Montreal and a Final Night in Toronto

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It's Monday 12th April 2010 and we have just arrived in Montreal after an 8 hour Greyhound bus ride from Toronto via Ottawa. Thankfully, we don't have far to go as our hostel (the Montreal Centrale), as it's right behind the bus terminal. The location of the hostel is superb, and although the building itself is by no means beautiful, it has fantastic ratings on Hostel World (www.hostelworld.com) and we are soon to experience why. We are greeted at the reception by the very friendly Josue and he shows us to our very clean 6 person shared dorm. (We end up having this room to ourselves for all 3 nights of our stay). We dump our bags down and decide to go for a walk around the local neighbourhood. This includes a walk along St Denis and we soon experience some of the beautiful French archecticture for which Montreal is famous. The language change to French also hits us. We stop off for lunch at the 3 Breweries Brassier, a micro brewery with a great balcony overlooking the busy street. We enjoy a blonde beer and relax in the sun.

The evening's entertainment consists of a live 'concert' by Guillherme Bulla. We later establish that Guillherme is a Brazillian singer/ songwriter who is staying at the hostel with his wife for one year. He performs 4 nights a week at the hostel in exchange for free accomodation for himself and his wife. He is a fantastically talented singer and guitarist and we chill out in the bar area with about 8 or so other people and sample a delicious local peach beer, St-Ambroise. At the interval, we talk to Guillherme and he explains that he is learning more and more songs in English (his native language is Portugese). He allows the small bar audience to choose songs and I pick Walk of Life by Dire Straits. Love it! Awesome performance. We enjoy getting to know him over the next few days and enjoy his chilled out and fun nature. Check him out on You Tube.

Tuesday 13th April

It's a nice sunny day outside and we decide to hire some bikes from the youth hostel and explore the city. We are charged a very reasonable $15 dollars for a full day. Josue very kindly maps out a route for us and provides us with lots of information about the districts and attractions we will see along the way. The tour itself is about 35k and we begin with a ride through the gay district. The area used to be known for it's wild parties, but obtained it's name in 1977 when the top Montreal policeman raided 2 gay bars and 144 men were arrested on the ground of morality misconduct. This led to mass demonstrations and finally a bill was passed, making Quebec the second society in the world (after Denmark) to forbid discrimination on the grounds of sexual orientation. We then head through Hochelaga Maisonneuve, one of the poorest and most corrupt neighbourhood in Montreal, before reaching the Olympic park, host to the 1976 Olympics. The Olympic park is home to the tallest inclined structure in the world at 175m. We relax next to the main complex and take lots of photos, including ones of us trying to 'push over' the inclined structure! We continue through Parc Maisonnueve (part of the Olympic Village), one of the city's largest urban parks (291.5 acres). We then pass through the Plateau Mont-Royal region and into the Jewish district, one of the oldest and most populous in the country (numbering about 100,000). The houses are beautiful and the neighbourhood very clean. The ride continues until we arrive to Av. Saint Viateur, where Josue has informed us we can find some of the world's finest bagels. After asking a number of locals for directions, we finally hit the jackpot and find the Fairmount Bagel shop on
Fairmount Street. The bagels are actually being cooked behind the serving counter and smell amazing. I purchase a blueberry flavour bagel and Andy a raisin and cinnamon one. We scoff them down and immediately order some more for the next few days! The next stop is Mont Royal and there are many ways to reach the top. We decide on the slow, snake like cycle and pedestrian path. Its a beautiful day and an hour or so later we find ourselves at the Chalet du Mont Royal view point. The view of the city is amazing and I would recommend the climb to anyone who is lucky enough to visit Montreal. Once down, we head towards the McGill Ghetto. The university, which was founded in 1821, is one of the oldest university's in Canada, chartered during the British colonial era, 46 years before the Canadian Confederation. The uni is attended by over 34,000 and we are able to ride directly through the centre of the campus. The final part of our ride took us through the financial district and we arrive back at the hostel some 6 hours after we set off!

