We had an uninteresting start to the week. Monday was laundry day and I managed to get a hair cut as it was annoying me something chronic - doesn't take anywhere near as long to wash now...Yay!! Jane, Julian, Michael, Joan, Jan and Tommy came over after dinner for some cake and a goodbye as we were leaving Tuesday morning for the next step in our adventure!

We set off a bit later than we were supposed to (is that suprising though?) and then when we got to London, we couldn't get on the underground line we wanted to as there was (to quote the annoucements and notices) a person under a train on the District and Circle lines so we had to fight with everyone else (with our backpacks and suitcase) to get onto a Victoria line service (one of the other lines also had severe delays due to malfunctions earlier in the day) to get to another station to get the train we wanted! And on that train, we ended up splitting up as we couldn't all fit on one train and there was another due in 1 minute and with so much luggage, we split up.

No hassles on the flight to Montreal (Phenergan worked a charm, Mum). Watched Get Smart (not too bad...maybe a bit long), Tropic Thunder (quite amusing), Baby Mama (mmmm...) and most of Kitt Kittridge - An American Girl (I will reserve my judgement until I see the end) and the service was great.

We arrived into Montreal at 6pm (a bit later than expected as we had to join a queue at Heathrow airport to take off...at one stage Emma counted 8 planes in the queue..and we had to head north and fly over Iceland and Greenland due to strong winds). We held our breaths as we stepped out of the terminal into the cold, crisp Montreal air.....and then breathed normally as it wasn't actually that cold. According to the weather, it was about -6C but it definitely didn't feel that cold. We got a taxi to the hostel no worries and checked in. We are in a small dorm with one other lady. It is so warm in here that at night we can sleep with only a sheet and thin blanket and you're fine.

We awoke quite early (well, Emma and I did) and it was snowing...not much but definitely snowing. We were first in the showers at about 8am (everyone here are sleepers like Tara!) and headed out about 9am to see the sights. We wandered up towards Downtown enjoying the snow falling on us as we went. We wandered through a f the big park here called Monttres and then up to the big park here called Mont Royal Park. We would have walked at least 3kms up this great big hill with steps and everything and Tara wasn't enjoying it and then she stacked it on some ice so then she really wasn't enjoying it. We wandered back towards Downtown and had a late lunch in McLeans which was I think supposed to be almost Irish but was kind of American so maybe an American Irish Pub...

We walked back towards Old Montreal, which is where we are staying, and dropped Tara at the hostel as she had had enough for one day (maybe even for more than one day!) Emma and I walked along the Old Quay next to the St Laurence River (and froze our behinds off) to an ice skating rink they have on one of the piers. We didn't go ice skating (we'd done enough of that all day along the sidewalks!) so wandered back through the main street of Old Montreal to our sleeping place and here we have stayed for the evening (when I got on the Internet when we got back, it was -6C again so can you blame us?)

We have big plans for tomorrow (we'll see if we get it all done) and the maximum is supposed to get to -5C which is not so bad considering on Friday it's supposed to reach a max of -12C. Argh...