Montreal, Canada

A house in Emilie's street.

Riding into Quebec was an experience, since this is the French-Canadian state all the road signs do not legally require English translations. My GPS had quite a bit of difficulty pronouncing the French street names, but I managed to the correct address in the early evening.

I wasn't sure what to expect from my host, as there are definitely French Canadians who do not speak English at all, which could make conversation a little stunted. However my host, Emilie, spoke fairly good English and only had trouble with a few more obscure English words. It was obvious that she didn't get the opportunity to speak English very often, and seemed pretty excited to be able to have the chance now.

Emilie lived in a beautiful looking street with row after row of old-style townhouses. The trees were mature and vines were growing up the walls of many of the houses, it looked very European  She shared the apartment with 3 other housemates, all of whom seemed musically talented  Emilie herself played the piano.

After dicking around with my bike trying to get a park (there were lots of parked cars and tricky time-dependant loading zones on the street), Emilie, one of her housemates and I walked down to the local store to get some beer. We then drank and talked up on her balcony. I learnt a fair bit about the French-Canadians and their relationship with the Canada and France. Apparently the French-Canadians find French people kind of uppity and pretentious - terms that an English-Canadian person might use to describe their French countrymen. Also they told me that the Canadian government has to spend around 15% of the budget to translate between French and English for legal documents and court transcribings.

Emilie and her piano.

Both Emilie and her housemate were lovely people, very curious and interested in Australia and Australian culture.

After everyone had go to bed, I settled in on my couch for the night. After 10 minutes or so on the iPad, I heard a knocking at the door - the rear door with no stair access. I got up to investigate. Their were two early-20 year old guys on the balcony; they must have climbed up or down from their apartment. I opened the door with a little confusion and they spewed French at me, obviously everyone assumes you speak French in Montreal. After apologising that I can only speak English, they looked at me very confused, probably from the accent. It took them a moment to get the English right, but they indicated that there was a party in their apartment and everyone was invited. Wouldn't have been an awesome adventure to go to these guy's party? I did think about going, but it I was really damn tired. Can't drink heavily every night for 5 months.

The next day I said my goodbyes and headed up to Mount Royal - the mountain situated in the middle of Montreal. From here you are supposed to get a good view of the city, and since I didn't have much time to spend in Montreal, I thought it would be the best attraction to see as I could only get one in. So I set off on a pretty wet day to the top of the mountain. After getting the obligatory photo, I headed down south back to the USA.

Obligatory Montreal and I photo.

Getting out of Montreal was a little tricky, I found it tough to find a petrol station and I really needed fuel. I eventually found one in the outskirts of town. It is a beautiful city though, I'd love to come back and spend a bit more time there.