So, I posted about it in the random shit thread, but I'm gonna post something a bit more complete and not written on my phone while drinking in a bar in Montreal.
So, for my birthday present, my girlfriend got me tickets to see Hiromi Uehara in Montreal. She played there last year and met Edmar Castaneda, a Colombian harpist, and she's been touring with him since then.
So, she decided to play this year at the Montreal jazz festival with him....and apparently they decided to record the entire show for a live CD. the show was fucking amazing, because they two of them really do seem to speak the same musical language. We got 2 encores, the second of which happened to my be ABSOLUTE favorite Hiromi song, which was the most perfect way to end the show.
We also found a fucking amazing asian bakery just down the street from our hotel. They had all sorts of amazing buns, and they also had a bunch of mochi and other assorted treats too. I've got some banana mochi roll things and an egg tart left over, and she has a "cheesecake" (which is like some sort of angel cake or something, very light fluffy stuff) and dorayaki (basically 2 small pancakes with red bean paste in the middle).
We also found the best sushi place we've been to so far there. Shit was expensive, but oh man it was good. She had a $12 glass of sake which was by far the best sake I've ever tasted, and I got 2 glasses of plum wine to go with the awesome sushi.
Just got back, and literally the ONLY shitty thing about the trip was the fucked up traffic I had to get through on the way back. We parked right in the middle of the entertainment district in Toronto, right in front of the Air Canada center, not far from the Rogers Center either. And we also made the mistake of coming back at 11:30 PM on Canada Day.... That was probably the busiest part of the entire fucking city.
All in all, it was a fucking awesome trip, and I hope I can go back again sometime.