Le petit déjeuner

My hotel is the reason I ended up coming to Montreal this weekend. It's a small boutique hotel, an easy walk from either the Old City or downtown, and surprisingly inexpensive. I had a free night's stay from hotels.com that was about to expire, so I was looking for somewhere to go; when I saw this hotel I decided it would be Montreal. But while its free breakfast is perfectly adequate -- decent coffee, yogurt, toast, fruit -- it's not very exciting.

So I had a real Montreal breakfast a few hours later in a cafe on the rue Saint-Paul: a crepe slathered with melted cheese and Béchamel sauce, and a cafe au lait served in a bowl.

As we say in English, Yum.

Inside the Palais

There's a section in the movie Bowling for Columbine when Michael Moore investigates the rumor that Canadians don't lock their front doors by simply walking up to random doors and opening them, much to the surprise of the inhabitants.

I don't know how representative a sample that was -- I'd be very surprised if most residents of Montreal or Toronto didn't lock their doors -- but it turns out that they don't lock the Palais des congrès, even though there don't seem to be any exhibitions going on. So here's a picture from the inside. I've been in a black and white photography mood lately but these colors are irresistible.

Saturday reflections

The Intercontinental Hotel in Montreal, reflected in candy colors in the windows of the Palais des congrès convention center across the street. That conical top to the hotel tower looks endearingly Canadian to me; the juxtaposition of old and new, staid and gaudy, seems very Montreal.

I'm only here for the three-day weekend, and I'm not sure how much blogging, or for that matter, photographing, will be taking place. It sounds so easy when you're planning it -- Hey, I'll go to Montreal -- it's only an hour away! It's an hour's flight, that's true, but when you throw in an airport that's under construction, flight delays, and the fact that half of the streets here appear to be closed for repairs, that one hour flight turns out to be the easy part of a seven-hour journey. (At least I didn't leave my passport lying on the kitchen counter.)

Then I walked for hours around the old town and the old port -- there was a festival, and what seemed to be hundreds of food carts along the river (the Fleuve Saint-Laurent, as we call it in these parts) and it was crowded and very hot and I'm exhausted. Dinner consisted of a very good chicken taco with fresh tortillas and ancho sauce and a squeeze of lime eaten at a picnic table in the shade while listening to a jug band play, after an appetizer of two beignets, freshly baked, one with vanilla creme filling and one with chocolate, and I will probably be asleep within the hour.

Urban poetry

Okay, maybe not urban poetry in the sense I generally use, but even after living in New York for decades, I still get a thrill whenever I catch a glimpse of the Statue of Liberty in the harbor.

So here's an old picture from her baby book -- 1884 in Paris,  when she was still in pieces and her copper skin hadn't yet acquired that green patina.

Astronomy Tuesday

This is the galaxy cluster known as Abell 370.

Astronomers had noticed the large arc in the upper right corner of this image decades ago, and in the mid-Eighties it was identified as the probable result of a gravitational lens. The Hubble finally made it possible to see this cluster in detail and confirm the hypothesis; the cumulative gravity of the cluster of galaxies acts like a giant lens, distorting the light that passes through it. That large arc of light is actually two perfectly ordinary galaxies behind Abell 370 that appear distorted when seen from this side. So it's not quite like seeing gravity, but it's pretty darn close.

Click to enlarge and you can see numerous other arcs and distortions of more distant galaxies seen through the lens.

Image Credit: NASA, ESA, and the Hubble SM4 ERO Team and ST-ECF

Sunday bird blogging

These lovely creatures insisted on hanging back modestly behind the branches, as though pink birds are a common sight anywhere, and pink birds with huge orange and white crests occur anywhere except Australia and certain drug-assisted fever dreams. They're pink cockatoos, or Major Mitchell's cockatoos, and like any sensible creature in the heat and humidity of Kuranda, they preferred to remain in the shade instead of strutting and showing off their unlikely splendor in the sun so I could get a decent picture of them.

Even so, that is one impressive cockatoo. Well done, Major Mitchell!

Saturday reflections

Glass floor at the Queen Victoria Building in Sydney.

I've managed to overcome many of my phobias, but there's still something about walking on a surface that I can see through -- glass or grate -- that makes me queasy. I just try not to look down.

But if there are interesting reflections like this, then I don't really have a choice.

Urban poetry

When Bad Things happen to Good Fruit: bananas for sale at a sidewalk stand during a heat wave, and turning from overripe but still good for baking into disgusting slime missiles so rapidly you could actually see it happening.

Astronomy Tuesday

When Galaxies Collide!

They do it on a galactic scale, so from our perspective it's very very big and very very slow. Galaxies are mostly empty space; it's not as though stars slam into each other and everything blows up. They slide a little closer to each other and gravity shifts; gases eddy and coalesce and maybe one star leeches some mass off another as they pass.

These two galaxies are part of Stephan's Quintet, a galaxy group 300 million light years away in Pegasus. While the ongoing collisions of four of the five galaxies in the group might show a distinct lack of anything humans would classify as drama, they're photogenic enough to have snagged a major movie role -- in the beginning of It's a Wonderful Life, the angels who discuss the life and times of George Bailey are played by none other than Stephan's Quintet.



Image Credit: Hubble Legacy Archive, NASA, ESA; Processing and Copyright: Jose Jimenez Priego

Sunday bird blogging

This is a pukeko, the New Zealand variant of the Australasian swamphen, hanging out in the swampy grounds in Rotorua.

One odd fact about New Zealand: except for a few species of bat, there are no indigenous land mammals there. As a result, many of the native birds are flightless, and even the birds that can fly build their nests on the ground because they had no ground-based predators. But the Maoris brought rats and dogs, and Europeans brought all the usual small mammals, and nesting on the ground, or being unable to fly, is no longer a safe lifestyle for birds and most of the native species are now endangered.

Saturday reflections

Bonus post -- another set of reflections with the concrete blocks behind the glass. So many layers, so many textures.

Geometries

I've taken many pictures of this and I never get tired of it: the skylights in the atrium at Equitable Tower, with the building looking like a walkway that ends abruptly in cloud.