The passing of Labour Day means back to school for the kids, and back to work for me; my new job as CTO of Comprehensive Technology Services starts today.
Before the serious work of diving back into producing software, I decided to take my first proper vacation with the lovely lady pictured above. She came up to Toronto to catch the Fan Expo sci-fi/horror/gaming/all-round-geek conference…
…after which we spent a week in Montreal with a side trip to Quebec City.
While in Quebec City, we stayed at Chateau Frontenac…
…and had dinner at Le Lapin Sauté (“The Jumping Rabbit”), a restaurant located right on Le Petit Champlain that specializes in rabbit dishes:
Le Lapin Sauté is right beside a courtyard where buskers play. When we started dinner, a guitarist was providing the music:
…but partway through our meal, he left and accordionist Bob Fournier took over:
He played a combination of classical accordion numbers as well as some less-expected ones including Johnny Cash’s Ring of Fire, all very well.
After dinner, I had to approach him and ask if he’d play a couple of numbers with me. He looked so delighted when he realized that I had an accordion with me, and so the jam session began:
He then sat me down and took me through a quick lesson on how to play La Vie en Rose:
He then asked me what sort of music I usually played, to which I replied “Le rock et le pop!”. Then I played a medley of Britney Spears’ Baby One More Time and Mitsou’s Bye Bye Mon Cowboy (a Quebec pop hit from the eighties):
We had a grand old time. I’ll post more photos from the jam session a little later today.
(And for old time’s sake, here’s the video for Bye Bye Mon Cowboy…)
