Near the end of this July my family and I went on vacation to Montreal, Quebec, Canada. This was our first trip out of the country. My mom had been to Montreal when she was younger but the rest of my family has never gone outside the U.S.
We had a relatively good time while we were there. We stayed for 6 days but cut our trip short because we found that 6 day in Montreal was a bit too much for us. We went to get the European experience without having to actually go to Europe. I have to say we did get the French experience.
We went to the farmers market which was really, really cool. I wish we had more in the U.S. The fresh food you could get was just so delicious. My favorite was the strawberries. They were so good and were much better than the ones you can get at the store.
We ended up eating our way through Montreal and only had a couple of real meals while we were there.
Poutine-Fries, Gravy, and cheese curds
Beaver Tails- Pretty much a doughnut type thing with topping.
Mine was a vanilla icing with crushed Oreos and chocolate syrup.
This was my parents'. It had a cream cheese icing and toffy stuff.
We got a cinnamon and sugar one for the boys.
Crêpe- A tortilla shell type thing with a filling
Mine had Nutella and strawberries.
While we were there we took the metro the entire time. It was so crazy driving there! We didn't feel safe so as soon as we got there we parked the car and didn't use it until we left. Plus, gas was really expensive. It took us a couple of tries to get a hang of the metro. We don't have a subway or anything here in Columbus but we've been on the one in D.C. However, every thing was in french and all of the announcements were in French too. I had 4 years of high school french which came in handy a bit, but I wasn't able to translate everything because I didn't know every word. I didn't get much of a chance to speak French either. People spoke so fast I couldn't catch what they were saying, plus they can tell by the dumb found look on your face that you didn't speak French and would switch to English.
We had to go up and down many flights of stairs to get to the metro.
Now we did go letterboxing while we were there. It was mainly just me and my mother. The males in my family don't really care about it anymore. My mom and I ended up separating from them for most of the trip to do our own thing.
The first box we found was quite the adventure. The box we were looking for was supposed to be a under 1 mile hike to find. Well, the clues were only in pictures....
We had to first find that sign at Mount Royal Park. Remember when I said we took the metro everywhere? Yeah, there wasn't a metro very close to the park. When we got to the park it turned out to be a huge park. My mom and I ended up walking over 5 miles trying to locate the sign to get to the box. Luckily we were able to find it! We took a leap of faith to find this box since it was planted over a year go and didn't have any finds. I understand why now. However, we were disappointed to find out we were not the first finders. A group last September found it but it was not logged online.
Success!!
I made an updated thing of the pictures in the clues but I forgot to get one of the pictures so enjoy my lovely digital drawing.
I suggest that if you plan on ever finding this box drive if you are willing to endure the crazy, crazy traffic. Also, the name of the box hints where its located. We ended up taking the scenic route to get the box and it was really pretty. Such a beautiful park.
It was a mountain. Lots of going up and down. My mom has a FitBit(step counter) and we did over 15,000 steps and 65 flights of stairs(walking up an incline is tracked as flights).
The second box we found was much, much easier and we had actually gone past the location the day before. The box-well, it was just a magnetic stamp- was in Old Montreal. We did a lot of window shopping around here and we tried poutine there too.
It was very European and very cool.
The stamp was very neat and cleverly hidden. You just have to watch for people since it got pretty busy. At one of the shops we got a Canada pin to go on my letterboxing bag. I was originally going to do patches but I have a tendency of changing bags so I didn't want to sew them on. I'm thinking about getting a vest to put all my patches on but I'm not sure what to get....
Over all it was a good time but I'm not sure if I'll ever want to go back for more than a day or two. I do have some complaints/things I didn't like about Montreal.
First off the city is dirtier than I expected it to be. There is a big homeless issue and most are very straight forward and/or aggressive. The first homeless guy we came across we came across started screaming at us telling us to turn around and kept doing so until we were about half a block away from him. That really freaked me and my brothers out. I know that in America we have a homeless issue too but theses guys were just so rude and up in your face(not all but a lot).
Next, I don't think I've come across a ruder group of people in my life. We all end up coming across rude people in a batch but it was like everyone was rude. People would not move out of the way. No one said "sorry" or "excuse me." People didn't respond to you when you said "sorry" or "excuse me." If you were holding hands with someone people would just walk right between you! They pushed through people but if you pushed through them since they wouldn't move, they would look at you like you were the rude one. I talked to a friend of mine who went to France this spring and she said that it was a culture thing. They don't have a lot of space in France so sidewalks and everything are crowded and they can't apologize to everyone. That's understandable but there was typically more than enough room for people to go around us but chose to plow through us! It just baffles me how rude and inconsiderate people were. They also seemed to lack any personal space
People were also rude if you didn't speak French. A lot of the people at the market were nice to us if we spoke English but a lot of people everywhere else where not nice about it at all. We were at a souvenir shop and the lady there gave us the nastiest look and was rude to us since we didn't speak French(she ws a lot nicer to the French speaking group behind us in line). I understand if we were in France we should try to communicate in French. People appreciate it if you at least try to speak their language since that is all they know, but Canada has two languages-English and French. Everything was in French, almost nothing was translated.
We decided to cut our trip short and spend some time in New York. We left Quebec and hoped over to Ontario and had dinner. We expressed to our waitress our thoughts on the rudeness and such. She said that she and her husband never go to Quebec, especially Montreal, because of how rude they are and how crazy their driving is. She said it was unCanadian of them to not have things in English too since their country has two languages.
When we got back my grandpa explained to me that Quebec has a grudge pretty much against all the rest of Canada because of the stuff that happened between the French and English. Quebec wants to be it's own country too. He said that they are rude to other Canadians that didn't speak French but we nice to people from America. That was not the case for us. There were quite a few times where we stated we were from the U.S. and they did not act any nicer to us. It was just all strange. I want to go back to Canada but probably not Quebec.
If you go and you don't know any or much French do not say hello in French. If you do so they expect you to be a french speaker and will ramble off in French. If you just say "Hello" they can tell you are an English Speaker and will most likely switch.
I am happy that we got to go and that we got to go letterboxing. That was the one thing I wanted to do before we left.
Thanks for reading!
(and for surviving though my rant about rude people)
=(^._.^)=
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