Tuesday evening is party time and Josue, one of the hostel managers, has organised a night out to a student night club. He informs us that pitchers of beer are only $7, and we instantly realise that it's going to be a crazy night. About 10 of us make our way to the club at about 22.30 and we get talking to the Irish duo of Emily and Sarah, Ruth from England, Michelle from Argentina, Steve from Singapore and a funny guy from Oz. We danced the night away to loads of cheesy music and it brought back some happy memories of my uni days. I actually got a bit carried away and don't remember getting home, although Andy informs me that we arrived back at the hostel at about 3.30am. Andy carried on talking in the bar area whilst I went straight to the room. Although I was on the top bunk, I was clearly too drunk to make it up there, and I found it funny when Andy told me the next morning that he found me passed out on the bottom bunk with a half eaten bagel in my hand! Good times.

Wednesday 14th April

Awoke with an horrendous hangover at about 11.00. Felt awful, but had to get up and pay for another nights stay at the hostel. Went back to bed and tried to wake up again at about 13.00. As we didn't want to waste the day, we decided to get up and spent the rest of the day exploring Old Montreal. Old Montreal is beautiful and we immediately noticed the change to European style narrow lanes and streets and lots of quaint little independent art shops. We also walk along the port, where we stop to see the worlds longest train passing through. Andy and I crack up laughing as the train appears to go on for about a mile!

Wednesday evening was spent cooking a lovely rib eye of beef pasta and chilling at the bar with Guillherme, his wife and a very funny Portugese guy. Andy insistents that Guillherme learns some Arctic Monkey songs!

Thursday 15th April

Travel day between Montreal and Toronto. We will be spending one final evening in Toronto before catching our flight to Vancouver. We arrive in Toronto just after 19.00 and head towards our hostel, the Backpackers Inn on Dundas. The hostel itself is pretty small and fairly grimey, so we decide to head out and and watch the Toronto Blue Jay's play baseball. The game started at 19.07, and as it was already 20.30, we had missed half the game. Outside the ground, a tout offered us tickets for $10 each, but we knew we could get them cheaper so we carried on walking. Our hunch was correct, and the tout followed us and reluctantly handed over the tickets in exchange for $5 each. Result! The game itself was between the Toronto Blue Jay's and the Chicago White Socks. Andy explains the difference between a ball and a strike and we enjoyed a chat with a lovely couple in front of us who are avid Blue Jay's fans and live right near the ground. Although the ground isn't full, the atmosphere is good and I really enjoy my first ever baseball game! As we leave the ground, we start talking to two local Canadian girls, Emily and Sandra, and asked them if they knew of any good bars. They recommended a few, and although Sandra had to go home, Emily said that she would join us for a drink. I was delighted as I instantly liked her and knew that she would be good fun. Emily lived and worked in Toronto and was really excited to hear about our travels. The pub was called the Loose Box and Emily explained that it was where all the Jocks went to watch sport. It was a great atmosphere, and we were joined by a group of about 8 people on a work night out. They were an awesome bunch of people and I think we charmed them with our English accents. Judy was particularly nice and I laughed when she told me that she thought Andy and I were gay! Robert was hillarious and clearly the office joker. They invited us to the bar next door and I continued talking with Emily whilst Andy smooth talked the big boss of the company. It obviously worked as we managed to get all our drinks paid for. Result! We walked Emily home and stopped off for some amazing pizza, before finally rolling into bed at about 3.30am. We would be up at 7.30 the next morning, but we didn't mind as it had been such a good night and a fine way to say goodbye to the East Coast of Canada.

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Comments

[sandra]

a great start
hi david, just started reading your blog you sound as if you have had a great start to your adventures, think thats one place i need to book to see the city sounds my type of city, uncle alfie has always wanted to see a ball game bet it was excirting. I should imagine you are going to have a few more hangovers before your adventure is over, glad to see you are on to the ticket touts that is going to help you for your future travels. Look forward to reading about your next adventure, stay safe and enjoy speak to you soon love auntie sandra xxxx

[Alex, Peter, Gowri]

Emily
Did she have a loose box?