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.