An Australian in Montreal (if you close your eyes it sounds like Paris, so if I was American, and a werewolf, the title could have been so much cooler)

Hey everyone!

I know I haven't updated this in ages but I have been having serious computer issues (admitedly my fault, there may or may not have been some milk involved). And it has been so crazy here recently with tests and the like! And it doesn't stop, finals are approaching really soon. Well, here goes with the story of Montreal trip number one!

A big 'ol group of us decided to get out of Burlington for the weekend and decided Montreal would be a good time. There are 4 buses a day that go from Burlington to Montreal so getting there was pretty easy. The most time actually for the journey was taken up by getting everyone and all of their stuff off the bus to go through customs. I had completely forgotten about the whole 'US and Canada are completely different countries' thing! Well maybe not forgotten, but it just didn't occur to me that on a bus we would have to go through customs. At least we got our own special lane at the customs place.

We arrived in Montreal after the sun had sunk over the horizon. I could have just said it was dark, but I thought that kind of sounded better. 4 of us stayed in a little place just off the main street and the other about 7 people stayed in a hostel just a bit further up the road. The walk to where we were staying was interesting, there were quite a few people on the street smoking I am not sure what, and everything had a kind of dodgy feel to it. We had actually picked a place in the heart of the gay section of montreal. Aside from the didgy side streets it was a really cool area. Had a few drinks (delicious sex on the beach cocktails at a restaurant, much better than carnegies I will venture to say), then we decided to find somewhere to go out. It was pretty late by this time so we just wandered down the main street near our hotel. After passing many many strip clubs I was starting to get dejected at the lack of pubs and or clubs (and not once was I tempted by the strip clubs, cant speak for the boys though) so we just decided to head to bed and try again the next night.

The next day we were just going to spend doing all of the touristy stuff, like walking around the old part of the city etc. Unfortunately and completely unexpectedly it was freezing and started to rain. Christine from South Korea even wore a skirt, poor girl. We managed to get to the notre dame cathedral which was amazing, so beautiful. Even though most of the Europeans said they had seen much better, the british girls and I were still very impressed. I have never seen stained glass like that before, the light was amazing!

Because the weather was so miserable we decided to head to a 6 story shoping mall that anita's roommate had told her about. It was so amazing! Montreal has this amazing network of underground areas, you can almost walk most of the city underground. And of course most of it is shopping!

We went for dinner in China town, and then a friend of Torsten's (one of the German guys) who he had worked with at Disneyland took all of us out. She lives in Montreal, so knew the best palces to go. We went to an awesome club that was so much fun, dancing all night long! Then early that morning we went to this random Irish pub with a lot of old men in it, one of the British girls ended up making friends with one of them, he was cool. Im not even sure what time we got home, but it was definitely a nice release from being underage!

We headed back on the bus the next day, all a smidge tired :) As to observations of Montreal, it is definietly an interesting city. It seems really contradictory, a mix of the seedy and the beautiful. But it was definitely worth a trip.

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