First stop on my new and improved travel plan was to head back to Montreal because that is where cheap flights to Thunder Bay left from. I’d spoken to our angel camp friend who’d said she’d put me up for another couple of nights and subsequently given everyone else a bed for the night as well. It turned out to be more of a floor because her house mates had some people over as well but we made it work.
By this point uni had started and so she took us to one of the first football matches of the season (I refuse to call it soccer). This turned out to be absolutely hilarious as they were truly shocking at football. Muireann also happened to be very good at football and plays a lot at home so her commentary was truly spectacular! Needless to say Montreal University lost and lost badly but it was definitely an amusing way to spend the evening. On our way home we found a debit card and being the good Samaritans that we are took it home with us, utilising the power of Facebook to find its owner. We reunited this lovely girl with her lost card and went to bed feeling glad it had been us that found and not someone less trustworthy. Just shining our halos and all that.
The main reason I wanted to come back to Montreal was to visit the last couple of places we hadn’t made it to before. Mainly Mount Royal which I thought was a church. Turns out the church is actually somewhere different and what’s on top of the hill is an old building and a giant cross. Still it was a beautiful sunny day and a good walk up to the top which offered incredible views over the city. We spent a fair amount of time up there enjoying the views and looking for the church which we then realised was actually about 5 minutes from where our friend lived…oops.
We eventually found St Joseph’s Oratory which is really impressive and definitely worth the walk. For someone who’d not particularly religious I feel like I spent a lot of time in churches on this trip but no lightning struck me as I crossed through the doorway so all was OK. After climbing yet more steps we found our way inside what was a very modern church, different to most of the others we’d seen so far but still pretty impressive in scale. As beautiful as it was the grumbling of our stomachs echoing round the building was not adding much to the ambience so after a quick couple of pictures and a friendly helping hand to a lost old lady we headed for lunch.
Food is not the main focus of this blog but it is something that I hold very dear to my heart and the reason I put weight on in Canada is because they do so many things that taste so good but are so very bad for you. Take poutine for example. This delicious masterpiece is a delicacy of the province of Quebec and rightly so. Chips, gravy and cheese curds; the staple of a night out in Newcastle is in fact a highly sought after dish in this part of the world. This was my first experience outside of camp where they really did not do it justice because this was delicious! Food always tastes better when you are especially hungry but I did manage to savour this and poutine quickly found its place in my heart as one of the top foods I tried in Canada.
Being our last night together of course it was a case of go big or go home and we ended up doing both. We went to a few different places trying not to go back to the bar we’d been to every other night we’d been out in Montreal. We stayed at one place for a while purely because it was happy hour and they were selling cheap alcoholic slushies with sweetie kebabs; there is no better combination than alcohol and a sugar rush. We soon realised, once happy hour was over that the place was actually a bit rubbish and of course ended up back at our old haunt. It was so overcrowded this time though and after Muireann cut all her feet on broken glass and I got a headache from being punched on the head we decided to call it a night and head home, via Tim Horton’s of course.
No one had to get going particularly early the next morning, which made a nice change and we managed to grab a relaxed lunch round the corner before heading our separate ways. I was sad to be leaving these guys behind. Despite our differences and little tiffs we’d all had such a laugh in the few weeks we’d been together and it had been nice to know there was always going to be people around to do things with, even if we all didn’t want to do the same thing. However, the time had come to say goodbye, put on my big girl knickers and head off on my solo adventure…well until Tay picked me up from the airport in Thunder Bay at least.
TOP TIP FOR MONTREAL: Mount Royal and St Joseph are not the same thing. One is up a big hill the other is up a lot of steps
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