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.