Rachel's birthday

Rachel had a wish to share this Sunday September 8th with her family and she got her wish :)

First, Alice, Lily, Rachel and I went running on a new trail she had just discovered from Parc Outremont to one of the three lookouts on Mount Royal.  This is where I learned that my days of keeping up with Alice were definitely over !

Then, we went to the Centre Phi in Old Montreal to experiment with several virtual reality exhibits and we had a fair bit of fun interacting with the various apparatuses invested with so-called AI.  I personally find VR and AI still very rudimentary compared to, say, four people running on a trail in the woods, but it's interesting to keep abreast of these developments... if you're prepared to put up with a bit of nausea wearing those VR goggles.
(In the picture, Lily sits on the right-hand side with a red sweater).

Last but not least, we (finally) went out for a sophisticated supper at Montreal Plaza, the restaurant where Gabriela has been working for the past two years (and where Simon had been a chef many years before that).  Gabi had recommended the fish and seafood menu and it was positively delicious:

• entrée: mousse de maïs
• tartare de thon et de truite + couteaux de mer
• bourgots de mer + moëlle de boeuf et homard sur l'os + fleurs de courgettes farcies et frites
• desserts: gâteau en fine tranche congelée + morceaux de gâteau au chocolat avec crème glacée à la sauge

Gabriela wasn't working that evening, but she had arranged for us to have one of the best-placed tables, right in view of the kitchen, and she had also secretly arranged for the staff to bring a blasting birthday bomb to Rachel at desert time :)