Bonjour de Montréal!!

I am in Montreal now, in the French-speaking part of Canada in the Quebec province.
Montreal is such a nice city with a charming "old town", I really like the place!

It is quite interesting that they speak French here, and everything is of course in French (signs, ads, posters etc). It is a bit like being back in France, but in North America, and while some things feel very familiar others don't. So it's both nice and sometimes confusing to be here ;)
I find the dialect a little tricky to follow at times, although most of the time it's fine as long as people don't speak too fast. The Canadians also seem a lot more relaxed with this tu/vous thing than the French, but I don't really mind.

I'm staying in a nice hostel, or as they call it an "alternative hostel". It's alternative in the way that they make a big deal about serving free trade coffee, there are also signs in the bathrooms telling you to close the tap properly not to waste water, and so on. You get the point...
But the place is really nice, especially the wonderful common room/kitchen/reception where you can spend an afternoon just reading a book and listen to fun music if you're too tired for sightseeing. The location is also hard to beat in the old town, and the staff are really nice and helpful as well (and in some cases quite nice to look at).

Today I visited the Olympic Park where the summer Olympic games were held in 1976. They offered guided tours of the area and there was also a 200 meter high viewing platform where you get superb views of the Olympic park and Montreal, just too bad it was raining.

My only real complaint about Montreal (well Canada in general) is the coffee, in most places it's nothing more than bland flavoured water. For those of you who know how extremely addicted I am, you can probably figure out I'm not happy about that part ;)

Tomorrow I'm off for a two days excursion to Quebec City which is a three hour train ride from Montreal, really looking forward to it as the city is supposed to be very nice!

A tout alors!

---

---