Who knew?

Montreal... So far, everyone who we've talked to that's been to Montreal had nothing but great things to say about the City.

"The place is so much fun!"

"It's the best place to visit!"

Those were some of the commonly heard accolades of Montreal whenever me or any of my friends told anyone who's been to Montreal.

Weird, because we are probably the first ones to tell you that we can safely say we will never come back here again.

This trip was just all wrong and perhaps, I should have picked up on the first sign when my intial flight out of Richmond was delayed 2 hrs, thereby being told that I will not make my connecting flight to Montreal. After talking to the idiot Delta rep, she rerouted me through Atlanta, at which point it got me to Montreal about 40 minutes later than planned. No problem. Disaster averted.

I joined my friends that night around 12:30am and we quickly got the party started by downing a few soco shots and whiskey shots in between guzzling down Labatt's Bleue like they were going out of style. So far, the only thing that sucked was that there were no girls. No problem. We got a chance to catch up (since these are guys that live in CT so I don't get to see them often) and we were ready for the craziness that was sure to happen.

Friday, we get up and decide that we need to hit up breakfast. Except by now, it was already close to noon so the diner that we went to told us that they no longer serve breakfast food. I guess that's one thing different about "diners" in the US v Canada. They did direct us to a place called Eggspectations (when the guy told me to go to Eggspectation in his french accent, I thought he was trying to get us to go to a strip club called Expectations). The place was great (breakfast, not strip club) and we were off to a good start. At the same time, the Jazz Festival is happening this week so 200,000 people were flooding the area, coming to check out the finest. Not being the jazz connoisseurs, we decided to hit up the casino.

And this is possibly where it all went down hill.

My friend, who has been due all his life for a monster crap roll is still due for a monster crap roll. I, labeled "Iceman" by other bloggers due to my quick crap out continued the saga as... Iceman. But in all fairness, this was like the table from hell. We couldn't get anything going and so next thing we knew, we were walking over to the bar area (no alcoholic beverages by the tables) to ease the pain of the losses. Fast forward several hours and we hit up Gibby's which was recommended by Astin. Man, that guy knows his food. The food at Gibby's was exceptional and we really enjoyed our dinner. But this is where all hell starts breaking loose...

We then hit Crescent street and start drinking at some bar... we then proceed to hit on two VERY VERY average looking women... which we then end up spending the next 3 hours of our precious little vacation time... I swear, at that point, it had nothing to do with desire and more to do with... not sure, really... big big mistake. By the time we were done, there wasn't much left to do. We then hit up Tim Hortons for some late night bagels and donuts and after scarfing down some food, we leave, heading back to our hotel. On the way back, we spot a dude with a very hot girl who was clearly an escort. My drunk friend proceeds to want to go make a comment but he didn't even get much of a word out when one of the guys who was part of the escort posse stops him. My friend was just like "woah, I wasn't gonna say or do anything" when a drunk member of the posse decided to slap my friend. That kinda got him fired up and so my friend was like "wtf was that for?"

CRACK!

Out of nowhere, the dude with the escort came out and coldcocked my friend square in the jaw. He must have hit the right spot really hard because it literally knocked my friend out cold. He was probably unconcious for close to a minute as everyone decided to help him get off the street. My friend finally came to when we poured water on him but it was a scary sight considering his eyes were open but his whole body was limp. I've never seen anything like it so close.

After that, we get back to the hotel and we finally pass out. My friend wakes up this morning to significant pain in his swollen jaw (obviously), scraped up elbows (from when he literally fell to the ground after the punch), and a mysterious ankle injury that none of us knows what happened to but was swollen the size of a softball. He was in a lot of pain so we end up testing the Canada health care system and take him to the hospital. After being charged $500 for the visit, my friend decides that he doesn't want to wait around for an xray so we just head back to the hotel room. With my friend totally banged up and the fact that they drove up together from CT, I suggest that it would be totally cool and understandable if they just left me here by myself for another night. Considering what happened and being hungover, we weren't gonna party too hard tonight anyways so I thought it would make more sense for my friend to get back.

Eventually, around 4pm, they did agree that going back and putting an end to this nightmare of a trip would be a good thing.

My flight is at 9:45am tomorrow where I will be going back to Richmond via Washington, DC. I never imagined before this trip that I'd say this on a Saturday night in Montreal...

I can't wait to go home.