Montreal

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It was a seven hour drive to Montreal from Toronto, this was an experience i was looking forward to mainly because the city is french speaking, something that you don't get anywhere else in North America.

The hostel is of a decent standard, but its very basic, but after coming off the Toronto one i guess i was bound to be a bit disappointed, i don't think that one will be surpassed. It said me get "free breakfast" but that is just toast and coffee, still if its free its good.

What seems particularly different here though is that the natives are ruder that Toronto, one example id how they "demand" tips from you, well i thought that tips were to be given for good services, surely asking for them makes the service worse in itself? Because of this i've done a lot less tipping in Montreal than Toronto. All people speak French mainly but everyone is bilingual, so from that point of view theres not much of a language barrier.

The absolute highlight of Montreal was a sandwich, specifically a Dagwoods fresh tuna sandwich with lots of stuff on it. The best sandwich i've ever had and if someone asks me what i thought of Montreal my response would be "great sandwiches"

More seriously though i did get to see the Olympic stadium and go into it and theres a lot about the history of the Olympics there and specifically the Olympics of 1976 which were held there. This is a personal interest of mine. We also saw Notre Dame Cathedral and the museum of Canadian History.

Montreal seems like a very European City and runs at a fast pace, much quicker than Toronto. Its also notable that hardly any Montrealers own there own homes and almost everybody rents.

The week has seemed to go really quickly here, unlike Toronto which seemed like a long five days (despite it being great).

Thanks to the people from work who emailed me while i was in Montreal, email me again if you can.

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