We're now in Toronto after a brilliant week with Adam in Montreal. I met Adam when travelling Europe with Duncan, and we all got along brilliantly - so much so that we re-joined him again on another two occasions during the month! I'm not sure if he expected either of us to actually take him up on his offer of free accomodation if we were ever in Canada, but he was a very generous and gracious host.

We took Montreal slowly, and were more keen to abuse the comforts of home rather than go out in the cold. The temperature didn't drop too severly, but over the week there was more than a foot of snow! Montreal is made for the weather, they are so used to it that they have a great deal of underground shops and tunnels connecting them all - but that made it a bit tricky to sightsee.

Nevertheless, we climbed the Royal Mountain (Montreal is Royal Mountain in French) twice, once in rubbish weather and once in lovely weather. We also visited the Biodome to see some awesome animals and the Ponte-a-Calliere, which is Montreal's cultural museum. It did a really good job of explaining how Montreal came to be in an interesting and entertaining way.
Adam even took us up to Quebec City, which is very nice. It's the capital of Quebec, so all the governmental buildings are there and quite a bit of the cultue of the province.

Adam provided us with some superb Canadian beers (Alexander Keiths being my favourite), and made sure we were fed well - our favourite experience being a sushi restaurant (I've now eaten raw tentacle, and there's photos to prove it!). We were made to feel very welcome by both Adam and Nicole, and we highly recommend staying with them to anyone heading to Montreal!

Now, after another brilliant Megabus journey (free wifi, plenty seating, a plug at my feet, warm and on-time both leaving and arriving) we're now in Toronto. There's no snow here, but It's crazy cold. The weather channel said with windchill it was down at -27C. I've never known it like this before, just gets super cold. Doesn't matter how many layers you've got on, when the wind hits you it's like ohhhhhwowowowwwooooowwooo. But, we're here to experience new cultures and things - is why we chose Canada in the winter and Oz in the Summer :)

Hungover this morning - had wine with dinner, pitchers of beer at the bar during a comedy show, white russians during the big lebowski quiz (we got into the final!) then whisky and ginger beer (free from the barman because I beat him at dice poker). Very fun night.

Now we're off to see if we can get some cheap tickets for a basketball game that's happening tonight - I reckon if we turn up, we might be able to get some from a tout or maybe see if we can go in after the game has been running for a while....

Au Revoir!