Trrno

UPDATE: I'm actually posting this about three weeks after writing it, but iPod/time/laziness issues abound (I'm having to type this up from a draft written on my iPod, because the iPod has decided that blogger is no longer accesible to me. I swear, I could keep a blog based purely on recounting how often technology rejects me) and hey, better late than never...

The first day in Toronto (pronounced phonetically by tourists only - locals skip the first two 'o's and the second 't'; hence the stupid post title) was a bit of a non-event. Our bus arrived late afternoon, and after the most stressful taxi ride of my life so far, we arrived at the hostel without the energy to do more than eat and sleep. Toronto is by far the biggest city we've been to yet - it's almost a mini New York (apparently film companies often use it as a cheaper double for NYC).

Day two started early, on our first guided tour; a bus to Niagara Falls. I'm pretty sceptical about the rehearsed nature of these things ordinarily, but my faith in this particular guide was cemented when, on realising he'd left his bag in the city five minutes after setting off, he pulled onto the hard shoulder and had his manager run to a parallel walkway. There was a ditch between the highway and the path, so Tour Guide's solution was to have his manager lob the rucksack onto the motorway, over the ditch. I was already in stitches at the back of the bus, but I nearly cracked a rib when the manager missed and had to shimmy down the ditch for round two.

In the end, rucksack in tow, we made it to Niagara Falls without any more hiccoughs (hiccups? I'm never sure and spellcheck won't commit either). The Falls were gorgeous, if foggier than expected, and the 'Maid of the Mist' boat trip very funny in our ludicrous blue ponchos. The only problem with Niagara Falls is the town itself - this place makes Blackpool look classy. The whole town is one huge, garishly bright, overpriced gift shop.

As if to make up for this, our guide then drove us to a nearby village called Niagara-on-the-Lake, which by contrast was like the Pleasantville to Niagara Falls' Tacky Town. Our last stop was a winery owned by Ghostbusters's Dan Aykroyd, to sample some Canadian icewine. My distinctly tenuous understanding is that this is wine which, in grape form, is left to freeze and harvested in February (as opposed to, you know, that time of year when most grapes are harvested...), producing a thicker, MUCH sweeter result. It was like drinking alcoholic syrup. Never one to turn my nose up at free booze, I tried a couple of different samples, but there was no way I was paying $35 for a beer-sized bottle (sorry, Dan Aykroyd).

Day three was much less organised, but even more fun for it. Myself, Julia and Jess wandered down to the St Lawrence market, where my eye was instantly drawn to a sign advertising peameal bacon sandwiches (as far as I can tell, peameal is cornflour...I don't really understand either, but it was delicious). There was a gorgeous moment when the three of us were sat outside next to a busker, in brilliant sunshine, eating our butties and feeling extraordinarily smug.

Full and happy, we headed to the Distillery District - once a hive of factory workers and labourers, but these days The Chic Place To Be. We saw three separate couples having their wedding photos taken against the industrial red brick (looked like Manchester to me, but apparently qualifies as Canadian hipster). We were pretty convinced one particular couple were models rather than newlyweds, as their 'photo shoot' went on for HOURS and "they looked more pretty than happy". This theory was challenged later in the day, the three of us sitting in the sun with a beer and shamelessly ogling the progression of photographs, when a stampede of Barbies and Canadian Made In Chelsea extras arrived to spice up the pictures. It was like our own mini soap opera - the respective mothers in law throwing each other looks of absolute filth before the shutter clicked, the groom sneakily semi-groping a bridesmaid, the LAYERS of passive aggression palpable in the subtext of every conversation we eavesdropped on. It was brilliant.

We only had one morning left before our bus, so spent it wandering along the harbour of Lake Ontario in still more sunshine. I'd heard some pretty mixed reviews of Toronto and so wasn't expecting much, but our time there was every bit as lovely as Montreal and Quebec. Toronto, for us, was an example of being lucky in your wanderings, and a city I would love to return to.

Swings and Sun in Montreal

So apparently you can access wifi on megabuses in Canada. This does not really support my Internet cloud theory, but I'll go with it. Six hours between Montreal and Toronto should be enough time to bore you with the last few days...

Stepping out of the train station into Montreal was like a revelation - to be in a Proper City again after quaint little Quebec and the sleepy-small-town feel of Halifax was pretty overwhelming. There were, like, more than three floors on most of the buildings.

We used our first day to find our bearings - get an impression of the city, settle into the condo shared between the eight of us (3 Aussies and 3 Swedes now officially outnumbering us 2 Brits) and stare blankly at a movie after a 6am start.

Day two, we explored Mile End, the trendy, chic, hipster-filled 'indie as f**k' area of Montreal. I felt way out of my cool league, but some of the shops were charmingly quirky and I ate what I believe I can seriously call the best ice cream of my life so far (chocolate orange flavour...culinary genius).

