It's French Jim, but not as we know it...

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  Montreal, Quebec, Canada
Wednesday, October 24, 2007

So, onwards to Canada.

Burlington had been gloriously hot and sunny - seriously: shorts and T-shirt weather. The day we left, it was chucking it down. Still, rather have that whilst on a bus than cycling to a brewery. First thing, we went for breakfast again, this time at another diner, which looked the part but really, that was its only selling point. "A cup" as Blackadder once said, "of hot water with some brown grit in it, unless by some miracle you've started serving coffee". Nuff said. However...when in Rome, as they say: Ben & Jerry's started their frozen dairy goods concern in Vermont, pretty close to Burlington. So, in the pissing rain, we chanced upon an ice-cream parlour, and gorged. Oh yes, despite the bacon, eggs and toast for breakfast, but probably because of the coffee, we had Cherry Garcia (two lots), Chocolate Therapy, Cinnamon Buns, New York Super Fudge Chunk and Berry Berry Extraordinary. Sorry Mum(s). Yes, we can hear the tutting from here.

Then, to a liquor store (for presents dammit, we're not quite that depraved), where we bought Black Sheep and Samuel Smith's ales for our hostesses, as a wee taste of Yorkshire beer (y'know, proper beer), where we BOTH got ID'd, for Christ's sake, again. This time, despite it being the same liquor store as before, they wouldn't accept UK driving licences...but UK passports were OK. Yeah, because Jacob really looks underage.

Then, to the Bus Station, where we watched our driver initially refuse to sell a drunk American teenager a ticket. Eventually, he relented, and let him on. Then, it turned out he had no passport, and hardly any money, and was advised that there was no point trying to cross into Canada, as they wouldn't let him in, and he'd be stuck, at border control, in the rain, with no ride. He said he'd take his chances. Well guess what folks! Yup, the tally of passengers was a little thinner after we crossed the border. It took about an hour before we finally gave up and left him, but left him we did. Berk.

So, arriving in Montreal, in the rain, in the dark, we discovered that the cash machines in the bus station wouldn't recognise our cards, so we had to poke around the city looking for one which would. Fun. Two rucksacks each, beating aside the panhandling vagrants who beset us at every turn, looking for legal tender. Could only get better...

Armed with currency, we bought an appalling meal (why would you make a sandwich out of chilli, and why, furthermore, would you pile more chilli haphazardly on top of the sandwich...and why, finally, would you make chilli entirely out of ketchup and salt?), and then headed to meet our hosts. We were Couch Surfing with a Montreal couple, Nathalie and Gabriel, in what promised to be a nice part of the city.

A lovely, lovely flat, in a nice area of the city, and we were greeted by a lovely French-Canadian bloke who made us tea and made us feel very welcome. Despite the language barrier, Gabriel is obviously a really nice guy - it's just a shame our vaguely passable French is French French, not Canadian French, otherwise I'm sure we'd have got on famously.

Then Nathalie came home. Nathalie is a yoga teacher, shiatsu massage practitioner and eater of natural yoghurt. Nothing at all wrong with any of that. However, imagine the expensive, opulent bohemian apartment in a French city, and the sort of pretensions you'd expect to be kicking around, if such a person was pretentious. There you go. No finger can be put, really, on why we weren't too struck, but that's about as close as we can get.

That's probably enough for now. Montreal proper, with all of its delights, to follow shortly...

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