We had just ordered breakfast at\u00c2\u00a0\u00ef\u00bb\u00bfthe Euro-bistro on the corner near the hotel, and we were trying to figure out how to get down to\u00c2\u00a0\u00ef\u00bb\u00bfVieux Montr\u00c3\u00a9al. 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.<\/p>\n
We decided to take the metro.<\/p>\n
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.<\/p>\n
“Est-ce que vous avez une carte?”<\/span> I asked, carte<\/span> being the word I know for map<\/em>. 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).<\/p>\n 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.<\/p>\n “Une carte<\/strong>, avez vous une carte … um … une carte du syst\u00c3\u00a8me<\/strong>?”<\/span> And I waved my hands around the station to indicate what I meant by syst\u00c3\u00a8me<\/span>, having pulled the word from English.<\/p>\n 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.\u00c2\u00a0And 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.<\/p>\n “Est-ce que vous avez … un … map<\/strong>?”<\/span> I asked, pointing at the maps, desperate for the map, no longer caring if I used French or English.<\/p>\n She rolled her eyes and reached for a map and slid it under the glass.<\/p>\n “Merci beaucoup,”<\/span> I said.<\/p>\n I looked down at the map. On the cover page it said, Plan du r\u00c3\u00a9seau<\/span>, which explained everything. I didn’t want une carte<\/span>, I wanted un plan<\/span>.\u00c2\u00a0So much for my first French sentence.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" We had just ordered breakfast at\u00c2\u00a0\u00ef\u00bb\u00bfthe Euro-bistro on the corner near the hotel, and we were trying to figure out how to get down to\u00c2\u00a0\u00ef\u00bb\u00bfVieux Montr\u00c3\u00a9al. 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, […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[42,41],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/augerhandle.net\/blogs\/jumpingfish\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/798"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/augerhandle.net\/blogs\/jumpingfish\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/augerhandle.net\/blogs\/jumpingfish\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/augerhandle.net\/blogs\/jumpingfish\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/augerhandle.net\/blogs\/jumpingfish\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=798"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/augerhandle.net\/blogs\/jumpingfish\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/798\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":801,"href":"https:\/\/augerhandle.net\/blogs\/jumpingfish\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/798\/revisions\/801"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/augerhandle.net\/blogs\/jumpingfish\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=798"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/augerhandle.net\/blogs\/jumpingfish\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=798"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/augerhandle.net\/blogs\/jumpingfish\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=798"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}