After a brief overnight stop in New York City we took an
early morning train to Montreal. The ride took 11 hours so we were grateful for
a clean & comfortable, albeit full, train. We passed our day watching the
scenery pass us by. It’s actually a really pretty train trip and I could
imagine that it would be especially so in mid-Autumn when all the leaves have
changed colour. We were, unfortunately, a couple of weeks too late in the
season to see it.
We decided to once again try our hand at Couchsurfing in
Montreal and a lovely couple called Phil & Mel agreed to put us up for a
few nights. Now before I get into our
time in Montreal I will just quickly explain one thing. Originally we had
planned a leisurely three week trip in Eastern Canada, we were going to start
in Toronto and travel across all the way over to Halifax before heading south
to New York, however that all changed when we received the invitation to a
wedding for a friend of ours in India. So we had to alter our plans and now only
had 10 days in Canada. Therefore we decided that instead of rushing around
trying to see as much as possible we would limit our trip to just two cities.
Firstly Montreal, a city we have never been to before & secondly Toronto
where we could catch up with two different lots of friends we had there.
So, now that you have the background we can get back to
talking about Montreal. We had a great intro to local Montreal when we had to
meet our couchsurfing host, Phil, at his battle of the bands gig at a local
bar. As our friends all know, we love live music, Tegan especially, so watching
a few local bands battle it out (in a mix of French & English) was great
fun. Montreal is a bi-lingual city. It sets in the French speaking part of
Canada and day to day most locals will speak French but almost everyone also
has a firm grasp on English and speaks it fluently. There are also some parts
of Montreal where people speak English as there daily language and French comes
second. It was really great to see how this all worked so smoothly in the city.
We found when looking at menus sometimes that there was less accessibility to
English than there was in some European cities we visited. We think this must
be purely because French Canada is so proud to be French and being a part of a
country where the majority do not speak French is pretty tough. So they are
trying to hold on to their language as much as possible, therefore unlike
touristy European cities, you don’t see English signs etc… everywhere you go.
We actually found that really refreshing and intriguing as it wasn’t what we
expected when we arrived in Canada.
Our first day in Montreal was spent wandering around the
city. We walked through both new & old Montreal just looking in shops and
walking past buildings and down lots of little streets and alleyways working
our way through the city. It was a nice relaxing day as an introduction to the
city and exactly what we needed considering we were still suffering a little
jetlag and feeling quite tired. That
evening was a good chilled out night getting to know Phil a little better and
chilling out with him on the couch at their house. Mel was unfortunately quite
busy with work and other things at the time we were visiting so we didn’t get
to spend a lot of time with her.
The second day we unfortunately had a bit of bad weather.
Phil convinced us to start with that it wasn’t that far to walk to where we
wanted to go so we thought, ok we’ll give it a go. We’d been walking about 20
minutes and really hadn’t got very far before it started to pour with rain. So
we jumped on a bus to take us a little further down the road before we had to
again walk through the rain to get to the Biodome. The whole trip took us
almost an hour and a half, which was a little different to Phil’s estimated 25
minutes J. But hey, we had fun along the way trying to
stay as dry as possible. The Biodome in Montreal is a huge structure which has
four different eco-systems inside it where you can see different plants and
animals actually living in the eco-system. There is a Tropical South-American
Forest where amongst other things they had Tucans, Monkeys and Macaws living, a
Laurentian North American Forest with a Canadian Mountain Lynx, Beavers &
river Otters, a Marine eco-system based on the bird life of the Gulf of St
Lawrence and a Polar area which is divided into Antarctic & Arctic and has
many different types of Penguins and little Puffins. We both decided that we
love Puffins! We had been disappointed when we found out it wasn’t Puffin
season in Iceland when we were there so we were glad to have the opportunity to
see some in Montreal. They were so super cute and this one Puffin just loved
humans. He kept coming up to the window when we would crouch down and he just
wanted to get as close to us as possible. I just wanted to cuddle him. Too
cute.
Phil decided to take us on a local micro-brewery crawl
around Montreal for our final night. Montreal is actually quite famous for its
micro-breweries and they definitely have no shortage of them. Phil basically
had mapped out a little circuit for us to take so we would get the chance to
visit some of his favourites. They had all kinds of beers available from your
regular ales & lagers to beers with tastes of Apricot, Hibiscus or even
cherry. They had a type of beer for every beer lover and we had a fabulous
night tasting quite a few brews.
The following morning however it was off to Toronto. Yes,
Tegan, the train was not going to wait for you to get over your hangover. So it
was pull ourselves out of bed, pack up, have a yummy breakfast down the road,
say our farewells and off we went. Lucky for us, once again travel industry
contacts came in handy and we were travelling in business class. Nice big comfy
seats with free wi-fi, drinks & meals included on our six hour trip to
Toronto.
We arrived feeling a little less tired & hung-over and
headed to our room we’d booked sharing with a couple of uni students in the
North of town. It was probably one of
the comfiest beds we had slept in, since leaving home. Bargain at only $50 per
night. We had four nights in Toronto and like I mentioned earlier we had two
different friends we were catching up with here.
One was a couple from home, Lisa & Jake, who had been
living in Toronto for the past few months on working holiday visas. So it was
super great to see some familiar faces from back home for a few days. We hadn’t
had that in a couple of months now so nice to hear some Aussie accents as well.
J The other friend was a
Canadian, Toronto local, Sarah. It was our second time meeting up with her
since we met the first time we were in Toronto a couple of years back. Really
great to have a local perspective as well. She took us out to her fave Sushi
restaurant (so good to eat Sushi for the first time in 5 months!) the first night
we met up.
Whilst we were in Toronto I unfortunately developed a huge
blister on the bottom of my foot, believe it or not, from too much walking! And
I am talking, MONSTER blister here. Not just huge but monstrous. It was really
bloody painful so we were a little hindered in how much walking we were doing
for our time in Toronto as I got the blister on only the second day. But with
the subway system and a little walking on my toes here and there we made it
around ok.
We got to see the CN tower (no way were we paying $50 to go
up it though, weren’t quite that keen), visited the Christmas markets down in
the Distillery district, shopped, saw Christmas windows and to help with
putting my feet up we even went to the cinema a couple of times. Mind you, one of
the movies was so boring I may have fallen asleep and now I can’t even remember
what it was called. But hey, I got off my feet for a couple of hours which was
the whole point. Ha ha.
On the second last day we got the opportunity to see Sarah’s
final uni project performance. She has been studying Film & Television and
a group of them had put together some live studio performances from local
Canadian bands and we were lucky enough to be around for the last performance.
So we got to watch two bands perform live in the studio at the University
whilst they filmed it all for the eventual DVD they are putting together as
their final project. After the show we went out for dinner with the rest of the
crew from the project.
On our final day in Toronto we had an early evening flight
so had most of the day free. We decided to have some separate girl & guy
time which let’s face it, you really do need every so often, especially when
you’re travelling and together 24/7. So we caught up with Lisa & Jake again
and this time after brunch we all split up. Tegan & Jake headed to a
brewery and Lisa & I got some shopping time in. A very relaxing couple of
hours for everyone I think. But then it was over all too soon and it was
already time to get back on a LONG plane trip, this time to India.
