starting, so I ran to the bathroom to change out of the stupid skirt (I'm not even posting it in my conference outfit post, I really dislike it).  I changed as quickly as I could, and when I got out of the bathroom almost everybody had loaded so we were one of the last people to get onto the plane.

We were warned about storms over Illinois but that we would "take a wide berth" around them.  Well, we did not.  The plane was undergoing extreme turbulence, and lightning could be seen right outside of the plane.  We flew into a cloud, and all of a sudden we could hear the plane engines powering down while the cabin lighting turned off.  I was certain that we were going down.  Thankfully the pilot got us out of it, but I couldn't relax for the rest of the flight, especially since there was lots of turbulence until we were flying over the Utah/Nevada area.  I have never been so happy to be on the ground in my life, and I really wanted to give the pilot a hug.

Although, it could have been worse.  If we flew back to San Francisco on the direct flight from Montreal Friday morning, we would have had a broken windshield and an unexpected stopover to contend with.