Bonjour!

Well, we have only about 4 weeks left in the USA and only a few more journeys to report back.
This weekend we drove 7.5 hours to Montreal, Canada. The drivers in this place are crazy! If you aren't doing 20km over the speed limit, then you will be left for dead! Approximately 67 percent of Montrealers speak French as a first language, and nearly 95% of the population speak French. We could have sworn we had just driven to France, not Canada.

This weekend we thought we would get some preparation in for Europe, and stay in a backpackers hostel, on recommendation from Luis who had stayed at this particular hostel before. Friday night we checked in and were shown to our fluro aqua and purple room. We walked to a road full of bars and cafes and hung around there for a while, before calling it a night.

No, it wasn't a dead body in our room!

Saturday morning we woke up excited - Luis had told us the hostel had a Hawaiian owner who cooked up a storm for brekkie. Kristy was picturing bacon and eggs with some pineapple cooked on a grill. We went downstairs and saw a box of cornflakes. Ryan went to ask the hostel manager which milk we should use while Kristy got the crockery and cutlery ready (there was still no Hawaiian man to be seen). The hostel manager told Ryan that there was in fact no milk for any cereal, that the only food they provide for (the included) breakfast was bread, butter and jam. Nice one Luis! To make matters worse, Kristy had the flu and it decided to hit the hardest that day! The good thing about the hostel was they let us use their bikes for free. Everyone in Montreal cycles - the infrastructure for this is excellent. After our toast, we set out for a cycle around the city. Our first stop was the Olympic Stadium built for the 1976 Olympics.

Riding around Montreal - This was before Ryan popped his tyre!

In front of the Olympic Stadium


And the winner is......

We continued cycling, but by this stage Kristy's nose would not stop running and she could barely see from the water pouring out of her eyes. When we found a chemist she almost cried with joy. It took about 10 minutes to locate cold and flu tablets as all the packaging was in French, then another 5 minutes to work out that if you turned the package over, the other side was in English! We also had to get air for Ryan's rear tyre, which he popped riding down the stairs at the Olympic stadium.

We rode over a huge bridge with awesome views to a little island which had the Biosphere, not sure what its purpose really is though.

Ryno at the Biosphere

We continued riding until we reached the historic downtown area and Old Port. The area was filled with cobblestone streets and old buildings, lots of cafes and live entertainment. It was a really nice area and the atmosphere was great. We stopped here for lunch.

We rode back to our hotel. We think in total we rode about 15km's. We freshened up, had some drinks at the hostel, then caught the Metro downtown to the Comedy Festival. The festival has 2 elements - indoor and outdoor. The indoor shows you need to buy tickets for, but the outdoor events are free. We decided to stick with the outdoor events. Despite the fact that it was raining, there were thousands of people out and about. There were strange large headed characters walking the streets, heaps of live entertainment and stacks of bars. We just wandered through the streets for a few hours. We think a lot of the outdoor comedy had been postponed due to the weather. When we got back to the hostel Ryan stayed up talking to other backpackers (including an Aussie) and Kristy went to bed.

Kristy in the streets with one of the characters walking around. This is where the Comedy Festival was held.

Despite the fact that almost everything was written in French, we could read this sign!

Sunday, we enjoyed more toast, checked out and caught the metro down to the Old Port area again. We walked through the cobbled streets and around the wharf, had some lunch in a nice cafe, caught the subway back to our car and headed off.

One of the old buildings down near the Old Port

Kristy at the port

On the way home, we went for a small detour through the Thousand Islands, where Thousand Island Dressing comes from.

Any of the Thousand Islands that were big enough, had houses built on them

We had to go through customs when entering back in to the USA. Way back when we arrived in the USA, Kristy had a special form stapled in her passport to say she was in the country as a visitor for 6 months (Ryan didn't need one as he is here on exchange). She had to rip this form out of her passport and send it to the US Consulate so it could be extended by one week, as it expired one week prior to us leaving the country for Europe. When the form was sent in, the Consulate issued a receipt to say that they had received the form. We rang the consulate before leaving for Montreal and they told us Kristy wouldn't have her new updated form prior to leaving for Europe (taking over 4 months for them to process the form), but should be OK to cross the boarder into Canada, as long as we had the receipt as proof of sending in the form. So, we are going through customs and the form obviously wasn't in Kristy's passport, but we had the receipt with us. Of course the officer wasn't convinced, so we had to go inside the customs office and wait while they investigated. This actually turned out to be a good move as they issued Kristy with a new form then and there on the spot for $6 and we were out of there within 20 minutes (as opposed to the $200 fee sending the form in to the Consulate and over a 4 month wait). They were also the nicest customs officers we had seen.

In summary, Montreal was beautiful and we are definitely ready to go to Euro now!