Oh Canada!

Greetings from Montreal!

Well my latest travels take me to our neighbor, Canada. I decided that I wanted to travel here because I wanted to go someplace without jet lag, with a currency exchange rate that wouldn't kill me, and somewhere where I could speak French. Thus begins my trip to Montreal and Quebec City.

This time, I'm accompanied by my friend Leah, who is always up for my crazy adventures and loves travel as well.

We arrived last night around 8 PM and didn't make it to our hostel until 10 PM. My limited and rusty French got us there, which I was proud of.

As for the hostel, as I told Leah, there are hostels and then there are HOSTELS. Ours is the latter. We are in a huge room in the attic-y like upstairs. We're sharing a bunkbed with air mattresses as mattresses, in a huge room that is subdivided by curtains. Yeah, it's no Miss Sophie's (see posts from Prague).

Anyways, the people here are nice, and the location is good, and at $20 a night, who am I to complain? We decided to get up at 8 AM which seemed good at the time, though we were the last people to get up. When we finally got out on the streets, there was no one there. Apparently, the rest of the world doesn't run on hostel schedule.

For our first visit, we headed to the Biodome. This is a natural history museum/zoo/aquarium. There is a huge exhibit for a tropical rainforest, an arctic area, and an area that is based on the traditional ecosystems of Canada. Personally, I liked the Canadian part the best- it was just different from what I'd usually seen in museums. And we saw puffins and penguins in the Arctic part which was neat. We also saw divers cleaning out the tank in the Canadian exhibit. They all wore drysuits and full face masks-apparently, if they are in the water for 15-20 minutes with just drysuits, they get hypothermia. Just another reason why I like to dive in tropical environments.

By the time we left the Biodome it was about 11 AM and we were starving. This wouldn't be unusual, except for the last meal that we ate was at 2 PM the previous day. We weren't even that hungry. I guess this is how people slowly starve to death. You just lose your appetite.

Anyways, no starving to death for us, we made it to this famous bagel place downtown. Montreal bagels are renowned- they are supposed to be much better than inconsequential American bagels. Frankly, I wasn't impressed. They were chewy and very bread-like rather than dough like. But you know, now we know.

After that I introduced Leah to my way of sightseeing, which basically consists of aimlessly wandering until you see all the important things you're supposed to. We walked nearly a mile (maybe 2) from the bagel place to reach Mont Royal. There are a number of important things you're supposed to see on the mountain. Our strategy was probably not the best for seeing all of them-we just kept walking around and around the path on the mountain. The path isn't steep, which means it's nice to walk, but which also means that it takes forever to get to the top. After about a mile or so, we ran into a set of stairs, and me, believing that there is wisdom in groups, decided to follow the crowd up to the top. It wasn't bad- a beautiful view of the city. Then we made our way down the stairs and the mountain in general. There are a number of other important sights on the mountain, but frankly, I had had enough of the slow windingness up it, and Leah, in flip flops, was more than happy to acquiesce with me.

Our travels had put us near McGill University, an English language speaking university in Montreal. We wandered around that for a bit, and then took on the epic task of finding a way into the underground.

Under Montreal, there is a maze of shops and restaurants that connects the city. During the cold Montreal winters, you never need to go underground. As there were eight entrances around McGill alone, you think it would be a breeze to find an entrance, alas, we walked a mile before we could find one. It was a huge mall, but frankly, it was overwhelming. If you knew exactly which store you wanted, I don't know how you'd ever find it. By this point we were exhausted, and headed back to our happy hostel.

The weather is beautiful here, 70s, and next we head out on the town. More later.

Sending smiles and moonbeams from Canada,
Emily