We had just ordered breakfast at the Euro-bistro on the corner near the hotel, and we were trying to figure out how to get down to Vieux Montréal. A family sitting next to us suggested that we take a look at their map of the bus and metro system. It was the #129 bus that we wanted, but there were also some metro options.
We decided to take the metro.
So we retraced a bit of our walk from the night before, pausing once at a bench to let Dad’s knees recoup. And when we descended into the metro station, I walked up to the information booth and asked for a map in the best French I could muster.
“Est-ce que vous avez une carte?” I asked, carte being the word I know for map. Frankly, it was the first complete French sentence I had uttered since we got to Montreal, and I was feeling proud (in a lame kind of way).
The woman couldn’t hear me and motioned for me to ask again, which I did. But she didn’t understand and pointed to the microphone. I repeated myself again, leaning into the mic. She looked at me as if I were from Mars.
“Une carte, avez vous une carte … um … une carte du système?” And I waved my hands around the station to indicate what I meant by système, having pulled the word from English.
Again a look as if I were from Mars. She reached for some piece of paper that was clearly not what I was looking for. And then I saw the maps in a box behind her, a stack of neatly folded maps just like the one we had looked at earlier.
“Est-ce que vous avez … un … map?” I asked, pointing at the maps, desperate for the map, no longer caring if I used French or English.
She rolled her eyes and reached for a map and slid it under the glass.
“Merci beaucoup,” I said.
I looked down at the map. On the cover page it said, Plan du réseau, which explained everything. I didn’t want une carte, I wanted un plan. So much for my first French sentence.