FIRST DAY WITH ROAD SCHOLAR

I hate this name, Road Scholar, but Elderhostel is trying to revamp itself to attract younger customers. I don't mind the concept, learning while traveling, but it just sounds so noisy tooth, like we thought we were Rhodes Scholars.  

John hurt his shin out gardening before we left, and it has become infected.  Looked pretty bad yesterday, but the antibiotic cream, $7 for a tiny tube of the house brand, and band aids $2 for eight strips, seem to have made it look a bit better this morning.  We seem to have these health dramas every time we leave town. I think it's because travel is stressful for John.

This morning we had a history of Canada, covered thoroughly in about 2 hours -- well, not thoroughly, they didn't cover all of Canada forever, just cut it down to Quebec province after about 1800 or so.  Fitting in depth for Road Scholars such as ourselves.  LOL.  

After that we had a walking tour of the old town.  Nothing we hadn't seen, but these statues were explained.  The Anglo man is looking at Notre Dame, the symbol of the French, with his nose in the air. The woman is French, and looking at the stock market, the symbol of England with her nose in the air.  

After the walking tour we had an included lunch, which was a very thin crust pizza, dare I say a California-type pizza.  Like something we'd get at Hot Italian.  Except we each got a whole pizza.  I'm assuming they took us to this place because they serve American-size portions. I thought it was too salty, but then it had olives, feta, and some mushrooms that also were pickled and salty.  Not to say I didn't eat it.

For our free time John wasn't feeling well, so I took the subway and went to the jardins botanique de Montreal where in addition to the lovely regular stuff, they have a mosaic show.  Mosaics are sort of like topiary, in that they are alive and growing, but they aren't planted in the ground.  Instead they are growing out of moss and growing medium which is put in the middle of a form for them to grow on.  So they are also something like a Rose Bowl float, except they have to stay alive for four months.  

I'm just putting in some of the pictures.  

You get the drift. 

Our final event for the day was one of those events tours put together to make you think you've been to a musical performance, but this one was really good. Sax and guitar playing jazz in an art gallery.