Our Trip to Montreal

In February, my wife and I made a brief excursion to Montreal, Quebec. Given it's just a 6.5 hour drive from NYC, both of us have only passed thru in all our years of college in Upstate NY. Montreal is the only city in the Americas where French is the official spoken language, and its French influence has been a major part in shaping its architectural and culinary history. In our brief 3-day trip, we managed to fit in a number of wonderful restaurants, including the famed Au Pied De Cochon (in French, "The Pig's Foot"), where Chef Hugue Dufour of the well-publicized NYC restaurant, M. Wells, got his start and honed his chops to satisfy fellow Quebecois. If you guys have been to M. Wells (now re-opening within MoMA's PS1), you'd certainly get a good sample of what Montreal's megalithic food scene offers.

We enjoyed our comfortable stay at La Casa Bianca, a 100-yr old Jewish-hospital-turned-bed & breakfast in the MontRoyal district, an area known for small shops and artisans.

Reader warning: Lots of food shots, so be prepared. I am getting hungry just putting this post together! Our only complaint? Wish we were there longer!

Images shot with my trusty Panasonic Lumix GF2.

Below: Le Petit Plateau, a nice eatery in MontRoyal, featuring a hard-to-find offering called the Floating Islands, an egg-white based dessert, and their excellent venison + foie gras.

The incredible Basilique Notre-Dame.

Schwartz's Smoked Meats - a favorite stop in the city, but didn't think it really took on Katz's in NYC. A close second, a different breed.

The famed Au Pied De Cochon below (Left: A diner is served the Duck In A Can (literally!), Right: My wife thoroughly enjoying the Stuffed Pig's Foot topped with champignones + foie gras)

Poutine @ La Banquise

Gunkanjima 2001: My Travels to a Ghost Island

It's been a hectic start to the year, but I'm glad to be back and blogging again. Since January, I've launched a new Albert Cheung Photography website, and been busy booking 2011 weddings and completing product/editorial projects.

Project Gunkanjima has been on the backburner since my first post in 2008, but I found myself revisiting my travels to Japan in response to the recent devastation following Japan's earthquake and tsunami in March.

In the summer of 2001, I had the opportunity of backpacking Japan as part of a traveling Cornell architecture studio. While we were in Nagasaki, our professor took us on a side excursion to the island of Gunkanjima (Battleship Island in Japanese), a small outpost 15km off the coast of Nagasaki.
Gunkanjima had one of the highest population densities ever recorded. Established in the 19th century as a treasure for coal mining manufacturing, the island was evacuated in 1974 as quickly as it came, leaving behind a ghost city in the Pacific. It was illegal to visit the island, yet we still made it amidst a sly smuggling operation by my professor with 20 students onto a fishing boat.

Here are a few scans from my archives. Walking along the high concrete seawall was frightening; with the high winds, you could fall to near-certain death. You can still make out some of the buildings that used to house coal mining operations on the island. I took home a few artifacts - an x-ray from a dentist's office and child's workbook from a classroom (see below).

I'll definitely expound on the history in a following post, with more photos. Here's a documentary on the ghost island, from the viewpoint of a survivor returning to the island for the first time. Hashima (Gunkanjima) Island