As I mentioned in my post earlier, today was a special day.  My little brother turned thirty eight, and since he is on vacation and I was off from work, I asked if we could spend the day together.

With our very different job schedules, we rarely get to share that much time, and he agreed right away.

I offered going to Grevin Museum downtown, and then having supper at La Barake, a restaurant we both love.

The wax museum has three locations in the world. Paris, Seoul and Montreal. I don’t know how popular it is in Seoul, but I walked in front of the Paris location while visiting earlier this year. And the crowd was just monstruous. There was at least a 2 to 3 hours wait, just to get in, and I could not imagine how it looked inside. I mean, how can you truly enjoy the experience, if you’re shoulder to shoulder the whole time, and can’t get pictures without having tons of strangers in them?

When I got to the museum’s entrance, I thought it was closed. There wasn’t a single person, set aside the two women working at the ticket desk.

We got in, and it looked as if I had rented the whole place for my brother’s birthday!

It was amazing! We walked around together, and suddenly, we were 8 and 10 again… There was a lot of picture taking with our fingers up famous people.

 

 

 

There were all kind of costumes and accessories available to take pictures with the wax sculptures. We dressed up, tried several outfits (all terribly ridiculous) just like kids… And when we got caught up having fun, we didn’t even mind the couple of other visitors who had a good giggle watching us fooling around.

The museum’s website mentioned that the average time to go through the whole exhibition was around an hour and a half, and we spent almost three full hours inside. And we had to leave, because of our restaurant reservation.

We had such a blast. I was glad to see my brother have so much fun. He is more of an introvert, and he rarely opens up like he did today.

I think it did both of us a lot of good.

And it was only the beginning, because I hadn’t told him I had invited my parents for supper. They live an hour and a half from Montreal, and he didn’t expect them to take the ride on a working day.

We had a wonderful meal, had a drink, talked and laughed. And when our waiter overheard that we were celebrating my brother’s birthday, he offered the whole table a round of shooters! He even took one with us…

My parents dropped us at our respective apartments, and drove back home.

It was a much greater day than I expected, and I am glad we got to set our inner children free to run around.

I hope you also had a lovely day… If not, here’s to hoping tomorrow will be!