Land of Cheese Curds

Wow, it's March already. I didn't realize it until I looked at my agenda. I flipped the page to the next week and it hit me: what, my birthday's next week?! Already? Noooooo!! Just 2 more years + 1 week until my quarter-life crisis.

I put up some of my pictures from Montréal here. Now that I don't have any more assignments this week I'll write about my trip to Montréal... drumroll....

Thurs. February 19
I took the 5:00 p.m VIA Rail train and sat in first class (oooh :P). They had so much yummy stuff for me to enjoy like trail mix for a snack, salad, dinner roll and peppercorn steak for dinner, and apple flan and chocolate cups for dessert. Too bad I don't drink... I could've had so much free alcohol, HAHA. For most of the train ride I was studying for my Operating Systems midterm, although it was really hard to manage my textbook, binder, and study notes on my lap and the tiny little table. I got into the city at 9:30 and headed straight to my sister's residence. I did some more studying and slept at 2am.

Fri. February 20
I woke up at 9:45, did some more studying, then headed out at 1pm to Beri-Uqam station to pick up a 3-day metro pass. The sucky thing was that they only sell the passes at Beri, so I had to spend money on an extra metro fare, hmph. So the day's objective was to get shots of places I used to visit around Montreal for my photography assignment. I went down to Chinatown, Notre Dame, and Vieux Montréal/Port to take some pictures. The tourist places that are normally so busy and crowded in the summer were totally dead, which was what I wanted to capture in my photographs, but I got quite bored (and cold). I met up with my sister at 3pm and travelled to Mont-Royal Station. Around that area we went "grocery" shopping for snacks and "breakfast" (ie. marble cake), and that was where I bought cheese curds for Christian. I thought they looked so gross upon seeing them for the very first time... I couldn't believe they were even edible (but they're actually really good)! Afterwards we walked around the Plâteau and went to Parc LaFontaine, where there's a huge pond (looks more like a canal) for skaters. We then headed towards Sherbrooke station; I took out a map to see how much further we had to walk to the station and some cyclist stopped to give us some "help". He went on to explain the structure of the metro system, and then kept talking to us about his travels around the west coast. He knew how to say "thank you" in 63 languages and started going over them with us. Holy crow, I thought he was going to go through all of them, but luckily had to head off to the library before it closed. Haha, he was entertaining, but we were freeezing! We headed to Place des Arts for the festival of lights and watched fireworks at 7:30, then went to an Ethiopian restaurant called Blue Nile for dinner. The place was really full, so we were directed to another restaurant, Abiata, which is under the same management just down rue St. Denis. The food was really interesting and was served on the LARGEST plate I had ever seen. We had to eat with our hands by using flat bread to pick up our salad our meat. The restuarant had really nice decor and the service was great, albeit a little slow.

Sat. February 21
For breakfast I had cheese curds melted on a dinner roll... yum! Haha... it took a little getting used to, but I was hooked on the curds after that. In the morning my sister and I went to the Université de Montréal, then took a mini metro tour, visiting the areas around Outremont, Parc, and Acadie stations. My sister went back home at noon while I continued on to Mont-Royal station and took a bus up Mont Royal. While riding the bus I finally figured out where that park that resembles a beach in the summer time is located!! (It's at ave Mont Royal and ave Parc) I took a couple of pics on the mountain, where many people were cross-country skiing... it was cool to see the mountain in the winter. Went back to the res, where I also met up with my youngest sister. In the afternoon all three of us went shopping at Simons and Les Ailes de la Mode.
I didn't buy much- just a black 3/4 length sleeve blouse and a pretty dress from Simons. After all the stores closed we dropped by the festival of lights again, then went restaurant hunting for dinner. Our first choice was a Spanish restaurant but we found out that it was out of business. Then we walked all the way back up to Sherbrooke to a Tibetan restaurant that we saw the night before, but didn't realize it was closed for Tibetan new year (?). So then we picked a Thai restaurant called Thai (so original) and the food was pretty good but I don't remember what any of it was called! That night I studied some more for my OS midterm *yawn*.

Sun. February 22
Uncle and aunt drove us back to Toronto, where we had a HUGE yummy dinner with the family at our house.

THE END.

Here are some pics Vanessa took on her digicam: