I am on my way to the city that never sleeps and finally find some time to tell you about Canada. I have 8 hours of Greyhound Bus to kill so be prepared for a detailed story ;)

My trip started in Quebec city which is really nice, very French and cute but I have to say, what they speak has nothing to do with French. And I thought that people were exagerating when telling that even if you speak French more or less fluently you will have troubles understanding the quebecois. And guess what? They are not! You really understand only half of what people tell you but fortunately I had my personal translator right by my side all the time.

Kristin showed me around and we found out that her temporary unemployment is quite a treat. We had a nice picknick with cheese and wine in front of the chateau in the middle of the day and after that a chilled beer on their roof terrace with its great view over the city. Quite relaxing!

I couldn't find the Hotel "bon vivant" though ;).

Next stop was Toronto and I have to say I was positively surprised by that city. People kept telling me that Montreal is so much nicer and hipper but I really enjoyed my stay. At first site it may not be the most beautiful city in the world, but when you stroll around a bit in downtown Toronto you can find some pretty interesting places like kensington market. And I liked that it wasn't so artificially beautiful and clean. You could see that people actually live and work there. But they also have this historic district where they had the biggest destillery in north America to smuggle the alcohol to the USA during the prohibition. Very smart those Canadians ;)

I only stayed one night at Fabienne's place and unfortunately she had to work so the only thing we could do was having dinner with my friend Alex and some of his friends but at least we had the best burrito in town :).

We than went camping to Prince Edward County which is a three hour drive from downtown Toronto but more or less a five hour drive on a friday afternoon. Canadian families often have a cottage in the countryside and so the whole city usually hits the highway right after work.

But that's the good thing about Toronto or Canada in general, within a few hour drive you can get away from the city to some national park and enjoy the most beautiful countrysides, huge lakes, nice beaches, mountains and of course all the forests. We could get a tiny idea of how the Indian Summer must be like up here. Some trees were already coloured so I guess no much longer and everything will be shining in bright red. I would love to see that but you cannot get everything even on a trip around the world.

We went to a campground and nearly got killed by the mosquitos that were apparently starving because nobody was on that campground anymore as the holiday season was already over.

But even if it wasn't main season anymore, the weather was great, we went to the beach all saturday and had to discover that you do need sunscreen in september in Canada even if you would not think so! Apparently Toronto is on the same height as Marseille ... why don't they tell you that?

Well anywhere we were all glowing in the dark after that day and decided on Sunday that we better not lie on the beach again from 11 till 4 in the afternoon ;)

So we searched a place where to rent a boat to go sailing but believe it or not we couldn't find one. The only thing you could rent were speed boats and canoes! Come on! You have perfect conditions and you don't go sailing? They definitely need some education on great leisure activities over there!

To end our trip we went to see the thousand Islands, a bay with hundreds of tiny islands. Really cute place but also very touristic which is not a bad thing in general but we fell for the tourist trap and went on a one hour cruise with 200 japanese people which was fun though.

Today, we went to see the Niagara falls. Also nice to see once in your lifetime but again very touristic. You feel like beeing in Las Vegas with all the casinos and hotels. But anyway they are impressive and it is worth going there once.

So, the Big Apple is waiting, I am exited to go there!