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Sunday, December 21
17 to 20 december - montreal 8:46 PMMontreal is the second largest city in Canada, and the largest in the province of Quebec itself. The official language here is French as defined by the city's charter, making Montreal among the top 3 largest French-speaking cities (second after Paris) in the world.
Being engulfed in a world of French'd made me miss Julie quite abit; I miss learning random conversational words and phrases from her, as well as her animated gestures and antics over our regular coffee sessions. Coincidentally, one of the employees at our hostel is named Julie as well, and speaks in a unique accent the way she does! I just feel kinda nostalgic now to have left some of my closest international friends, and to realize that my exchange experience is so about to be over.. :(
Montreal's weather conditions are very different as compared to Winnipeg's. Winnipeg is actually the coldest major city (i.e. population over 500,000) in the world, and JS and I'd thought we're invincible now to have survived Winterpeg and nowhere we're visiting on this trip would be as bad. Yet Montreal's climate is more humid, so instead of dry crisp winds and piercing painful temperatures, it exudes a vastly different, moist-kinda cold which can be unbearable as well. Streets in Montreal are also very slippery and sloshy in light of wetter snow, making walking equally uncomfortable and extremely dangerous at times, bleah.
Anyway, I'd love to share a tad of Montreal's culture, architecture and history in this post, but given the need to keep up with daily updates it seems virtually impossible to achieve that, so I'll just be posting up pics along the way for all of you back home (and in China)! :)
17-18 Dec - Le Sous-Bois, Parc du Mont-Royal
Left: Singapore reunites! Pompidou (Shuwen's bf) joins us in our travel plans as well
Right: Le Sous-Bois, our hostel with quaint lil' cabins (though these are not ours, haha) - see below!
Our very budget (CAD 15 per night) mixed dorm, which really looks like a barnyard la, haha. It gets really chilly at night here cos of the wooden floors, cold air-beds and not very efficient heating system, hmm.
Left: At a Metro station / Right: A tobogganing snow-slope at Parc du Mont-Royal (Mount Royal Park)
Atop the observatory chalet of Parc du Mont-Royal, overlooking downtown Montreal
19 Dec - Montreal's Underground City, Quartier-Latin
Random streets of Quartier-Latin, an area downtown bustling with night-life
Interesting stuff - my humps and penis pasta at a random plaything shop, haha
Left: Winnie the Pooh has a French name..?!
Right: TAO-GEY at a Vietnamese pho restaurant, which I haven't seen in 4 months!
Je t'aime - I love you.
20 Dec - Old Montreal, Montreal's waterfront
Notre-Dame Church (Basilique Notre-Dame), the largest in Montreal - Celine Dion got married here!
Interior of Notre-Dame, exquisite and beautiful - spot me in the pictures!
The historic area of Old Montreal (Vieux-Montreal), where architecture and cobbled streets are well-maintained, restored and frequented by horse-drawn caleches carrying tourists
Fireworks display at Montreal's waterfront to usher in the Christmas season. The scene was simply breathtaking, beautiful and romantic; I teared when Celine Dion's "Because You Loved Me" came on, and now I finally understand why people use "感动" to describe fireworks displays. Apart from that, this is the first time I'm watching fireworks under freezin' cold conditions, as compared to being amidst a sea of red and white sweaty bodies, haha.
My last night in Montreal ended on a rather interesting note; we actually bumped into some of our U of M international friends at the hostel! Dennis (Holland), Ayumi (Japan), MiJoong and Minji (Korea) arrived in Montreal late last night, and we'd all coincidentally ended up at Le Sous-Bois, heh. Unfortunately it was already our last night in the city, so JS and I spent some time with them over breakfast this morning before bidding farewell (we'll be meeting them again in 10 days' time on New Year's Eve).
xx
The above is really a highly-summarized account of the sights and sounds of Montreal. :( But I figured it's the best I can do while I'm on the go - not bad already okay, I'm actually aboard the VIA Rail right now headed for Quebec City, my friends are all sleeping but I'm faithfully blogging away! Haha.
On a side note, I've got a single window-seat and everywhere's a pure sheet of white when I look outside. I know it sounds romantic and beautiful, but a snow storm seems to be brewing right now so it actually looks quite scary as well. We're earnestly hoping for good weather conditions in the other cities, though we're told not to be too optimistic as places like Toronto'll be much worse with its cold humid climate and knee-deep snowfalls.. Winnipeg too is currently experiencing near -40 blizzards! Omg.. :S
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Winifred Lim
Arthur V Mauro Residence, Box 436B
120 Dafoe Road, Winnipeg, MB R3T 6B3
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About me
You are an enthusiastic innovator, always seeing new possibilities and new ways of doing things. You have a lot of imagination and initiative for starting projects, and a lot of impulsive energy for carrying them out. You are stimulated by difficulties and are most ingenious in solving them. You can get so interested in your newest project that you have time for little else. Your energy comes from a succession of new enthusiasms and your world is full of possible projects. Your enthusiasm gets other people interested too.
Your feeling preference shows in a concern for people. You are skillful in handling people and often have remarkable insight into the possibilities and development of others. You are extremely perceptive about the attitudes of others, aiming to understand rather than judge people. You are much drawn to counseling and can be inspired and inspiring teacher, particularly where you have freedom to innovate. With talent, you can succeed in almost any field that captures your interest.
A difficulty for you is that you hate uninspired routine and find it remarkably hard to apply yourself to sometimes necessary detail unconnected with any major interest. Worse yet, you may get bored with your own projects as soon as the major problems have been solved or the initial challenge has been met. You may need to learn to follow through and finish what you have begun, but are happiest and most effective in jobs that permit one project after another, with somebody else taking over as soon as the situation is well in hand.
Hearsay? Say here.