by Shaula

We are traveling to Montreal in June for a family wedding. This afternoon I started looking up prices on Montreal hotels.

In one tab I was consulting a Montreal metro map. In a second tab I was checking out McGill summer accommodations, my alma mater, which I highly recommend for some of the lowest cost rooms in downtown Montreal. I was also comparing information from a number of travel websites including hotels.com, venere.com, and tripadvisor.com (all of which we recommend).

In my mind, I was walking along the streets of Montreal, remembering the years I lived there as a student, thinking about all the museums and restaurants and little shops I looked forward to sharing with my parents…

And then Neil told me the time was running out on the parking meter, and Whoosh! I was transported through time and space! Instead of walking down Rue Sherbrooke in Montreal in the late 1980’s, I found myself teleported to the Nob Hill Flying Star Cafe on Central Avenue in Albuquerque 20 years in the future. Wow!

It was completely mind-bending. And completely disorienting.

And it is one of the things I love about travel: being totally and utterly shocked at the realization that right now, at this very moment, I am where I am.