Sherbrooke

It was still warm but raining when we woke up this morning- great, heavy drops accompanied by lots of rumbling thunder. The backyard of maple trees was awash with green and it actually looked like the maize crop across the road had grown overnight.

 

The back of our Airbnb

Florence arrived around 9.30 and we took off on a little road trip around the Eastern Townships. This area was settled by the English and Irish and that influence is still really strong in the architecture of the little towns that border the many lakes and rivers in the area. One of the most startling features is the many window boxes and other floral displays, evident in all the towns we’ve visited. They are like a celebration of Summer after the long, cold Winter with all sorts of colourful blooms carefully tended and displayed along the verandas and shop fronts.

In North Hatley we visited the Local Farmers' Market, sampling all sorts of organic goodies like nut cheese and wild pig pate before buying the less healthy options of donuts and bagels.

 

Farmers' market

From there we drove into the Sherbrooke, walking the length of the Lake of Nations to a micro brewery where we had a delicious lunch and sampled some of the boutique beers, including one made from blueberries!

Mmm, beer tasting

In the city, we marvelled at a giant spillway and rapids running straight through the centre of town and wandered around some of the older parts of the city with their ornate, colonial style buildings.

 

Hotel de ville - not a home for Cruella. It's the municipal centre.

Apartments bordered by rapids

Geoff is doing a great job driving in Quebec but it’s not easy. There’s the whole turn into the traffic the opposite way thing, which is even worse when you get to a roundabout or a parking bay and then there’s the constant ‘Arret’ signs, (not to mention the warnings that an Arret is coming up!) When you get to these you must completely stop the car and then the person who got to the stop first, gets to go first. It’s simpler than it sounds and because the Canadians are so polite there’s never an argument but you do have to be on constant look out for the signs. We were driving back to the Airbnb this afternoon, practising our French phrases, reminding Geoff about tight rights and loose lefts and keeping a keen eye out for arrest, when suddenly a police car with flashing lights pulled in behind us. Since there were no other cars on the road it was obvious we were the object of his attention so we dutifully pulled over and wound down the window.

“Je vous ai trouvé accéléré dans la voiture à 79 km dans une zone de 50 km. Donnez-moi votre licence et vos vendeurs d'assurance."
 Given that he had no idea what the policeman was saying, not knowing what he’d done wrong (we thought the speed zone had been a steady 80 since the city) and knowing that he’d left his licence back in the bedroom of the airbnb, this was greeted with a glazed but terrified stare from Geoff.
 Florence quickly intervened, explaining that we were ignorant but harmless Australian tourists and that we were her long lost host family who loved her but may not love her anymore now that she had not noticed the change in speed zone and really it should have been her responsibility and she was very, very sorry.Turned out the police officer spoke excellent English but I don’t think he minded Florence pleading so sweetly with him. He handed back our registration details and said he would not like us to think badly of the Quebecois and so he would bid us a good day. 
I may have already said this… Canadians are the lovliest people in the world.

The only mean thing we have seen in Canada so far

Reunion

As one last insult, the toilet in our hotel room packed it in this morning and wouldn’t flush. Given that they haven’t managed to find a key for our room in the 3 days we’ve been here, I don’t hold out much hope of getting a plumber, so it was lucky we were on our way out of Montreal today.

We left our bags at the hotel and walked down to Rue Aylmer to collect our rental. On the way we came across masses of people dressed just in their undies and completely covered in red, yellow, blue or purple body paint. Like inquisitive aliens, they spread out across the city, climbing on statues and stairs and interacting silently with the public. I’m not sure what or who they were promoting but it was very cool ‘arte’.

 

The 'invasion'

There’s nothing quite as adrenalin rushing as driving a rented vehicle, on the ‘wrong’ side of the road in a country whose signs are written in a language other than the one with which you are familiar! Luckily the lovely man at Hertz (we haven’t met an unlovely Canadian yet) upgraded our vehicle to one with an inbuilt GPS, and with Taine & I chanting ,‘righty tighty’ or lefty loosey’ at every intersection we made our way safely out of the city.

 

We got a Jeep!

A few years ago we were lucky enough to ‘inherit’ an exchange student and so the motivation for our trip to Canada was to catch up with her. Thanks to social media we’ve been able to keep in contact, but seeing her in person and having us all in the same face to face space was awesome. As with all good friends, we just took up where we’d left off and it was as if the time apart had never happened (except that Taine now looks like a giant beside his Quebecois sister!). Florence cooked us a local pasta dish for dinner and we practised our Fringlish together. Montreal is a truly bilingual city. Every sign is written in French and English and every person in every shop seemed to be able to switch effortlessly from one language to another, sometimes in mid sentence. Provincial Quebec however, is solely French so we will be dependent on our interpreter for assistance!

