Montreal

it wasn't far from Burlington to the Canadian border. the first thing we saw when we got over the border (apart from fields) was a strip club. in the middle of the countryside. this seemed a little wierd at first but we soon realized that people from Qubec looooove sexy time, there are strip clubs every hundred feet or less in the city.

getting in to the center of Montreal was really easy, the British government could learn a thing or two from the Canadians about how to build road systems. we had a bit of fun at the hotel check in desk as our booking had been made for July instead of June! it was alright though, they got it sorted quickly. the room was cool, pretty big. the hotel also had a saltwater pool whch we had a swim in every day we were there (we needed to do something to work off the constant burger/steak/bbq chicken and chips)

after checking in we went for a walk around town, stumbled across filming for something or other in one of the streets they partially closed off. i'm not sure what it was for but they had a cherry picker and loads of cameras and they were planning an ariel shot with some dude lying on the floor, and another guy was wearing an eye patch which was pretty cool. just as we passed them it started to rain heavy. really heavy. we stepped into a burger king (more meat, yessss) and watched people and camera men getting wet for a while.


the first full day we carried on walking around the city, checking out the sights and some of the shops. i am fast developing an obsession with the crazy amount of trainers they have here and have probably visited at least 3 footlockers in every city we've been to.....
we also found the underground city, which is basically a ton of big shopping precincts, food halls, cinemas and metro stops all linked together underground. we walked around this for what seemed like ages before surfacing and getting some food and deciding to go to the cinema. we saw shrek the third, it was pretty good.


the second day we decided to scale Mont Royale, the mountain that resides in the middle on Montreal and the place that gave the city it's name. bear in mind the temperature was 31 degrees today and you can see why i had to get the guns out properly (check out the t shirt tan, nice). the mountain (i'm really not sure if it's a proper mountain or not, it's a pretty big thing to be stuck in the middle of a city anyway) was pretty steep, it took a couple of hours maybe to walk to the top. the view was worth it though. you could see all over the south of montreal (probably about 70 strip clubs......)


there was a nice park at the back of Mont Royale with a big paddle boat pond, we hung around there for a while watching dogs get wet in the pond and soaking up some Canadian rays then went back into the city to look around some more. we stumbled on a graduation ceremony in front of some uni buildings and a fountain, hung out there for a while then went back to the hotel for a swin and to get ready for the 5 hour drive to Toronto the next day.