But after two days of aimless wandering, I think we all felt as though we hadn't really done Montreal justice, so day three was an EPIC. We got the metro (even the underground stations were arty - these people take hipster seriously) to a food market which was largely closed, which was a bad start quickly remedied by the next metro station. A busking swing band gave Jess the opportunity to show off her swing dance skills by trying to teach us some moves. We were crap, but she caught the saxophone player's eye and he ran over for a dance. What followed was simply glorious. Both were good enough to make it look semi-choreographed, and the sheer number of gleeful faces at witnessing spontaneous dancing in the street could be matched only by the number of iPhone lenses trained on Jess and her sax player. With 'learn how to swing dance' now added to twenty-odd bucket lists, we headed towards Parc du Mont Royal (I'm sad for you that you can't hear my Inspector Clouseau pronunciation of that) to get a good view of Montreal.

The bad news was that the mountain had to be climbed via a set of never ending stairs - we were all laughing at the bottom, quiet by the middle, and my feelings were represented near the top by Georgia responding to the question 'How are you feeling right now?' with 'F**k off.' To be fair, the view at the top was worth risking the heart attack; a crystal clear panorama of Montreal and the Saint Laurence (possibly...) river, triggering a sequence of photographs that quickly descended from arty to silly.

Still not done for the day, next we hit the craziest charity shop I've ever seen - there was a literal room of clothes, in which you could wade hip-deep in one-dollar cast offs. Feeling mature after our mini costume party / clothes fight, we then found some swings. Said swings are right in the city centre and play a tune when you get high enough, creating a weird combination of ethereal music and shrieking adults. The fun we had was almost embarrassing. Releasing the inner child also unleashed my competitive streak, and Georgia and I both nearly killed ourselves trying (and succeeding!) to get high enough to tap our feet on the top bar of the swing set.

We ended the day eating pizza on our terrace, utterly knackered but happy.

On our final full day, a smaller group of us spent the morning packing / sorting / complaining about how much our legs hurt. In the afternoon we ventured out to Old Montreal to see the basilica, wander the shops and experience the contemporary art gallery. The latter was by far the most entertaining - between my cynicism and Georgia's sarcasm, I got a fit of the giggles of the teary, snorting kind not, apparently, appropriate for Great Art. I thought the art police were going to kick us out - I'd already been told off for taking a photo of four big red squares (maybe they didn't want me copying it...).

Maturity intact, we returned to our condo to take final advantage of the terrace. Full points, Montreal - Toronto is going to have a hard time living up to this.

Bienvenue a Quebec

Our first full day in Quebec started late; but eventually we headed off on a walk of the fortifications (read: wall) around Quebec. The morning consisted of taking gradually more ridiculous photos; initially imitating soldiers, then imitating the Beatles and eventually jumping over the breaks in the wall in largely failed imitations of a gazelle. Yes, that's right.

Our route around the wall was interrupted by a detour to the smallest street in Canada (which, incidentally, looks like a completely normal sized street to a European) which was very pretty and quaint, with loads of quirky, cute little shops including - to our delight - a chocolate shop. We wandered the surrounding streets, the oldest in Quebec, for a couple of hours, and took longer than we should taking pictures of ourselves integrated into various murals.


Day two began much earlier, and we were only running slightly late to rent bicycles. By now our party of four had been joined by two more Swedish girls, both of whom are sickeningly beautiful. They're also both very thin, and being as I'd spent a large part of the previous evening sat out of a conversation between my travelling buddies about running shoes (quietly thinking to myself 'I just think pizza is delicious'), I was slightly worried about being the heffalump gasping her way uphill whilst everyone else sailed gracefully away a la The Sound of Music.

Fortunately this was not really the case - which can be attributed to the flatness of the bike track rather than fitness - and other than some initial navigation issues, the cycling went really well.

We biked 12km each way to the Montmorency Falls, which were gorgeous - enormous and powerful, with very impressive surroundings (up to and including a shirtless boy running up and down the seven zillion steps, stopping occasionally to do some push ups, whose abs were visible from the bridge). We had a picnic in the sunshine at the top of the falls before biking back to Quebec. I really felt like I earned my ice cream, sat on the boardwalk over the river which reminds me weirdly of the pier in my mums hometown of St Anne's - except it was consistently sunny and you can actually see / hear water - but it was a nice reminder of home. We went to bed achey and knackered but pleased with ourselves.

A Psychological Experiment

Forewarning : I am writing this on my iPod, so chances are everything will be spelt (I'm not even sure if that should be 'spelled'...) properly for about five sentences, then I'll lose patience and descend into gibberish, or throw my iPod out of a window. We'll see.

