Bonjour

As I descended into Montreal, I craned my neck to get a view of the land through the low hanging clouds.  Streams of water danced across the window and visibility was low.  When we were finally in sight of the city my first thought was, “Oh, it looks like every other city in the world.”

But it wasn’t.

Montreal was wonderful.  From the air, it does look like every other city in the world.  It’s industrial and the drive from the airport to downtown could hardly be described as beautiful.  But I’m getting ahead of myself.

I’m met at the exit by a man holding a sign with my name on it.  My limo service driver.  At once I break out in a small grin.  I don’t often get met by cheuffer’s at the airport and secretly I hope I get to have this experience again someday.  I also secretly hope that I don’t ever get so used to this occurance that it loses it’s magic.

After meeting up with the other woman who has been flown in for this event, the lovely Stacy from Mom Central, we make our way to our downtown hotel.  When we arrive downtown, I notice that it looks quite similar to St. Louis in many ways.  The buildings are close, every other street is a one way (created to torture directionless yahoo’s like me, of course) and it feels a bit grey.

But there is more to the city.  I want to understand what it is.  It suddenly dawns on me that I don’t know a single thing about Canada’s history.  Why do they speak French in Quebec?  How did Montreal get established?  What mysteries lie behind the Notre Dame church that stands valiantly around the corner?  I wasn’t prepared for how foreign it would feel in Montreal.  For someone who adores international travel, this was icing on the cake. 

My two days in Montreal were a whirlwind.  I quickly realized that I should have spent less time mastering my “Eh” and more time learning some French.  Thankfully, mercifully, most people spoke English as well and I was able to meander my way through the crowd with the ignorance of an American who can’t be expected to know another man’s tongue.

Note to self: learn a few functional phrases in the native language of any place you ever visit.

We kicked the weekend off with a beautiful dinner at Le Latini, which was every bit as wonderful as the name makes it out to be.  Our waiters were both bald, with prominent eyebrows, laugh lines around their eyes and broad smiles.  Their accents were thick and sometimes difficult to understand, but they treated our group of five well.

It ended up feeling like a girls weekend away.  I so enjoyed the women I was with that I wished our time in Montreal could be a little longer.  They were funny, sweet, thoughtful and…did I mention funny?

The next morning, after a glorious breakfast where we met up with the final two bloggers of our crew, we headed to the set of Walmart/P&G’s newest installment of the Family friendly Family Movie Night movies.  Right now the working title of this film is “Passport,” but that is likely to change.

We are not allowed to bring cameras to the set, but are instead trailed by one of the cameramen, Francois, and the set photographer, Phillip.  Have I mentioned yet that Canadian men are handsome?  No?  Not sure how I overlooked that important point… Not only are their names romantic, but so is their language.  And yes, the men of Montreal are handsome.  And now we all know – the hot men of the world are hiding in Quebec.  That piece of information is brought to you free of charge.

We spoke first with Loren Dean, one of the principle characters.  I think he was a little nervous to speak with us blogger types.  He probably heard that we have fangs.

Actually, he was quite pleasant and spent about ten minutes chatting with us.  I remember him from his role in Apollo 13 as one of the flight controllers but from a bit of research it appears he has been in quite a few productions of greater notoriety.

We watch them film a chase scene and meet the child actors on the set, both of whom were terminally cute and extremely personable.  Then we are ushered inside the house they are using to film much of the movie.  Or maybe I should say mansion.  The house is spectacular. 

We watch a couple more scenes being filmed, then set up to interview the Executive Producer.  After that we each had the opportunity to interview Robin Lively who was lovely.  And who knows Zac Efron as her husband played the dad in the High School Musical franchise.  I tried to act cool upon hearing this information.  I may or may not have pulled that off.  I really enjoyed speaking with Robin.  She has three children, almost the same age as mine, a girl sandwiched between two boys.  But she doesn’t drive a minivan, something that I urged her to remedy quickly.  She agreed to consider it.  If I may have somehow managed to pull another mother out of the confines of “coolness” and into the freedom of the minivan, I will consider my time there well spent. 

Amen.

We also had the opportunity to interview the amazing Christine Baransky who was absolutely delightful to talk to.  She was so nice and so personable and friendly.

And she told me I should get massages.  BOOM! Instant friendship.

This post is getting far too long so I’ll spare you too many more details.  In a couple of weeks I should receive the photos and video for my post regarding the movie.  I’ll share more then.  For now, though, I can honestly say that I had the best time on this trip.  Turns out I’m kind of a camera whore.  I loved when they said “Action.”

Who knew?

I will also say that Canadians are extremely friendly.  Even the people working in the airport!  Shocker, right?!  They smiled, they asked questions, they laughed.  They were all so pleasant.  And cute.  I’ve mentioned that the men were good looking, right?  Oh I have?  Oh, sorry.  My bad…

Au Revoir my bloggy friends.  I wonder how you say that in French?