Today we found ourselves in a new foreign land with a foreign tongue. Most of the day was taken up by driving from Toronto to Montreal, Canada. However, when we arrived at our destination we felt like we were not in Canada any longer. Our hostel was situated in the center of Old Town Montreal. Everything from the buildings, the language, the restaurants, the people seemed European to us. A little bit of France, a little bit of Vienna, a little bit of Italy. It all reminded us of some small foreign town we had been to. The hostel for Montreal was by far the most charming. We had good luck at the other two. The one in Niagara Falls featured our own room and nice hostel workers, while the one in Toronto was very centrally located. The Maison d’Patriote, however, was so pretty. We had our own “family room” with a nice painting on the wall and a very French feel. For the first day we also didn’t have air conditioning, which was a definite minus for the 80 plus degree weather. But what we sacrificed in cool we gained in aesthetics.
June 7, 2011 and June 8, 2011
These were our two full days in Montreal and our last two full days in Canada. Oh so many wonderful things happened in Montreal, so I thought I would combine the days. Nope, it has nothing to do with getting behind on my blogging these two days. Nothing. Anywho. Here were some activities/points of interest of note:
The Biodome: Like the name suggests. A building dome-like in shape with a biological theme. Is a converted former stadium or something like that. Usually it has four biological habitats inside, but when we went, due to ‘unforeseen circumstances’’ the ice/snow region or whatever was closed. So no penguins for us. The other three habitats were still cool though. In fact it may have been cooler than most zoos because we were essentially in the same room as the animals. We were usually protected by a valley or wall barrier, but we could see animals like lynx, crocodiles, and giant rodents mere feet away. And when we were in the rainforest section, we felt like we were in a rainforest because it was hot and humid. Ok, that wasn’t so fun. But the experience was cool and ‘authentic’ (though I think that word is stupid b/c what does it really mean anyway).
Food: When we left Niagara Falls we sort of swore that we would not spend as much money in expensive touristy food places. Unfortunately, for us our hostel was smack dab in the middle of the old town/tourist district of Montreal that contained only overpriced food. Note to self: I will open up a restaurant in a tourist district because you can charge twice as much for your ingredients as other places do and thus make twice the prophet. And tourists can’t complain because they’re tourists and they’ll buy anything! No really. End note to self. As a result most of our meals were expensive. Though nothing was of terrible quality and the beer was always good. And the company was great rof course. Most of the waiters were also really nice, despite our fumbling French pronunciations. Which brings me to…
The language: For those who don’t know I took 4 to 5 years of French in high school. Unfortunately, I was never particularly good at it, so after a certain point I was learning new things before mastering the old ones and I got all frustrated a quit. Breathe. Then you add like 6-8 years of space without practicing French at all and you get…I can speak the French of a French baby that maybe started talking a couple months ago. Consequently, the only thing I was really good for in Montreal was pointing out random vocabulary words that I remembered, and having ‘Je ne parle pas Francais’ at the ready if we really really needed it. Fortunately, we didn’t really need it. Everywhere we went had English as an option. The waiter/sales person would greet you in French, you’d give a quick ‘hi’ or awkward look and they would shift to English. And they didn’t seem to particularly hate us for it, though their true ‘backstage’ feelings may be quite different. As a result, if I ever want to continue French, after a few classes or something, I would go to Montreal to practice. They say the best way to learn a language is to immerse yourself in it. And if I crashed and burn I could always fall back to English with minimal guilt. Actually, that’s a lie. I felt so guilty I couldn’t speak French. I hate that we Americans assume that everyone should speak English. Why should they? I obviously didn’t succeed in learning their’s.
China Town and the Red Path Museum: It was hot on June 8th. Very very hot. And moist. And sticky. And when we fell asleep the night before and woke up the next morning we had no air conditioning in our room, so it was hot. That made our day very leisurely. When we woke up we played the waiting game. Who would wake up first? We were all half awake and knew the first person to move would set the pace. But that didn’t happen…for a while. For the same reason, we didn’t try to overdo the physical activity. We walked over to China Town first. Actually, we ate at a brilliant crepe place first. The main selling point was including pure Maple Syrup with many of the crepes. And that syrup went surprisingly well with my ham and egg crepe. The waiter was also super nice—encouraged everyone’s French pronunciations and cracked a few jokes—and kept the glasses of tap water coming (unlike that sneaky Italian waiter at another dinner place). Anywho, Chinatown was visited by us in the hopes of finding cheap souvenirs, but it sounds like Perri and Brett had more luck in Toronto for that. The Red Path Museum was basically an anthropology exhibit located within McGill College in Montréal. There was you’re usual stuffed animals and ancient relics from the past. Very interesting, but not much air conditioning.
June 9, 2011
June 10, 2011
"Hershey's milk chocolate, Hershey's milk chocolate." (sung in the style of a creepy children choir). This was the result of my brainwashing at the hands of the ridiculous fake "how we make chocolate" Hershey's tour. It was basically a "It's a Small World After All" ride, complete with its own catchy jingle. The problem was by the end of the ride I was so completely brainwashed that all was left in my mind and on my lips was the creepy jingle included above. My travel companions would largely not agree with me that everything in this Hershey tourist trap was creepy. So I tried to approximate the chill-down-my-spine I felt the whole time with this manipulated photo:
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