OH MAI GAWD!!! I realized I never did blog about one of the prettiest and most enjoyable vacations i had during my SEP! The montreal/Quebec City vacation! The details are pretty sketchy by now, but thankfully I have plenty of photos to try to invoke the return of my memories! Its like our 2nd monthly adventure (with Niagara being the first) with the 3 of us with Lynette, Kelvin, Eileen and Jean who came over to Toronto from London Ontario to join us for this trip! We took an overnight greyhound bus that lasted about 6-8hrs, stopping over at Ottawa where we coincidentally met another NUS guy! After the considerable ride, we arrived in montreal where fabian came to welcome us!
We first went to our hotel to check in under light drizzle and generally overcast conditions (that unfortunately lasted throughout the entire day) with me sharing a room with Kelvin and the 3 girls next door~ we then headed towards Mount Royal where we had lunch at a restaurant opened by Celine Dion! It started mild drizzling after lunch as we headed to McGills Uni to look around before going up mount royal~ they had a cool museum called redpath that was huge and much nicer than the Raffles Museum in NUS! Later, Kelvin and fabby went to meet up with Eileen and Jean who checked in at a less costly accommodation while we shopped around McGill’s Bookstore which to my disappointment sold ugly and overpriced souvenir tees so I didn’t get any in the end~
When the group arrived, we started our ascend of mount royal~! Really gotta take my hats off for fabby man~ the slopes on campus were like 40 degrees! Makes kent ridge campus look like child’s play man! Due to some renovation works of the path up mount royal, fabby took us on another path, not knowing that the shortcut was still open, and we ended up taking a long and arduous trek up mount royal! (Kelvin even opt to run up! Hahaa) tired but glad to reach the top, the observation point could have had a very nice panoramic view but with the rain and fog the visibility was pretty poor! Sobs~~
Satisfied with climbing mount royal (Btw the city of Montreal actually means Mount Royal in French!) fabby then led us down the shortcut wooden stairway and walked to Old Montreal where we passed by the notre dame basilica before heading to the streets of Old Montreal with red bricks, cobblestone road and nice architecture! After that we walked to Chinatown where we had delicious xiao long baos! Yummy! I had the Xing Zhou Chou Mein which actually means Singapore Noodles! (strangely we don’t have it in Singapore?!)~ Definitely cannot win Singapore chow mee fen man!
With bellies filled, we decided to walk on to the gay district in Montreal with the entire street of gay friendly stores spanning across 3 subway stations! There were many restaurants, candle lit ones or even fast food stores all nicely displaying a flag of 7 colours! I learnt that the flag represents Gay and Lesbian Pride and its really quite an interesting perspective to see the whole street full of colourful flags and gay/lesbians couple dining out or enjoying the night out! To avoid making a scene of us treating this as a ‘exhibit’ we kept out cameras and I was no exception! In a conservative society like Singapore, our gay/lesbian community would be very much discrete and try not to ‘perform’ acts of same-gender dates etc! Hopefully with the development and maturation of our nation, we could slowly shed our homophobic beliefs and just accept them as anyone else just with different sexual desires!
The next day, we went on back to Old Montreal early in the morning! I was sooooooooo happy to wake up to see clear blue beautiful skies!! YEAHH!!! First stop was to visit the Notre Dame Bascilica for a nominal fee~ gotta say that it is the PRETTIEST indoor design and atmosphere I ever seen in my life~ moreover the staff were very polite and agreeable with me using a tripod (where some churches are adamanant of disallowing) given that i signed the form that I wasn’t taking such shots for commercial purposes... I took a long time taking in the sights, taking shots of the beautiful place along with the others~ Afterwhich we went towards the riverside passing by the science center where we stumbled onto a huge field with a market in the background where we did jump shots! We even stumbled onto a mini park with beauuuuuuutiful autumn leaves and crimson maple where we spent quite some time taking pics and camwhoring too! As can see, we're trying hard to bring out the 'winter sonata' feeling in autumn version! hahaa We then visited the white tower before heading to old montreal to visit the shops that we missed yesterday due to the late hour~ we also had our must-eat meal of smoked meat and poutine (french fries with nice gravy and cheesecurds!) in Old montreal! Yummy!
After lunch, we took the subway to Parc Du Olympique to visit the Olympic stadium which many of us never knew occurred in Montreal before~ We then went into the Biodome which was like a zoo with warm and cold climate environments all contained within a dome! Quite an interesting spread of animals, although many of them were sleeping for some reason! Time to hibernate I guess? With the sun setting, we returned back to downtown montreal near philips square to have dinner, do some souvenir shopping before heading back to rest!
The next day, lynette, fel, janet and me went to Chinatown early in the morning to meet up with the tour group for our 1 day tour of Montmorency Falls and Quebec City! Kelvin and co decided not to join us and spent their last day in montreal before returning back to London~ Yue Zhi also was on the same tour but on a different bus with her group of friends from Queen’s University~ then started about 3 to 4hrs drive with a funny sounding Chinese tour guide who spoke English, French and Chinese with English being his worst language! After napping for most of the ride, we woke up to reach Montmorency Falls which is actually taller than Niagara Falls but not as wide and hence Majestic~ We took a gondola up and walked on the wooden walkway to view the falls up close and from the top~ pretty cool to look directly down the falls! After that, we went for the main highlight for the trip to the 3 gluttonous girls (hahaa don’t kill me!) – International Buffet! We did pay extra for it, but Janet and Lynette especially really made every cent worth it by eating lots, so much so that when we had to leave due to our 1hr limit, they were complaining that they were barely half full! Women can be so scary sometimes!
We finally enter Quebec City proper after lunch and our first stop was the Observatory where we captured a 360 view of Quebec City and the river that ran all the way from Montreal~ Was quite nice spotting the transition from the Old Quebec City with the new with landmarks like the Fairmont Le Chateau Frontenac, the most photographed hotel in the world! Soon after we took the bus which brought us down to the Old Quebec City which was an entire World Heritage Site! Beat that! And for good reason too! The buildings and architecture were obviously old, but mixed with contemporary design and colourful paintovers, the town looked really beautiful! Definitely on my checklist for possible Honeymoon destinations!! We walked down the alleys flanked by colourful and interesting shops as baskers performed concert worthy musical repeitoires or show off their beauuuuuuuutiful dogs! I was sooo in love with the city I told fabby that I was coming back again! Usually my pictures aspire to do justice to the beauty of the place, but even with shots that I really like, I still feel that I was far from capturing the essence of the place! Chased by the tour guide, we boarded the bus while I rushedly bought a beautiful artwork~ the one i really liked cost $600, and the pretty French young lady (haha thats not the main reason why I was there so long!) also approved of my taste and offered me a discount but sadly was still way beyond my budget, so I bought 2 cheaper artworks as souvenirs as I bade farewell to that great artwork~ After a long bus ride, we grabbed more than enough sleep so I jio-ed fabian and yz out as we went to grab drinks at a pub to celebrate our last night in Montreal~
With time in the morning before our bus ride in the afternoon, we headed to Jean Talon Market early in the morning to check out their wares and food~ there I bought Ice Cider that was similar to ice wine except they used apples instead! Tried one back in Toronto and still prefer Ice Wine for sure!! Once afternoon arrives, we quickly returned to the bus terminal and took our long bus ride back to Toronto~~
dEminG I LOVE QUEBEC!!
My mind's unweaving/ 3:58 PM
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What used to be a personal blog to chronicle my life when I first started off, Now its just random ravings or thoughts as they come along!!
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