Sleeping City in the Sun

It's a gloriously bright sun-shining Sunday, but Montreal is asleep recuperating from the city's 8th annual "Nuit Blanche" (White Night) festivities. The whole town went nocturnal: museums open until 3am, music on the streets, open air swimming at the Bonventure Hilton, and over a hundred art installations.

I have a hard time staying up uber late, but despite urge to crawl under the covers at 11pm, Craig  forced me to put on long underwear and venture out into the cold in search for adventure. We caught one of the free "Nuit Blanche" shuttle buses and headed to the Redpath museum for its famed 'midnight flash light' tours. Having missed the opportunity to explore this historic McGill museum in past years, I was excited to see dinosaur bones and stuffed creatures in the dark. But alas, after standing in line for 20 mins in negative 15, we were turned away due to over capacity. Oh well, next year.

We walked down McGill College to Indigo bookstore where my friend Darryl and his The River Beauty Band were performing. I love coffee table books, so it was fun listening to live music while turning pages of Andrew Zuckerman's photography, travel guides in Scotland and Marilyn Moore retrospectives.

Our last stop was the McCord Museum of History, where the party was packed with grinning adults. You see, there is a large interactive toy exhibition with a massive homage to Lego. There were even stations set up for play, so visitors constructed DNA coils, an Eiffel tour and even a Where's Waldo. On display were Lego replicas of the Millennium Falcon, the Twin Towers and a whole Lego city. Enough to bring out the child in everyone. 

We were home around 2:30am. A good effort on our parts, but I'm sure the celebrations continued until sunrise this morning.

I sometimes wish I was a better party person. The night intrigues me, but I have such a hard time staying awake past midnight. I suppose it doesn't help that my days are also packed with activity and it's near impossible for me to sleep in. (It's 8:30am and here I am typing away my thoughts!)

Yesterday afternoon, I did my fourth consecutive day of lunar series in the Lululemon window on Ste Catherine Street (more on that later) and then I co-hosted a cinema night at Om West, which was pretty cool.  We projected a film called "Time Wave 2013", a really interesting doc about the Incas and the prophecies surrounding 2012, the end of the Mayan Calender. Curious stuff...

That's it for now. I'm off to enjoy the rest of my day off-- maybe brunch on Laurier with coffee (a rare treat), followed by window shopping around my Mile End hood, then Moon Salutes!