Sunday 28th September 2014

We had an early wake up call and got ourselves washed and dressed for the long ass haul of our bags to the bus depot! A 14 minute walk with three suitcases weighing 23 kgs each, plus a laptop bag, camera bag and two backpacks is a lot of work!

We arrived at the bus depot finally after what seemed like a long walk, thank god there was no one around! We picked up our tickets and paid for the extra bag before we sat in the waiting area for our bus to arrive.

We boarded the bus and settled down for some sleep. Sleeping in buses hasn't gotten any easier!! We had a transfer at Ottawa which is a pain, as we had to get all our bags out and put them on the next bus to Montreal.

The overall journey wasn't that bad at all, the buses have WIFI, not very good at times, but it is something!

We finally arrived in Montreal after eight hours on the bus. It is actually much quicker than on the train, all of our bus journeys are to be honest and a third of the price!

Our hostel is in the French quarter of Montreal, this made sense after our friends Ant and Kat told us as we didn't hear a word of English from anyone! We had a 'short' walk, which is never short with the snowboard bag and Stu moaning about it every five minutes!

The hostel was ok, apart from having to lug our bags to the third floor, and the bathrooms being in the basement, which was kind of spooky too! We had a shower to refresh ourselves before we went to the fresh food market to grab some food for dinner. We didn't really get up to much as we were shattered at most sights and shops would be closing so we stayed in and had an early night!

Monday 29th September 2014

We woke up earlyish and grabbed breakfast and went out for one of my walking tours. We walk through a couple of parks which were populated by hundreds, I actually mean hundreds, of squirrels! We actually saw an all white squirrel too.

We walked down Avenue du Mont-Royal until we arrived at parc du Mont-Royal, it was a huge park and we followed the many footpaths trying to find the lookout point! We enjoyed our walk through the forest with all the leaves in their Autumn foliage and falling off the trees. It had some spectacular colours on show!

We finally made it to the top after some killer stairs and got a great view of downtown Montreal. It was a little windy and cold up top, we started our walk back down. Luckily we had my phone as we had no idea where we were going!

Stu was getting hungry so we went to a bagel shop/mini factory and we brought six cinnamon and raisin bagels. They were really tasty! We sat on a bench eating our lunch watching people walk by. There was a lot of traffic going into the bagel shop, so they must be popular with locals too!

We decided to catch a bus down Avenue du Parc, down toward downtown and the waterfront. We had a wonder round and went into the little shops that were down the alleyways having a nose. We walked into a maple shop and got some maple syrup tasting! The guy told us how it was all made which season the sap was harvest and each one had a different taste. All which I enjoyed!

Maple syrup is made from the sap of sugar maple, red maple or black maple trees, although it can also be made from other maple species. In cold climates, these trees store starch in their trunks and roots before the winter; the starch is then converted to sugar that rises in the sap in the spring. Maple trees can be tapped by boring holes into their trunks and collecting the exuded sap. The sap is processed by heating to evaporate much of the water, leaving the concentrated syrup.

We headed back to the hostel as we had to get ourselves ready to go and meet Ant, Kat and Luky for dinner and drinks.

They met us at our hostel thankfully and we jumped on the metro and we headed out to apparently the best burgers in Montreal. They were actually so good! Stu had this gigantic thing with poutine in the middle!! I had a super hot burgers with lots of hot relish and hot peppers! Yummy!!

We then went next door, literally, for some beers! We all had a litre worth of beer, and played some card games like back in Bangkok! It was still pretty early, and I was already feeling tipsy, uh-oh!

We jumped back onto the metro to go to another bar, but we had to run for the metro and my shoe came whizzing off on the last step and it started sliding towards the platform! Everything went slow-mo and I was like nooooooooo.....! Thankfully my show stopped before the platform and Luky had to jump the barrier to grab my shoe for me! I couldn't try that again if I planned it!

Our next stop was a Japanese bar which a specialty drink...Saki Bomb!! The bar waitress built this huge tower of three drinks, the first being a beer, the second saki and the third another beer! All balanced on chopsticks! The next part the waitress goes when I say saki you say bomb, which we did three times then banged on the table and all the layers fell into the big beer cup at the bottom and you had to drink! It was pretty cool drink to look at and tasted ok too!

The last bar was a 'typical' British bar...apparently! They wanted our take on the pub which wasn't very British.

It was getting pretty late so we decided it was best to head back to the hostel to try and get some sleep. We had a great time seeing Kat, Ant and Luky again and hopefully if we come back over the east side of Canada or even America to let them know and they will come and join us if they can!

Stu managed to be sick on his bed, my coat but luckily most of it went into the bin seeing as we have no bathroom on our level! Typical! Tomorrow is going to be one fun bus ride!