So my travels began with a nineteen hour train journey from Halifax, Nova Scotia to Quebec (there's an accent in there somewhere...insert at will) City, Quebec. The train was less than a third of the price of flying, I'm not just a sadist, so myself and two of my travelling buddies jumped on board somewhat less than eagerly just after noon on Tuesday 23rd April. I kept a kind of hour-diary as time stretched on, the intention being to either make for an entertaining blog post, or monitor my descent into madness:

"Just got on board; seats bigger than expected, actually have leg room: WINNING.

Two hours in: feeling peaceful, trying to get a photo of Canadian countryside but being continually obstructed by trees.

Three hours twenty minutes in: thinking deep, philosophical thoughts whilst listening to Ben Howard and watching two girls walk home from school down one of those characteristically roomy Canadian streets in a tiny town amidst North American wilderness. This is their everyday normality, and it's completely alien to me. Strange to think how detached we are from everything happening right now in the world around us; we really do live in a bubble. Deep thoughts then somewhat ruined by Ben Howard fading away to 'Relight My Fire'...

Four hours fifteen minutes: wishing it was socially acceptable to sing along with your iPod in public.

Five hours twenty minutes: woman with a $30,000 mirror on the seat in front announces its worth to carriage when asked to move it. Hilarious conversation with ticket man ensues: 'People who can afford $30,000 mirrors don't travel by train...'

Six hours thirty minutes: thought this was going remarkably well so far, then realised have twelve and a half hours to go...

Seven hours forty minutes: starting to laugh an inappropriate amount at things which aren't that funny.

Ten hours twenty minutes: officially regretting this morning's decision to wear jeans. Inevitable.

Eleven hours fifty minutes: the frustration of finding a position which is almost comfortable, then your leg / foot going dead before you're able to fall asleep in a now painful position.

Fourteen hours: debating how many limbs I would sacrifice for an actual bed."

After that I spent the remaining time trying, and for the most part failing, to sleep. We got off the train at 6.10am on Wednesday morning and got slightly lost trying to find our hostel on the pretty but obnoxiously steep streets of Quebec. We couldn't check in until 2pm, so left our bags and wandered in a sleep-deprived daze around the city.

First impressions of Quebec were lovely; I could actually FEEL the sun for the first time in four months, my over enthusiastic reaction to which has resulted in a cherry red face. The city is hilly, full of joggers and feels less like Canada than I expected; the tightly packed streets, sheer number of cafes and coloured buildings (not to mention all the French people) all feel very European.

We wandered around for a few hours before finally gaining access to a shower and a bed; and let me tell you, cleanliness has never felt so good. I'm not saying 'never again' to a nineteen hour train, but godammit I can try.

OH MY GOD A BLOG POST WHAT

I have a really good excuse as to why this is my first blog post in a very long time.

Okay, it's not really good, but it isn't bad. December was, as always, just insanely busy, and then on January 3rd I moved to Canada. I took my home university up on the offer of a semester abroad, and ended up in Halifax, Nova Scotia, Canada for 4 1/2 months. Well, 3 1/2 really - from next Tuesday, myself and a friend are travelling round south-east Canada and north-west USA for a month or so. I'm going to try and update this blog regularly, but I can't bring a laptop, so will only have internet access via my iPod touch, and typing anything longer than a sentence on that thing fills me with so much rage, it might not make it back to England.

But what? I hear you say, I thought this was a review blog? Well yeah, it was, but you'll notice I gave the blog a pretty non-specific name, as I was aware of my own apparent inability to stick to the topic when it comes to blogs. I always come back to blogging, but it's not unusual for me to take a six month (nine month, one year, two year) break and then return with a new name / subject / theme / general philosophy on life Though still, in all likelihood, without working gifs.

When I started this blog, I thought about making it a writing blog, then realised nobody would care ('Got up late. Wrote a page or so. Had lunch, read it back, decided it was shit, deleted it. Had a nap...' see?), settled on a film/book review blog with some poncey writerly reasoning, but it basically turned out that the number of films I watch is wildly disproportionate to the level of laziness I attribute to blog posts. Then when I started my semester abroad, I thought about keeping a blog about that, but same problem - 'Got up, went to class. It was okay. Came home, read some course books. Thought about writing an assignment. Went out with some people you've never met and thus don't care about...' So this is now, officially, going to be a Fad Blog. That is, I will write on it when I feel the urge, about whatever's relevant to my life right now - travelling, film-watching (I have this 1000 Films To See Before You Die list on my computer...that might make an appearance), book-reading, life experience gaining, panicking about the future, ranting, writing...you get the point.

(Aimless blog posts like this always get away from me...I had this whole funny bit about summer weather and Aerosmith in my head, but I've talked myself away from it...)

So yeah, expect randomness, little and rarely, and this will go just swimmingly.

Compulsory gif testing: (WIN)

This represents how I'm sure you feel about my return.