Pour la première fois depuis presque un an je me suis trouvée dans un endroit où j'étais entourée par le français, ce qui m'a rendu très contente :) Ooh sorry, got a bit carried away with the French mode there! Don't worry, it'll be English from here...
So yes, for the first time in our trip we found ourselves in Frenchland and I was very excited to be surrounded by my favourite language again. Being the language geek that I am I was interested to hear the accent and to see how québécois differs from other dialects of French. At first I felt like someone had switched the "French comprehension" section of my brain to off and it was rather disconcerting! The accent is so different, I think I understood about half of what I was hearing. Even simple things like ordering food and drinks seemed impossible! Thankfully I started to get used to the different sounds and my faith was restored in my French ability.
Way back near the start of our trip when we were in Vietnam we met two French Canadian girls, Janie and Marie-Pier, who very kindly offered us a place to stay should we visit Montréal during our time on Canada. An offer which 7 months down the line we took up! It was great to spend time with the girls, getting to know them better, learning about Québec, sharing travel stories and reminiscing about Vietnamese adventures.
Montréal is a much bigger city than I'd imagined, apparently it's the third largest French speaking city in the world, and there's certainly plenty going on there. It's an extremely vibrant place with lots going on and so we weren't short of things to do. We happened to be there during the famous Montréal jazz festival and on the opening night went along to see the free Rufus Wainwright concert. Not really very jazzy but a famous Montréal name and despite a few technical difficulties and not knowing any songs, it was a great evening!
Le Vieux Montréal - the old part of town - is a delightful area to explore, lots of narrow cobbled streets, beautiful old buildings, interesting little shops and nice restaurants and cafes. We did a self guided tour around there and also sampled some poutine with smoked meat. Poutine was the main dish people came up with when we asked what traditional Canadian food we should try, and I have to say I wasn't overly taken by the idea of chips, cheese and gravy. However, being the adventurous type these days I didn't shy away and was pleasantly surprised - poutine is great!! It's a special kind of cheese they use, which I think makes all the difference.
July 1st is Canada Day but unfortunately we were rather in the wrong place as the Québécois have very little desire to celebrate being part of Canada! For them July 1st is instead moving day, it's the date that all leases start and end, and so the roads and streets are full of removal trucks and everywhere you look people are seen carrying boxes - very surreal! There was, however, a firework display in the evening and a giant Canada Day cake which we queued for a long time to sample. We were also given some little flags so we felt vaguely festive. I think the only people at the celebrations were either English-speaking Canadians or tourists!
We also went up Mont Royal (the hill from which the city takes its name) to admire the views over the city, making the wise decision to take the bus up and walk back down. It was far too hot for hiking up hills! Kirsty got her stadium fix with a tour of the Olympic Stadium from 1976 (which includes the tallest inclined structure in the world) whilst I sat in the sun getting my French fix from that day's metro! On our last day we enjoyed a trip to the beach (a lake beach!) in a beautiful national park about an hour's drive from the city, and on a day when the weather wasn't so good we sheltered from the rain in a cafe called "Juliette et Chocolat" and demolished a delicious chocolate fondue, mmmmm!
As we weren't that far away we made a little trip to Québec City for a couple of days, a place well worth visiting, even if we didn't see it in its best light! The weather was predominantly Mancunian and we got caught out in one of the worst storms of our whole trip, and that's saying something given the storms we experienced in Asia! The heart of Québec is a very quaint French city dating back to 1608, making it (allegedly) the oldest city in north America. Again, lots of narrow cobbled streets, alleyways and beautiful old buildings - some in the style of fairytale-esque castles - make the old town a very interesting place to explore. As well as exploring the streets and sheltering from the rain, we went on a tour of the Governor General's second residence (the Governor General is the Queen's respresentative in Canada) which included seeing a room where William & Kate had dined on their last visit, and did yet another parliamentary tour! We were slightly less impressed with this one, it ranks as our least favourite of all the ones we've done! Still, we made some new friends on the tour who happened to be staying in our hostel too and spent a nice evening with them and a Japanese girl who was in our room - dinner and then beer sampling at a local brewerie. At the restaurant I made friends with the waiter and impressed him with my French skills, so much so that we managed to order meals which are only usually available at lunchtime!
After the penultimate bag-pack we headed off on the overnight bus for the final stop of our trip...
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