Sherbrooke

Last time we saw her she was taller than him!

We’re staying at an Airbnb just out of the city of Sherbrooke where Florence is at university.

Its lovely to have the space of a whole house after a week of hotel rooms and behind the house is a wood full of maple trees so we might find some more squirrels.

Our backyard

After the excitement of Niagara Falls, Wednesday’s train ride to Montreal was very tame by comparison.

We caught a trolley car (identical to a Melbourne tram but newer) to Union Station. For anyone else visiting Toronto, the trolley was simple as long as you had the exact change - $3.25

The VIA train was also easy to catch. The only close hiccup was when they weighed our bags. Mine seems to have suddenly put on weight even though we’ve only been here 3 days! Might have to go on a shopping diet for the rest of the trip. Luckily, it was exactly the 50lbs allowed – I claim this as a superior packing effort!

We shared the carriage with a group of four, vacuous, early 30 somethings who talked, non stop, very loudly, about absolutely nothing of any consequence, for the entire 5 hours from Toronto to Montreal. To complete their stereotype, I sincerely hope they were American.

Having set a precedent in Toronto, there was no question of a taxi from the station. With our screen captured map in hand we hoofed it through the city to our hotel. So far I am two for two on satirical hotel names. The Super 8 was anything but Super and the Comfort Suites is neither comfortable or a suite. Unfortunately a pervious valued customer had spilt water on the card machine so we have no room key but have to wait for someone from reception to come with us every time we want to enter our room. And the promised air conditioning is really more of a boxed in fan, circulating the hot air of Montreal’s warmest summer day around the room. Still, we’re in Canada and that trumps any minor inconvenience.

We set off downtown – again on foot. I was keen to see some of the Montreal Jazz Festival - until we got there. It was only when I was hot and bothered and totally exhausted that I remembered I don’t like crowds of people or expensive beer and I actually don’t like jazz.

The upside was that we found an IGA supermarket on the long walk home. Taine was most impressed (that it was an IGA) and so was I…they had six packs of cold beer for the same price as one cup at the jazz festival. We also found a park with squirrels. Free entertainment.

Today we tried a later start and didn’t get down to breakfast till 7.30. Comfort Suites redeemed themselves somewhat by including bacon in their breakfast bar and a bowl of fruit available to take away for snacks. We walked down to the closest Metro and bought a day ticket each for $10, an excellent deal.

First stop was Old Montreal where we collected some more share bikes, $5 per bike per day. This is such an excellent way to move quickly around the quieter streets of the city and, like Toronto, there are plenty of designated bike lanes.

Old Montreal and the Port area are very pretty, with a very French feel and lots of lovely old buildings. Having survived the bike riding, I managed to trip on the pavement and fall flat on my face (and knees). Luckily there was no real damage and plenty of lovely Quebecois to fuss over me and check that I was ok.

Back on the subway we headed to Olympic Park to see where the ‘76 Olympics were held. This area is kind of under construction as they attempt to bring the stadium and surrounds back to its former glory. You can tell that it must have been state of the art 40 years ago but now it’s a bit of a white elephant. There’s a crazy, leaning tower beside the stadium that was designed for the Olympics but not finished until 1985. You get to the top via a funicular type elevator. I guess they’re still trying to make up the 40 yr debt because it was a very pricey exercise – we decided we’d get the same view from the plane so we grabbed some more bikes, meandered around the park and botanical gardens area and then hopped back on the subway to Ile Saint Helene.

The island is man made, created for the World Expo in 1967. There were lots of signs to promising activities but nothing actually open that we could see, apart from the golf course and a giant mesh dome. The dome, called a biosphere, looked intriguing, so we went there. Taine conned us into forking over $30 to enter because it looked vaguely educational. It wasn’t. And it had interactive games. It didn’t. The people running it were lovely but it was seriously boring. If you come to Montreal, don’t go there.

 

Montreal biosphere

We rode the subway back downtown and took an afternoon siesta. Remembering the weather we left at home, I hesitate to complain about the heat but 30C here is very hot (and did I mention our air con is useless?).

After a little bit of afternoon shopping we rode another few stops on the subway, just for the hell of it. And then we grabbed some more bikes to ride back, just because.

To date I have walked 86,406 steps in the 4 days since we landed.

Luckily there’s still cold Milson beer in the fridge so we can lay around and watch Thursday night baseball on the tv.