travelogue: montreal

clicky, kachu, rian, & i left for south station thursday night to hop a bus to montreal.

we napped most of the seven hours there, waking only to be hustled through customs. no, i'm not bringing any weapons into canada.

when we got to la station centrale d'autobus de montreal, we realised we had

1 no canadian currency
2 no map to the youth hostel where we had booked beds online [although i had printed one out & told klacky to pick it up from the printer, he had been too flustered by the disappearance of his boston red sox cap to remember to do so]

also, it was 6:45 am and we were very tired.

fortunately, the chu got a free map from information [although it wasn't detailed enough to have rue st vincent on it].
fortunately, a convenience store at the bus station took american money [at a one-to-one exchange rate], so i bought a more detailed map.
fortunately, some canadian guy was travelling to new york and wanted american money, so we were able to get $65 canadian.

and soon we were roaming around montreal in the very wee hours of the morning, exhausted. we found our hostel, but check-in wasn't until eight [and even then it was an extra $8/person because check-in really wasn't until two], so we had time to kill. we searched for breakfast.

first, we sat down in a tim hortons to get out of the cold, but then we realised we didn't want anything from there. a block away, we stopped at a little diner.

our waiter was very friendly. he asked us where we were from & strongly recommended 'the clubbing scene' in montreal. he also suggested climbing mont royal, which kachu got really excited about.

after eating breakfast, we were able to check into our hostel. except the hostess was like [in a cute french accent], 'oh, your cabin isn't heated yet & your air mattresses aren't inflated.' and all we wanted to do was collapse in bed and take our $8 dollar naps.

so we marched out back to our gypsy caravan and found our cozy little room with two twin beds & not much space. also, it was freezing. but at least the mattresses were inflated enough to sleep on. [i had imagined shriveled up mattresses with hardly any air in them, but they were just a little more giving than they ought to have been.] so we turned on the space heater, huddled under the covers, and took a nap.

we woke up four hours later with plans to go to the biodôme, because klacky saw some stupid movie and was really excited about it.

we figured out how to use the metro, although we didn't figure out that if you buy six tickets it is just as cheap as the four we bought, and arrived at the biodôme. [we even changed lines!]

after walking around the entire thing before finding the entrance, we made friends with fredrick, the biodôme ticket salesman. he asked click how noam was doing, after looking at his student ID, and told me that he used to have blue hair after looking at mine.

the biodôme was pretty cool, even though clack told us it was a self-sustaining ecosystem, and really it was just a fancy zoo [we saw penguins & fish being fed.] however, we got to see lots of animals from pretty close up, including capybaras, adorable tiny monkeys, piranhas, bats, caimans, birds, porcupines, & more. there were four 'ecosystems': humid rainforest, boring normal forest [invisible otters, beavers hiding in their dam, bobcat napping mostly out of sight], boring seashore [don't need to go to the zoo to see seagulls], and antarctic penguin city.

after our exploration of the four ecosystems, we went to the basement to use the toilettes & found a photo booth!!! we are in another country, so for some reason this seems like a fun thing to do. well, it only takes one or two dollar coins, so after standing around for a bit, i go up to the coat check counter and before i even know what's happening, the woman there has said something in french and made change for a five. i smile, take the money, and walk away.

the cool thing about montreal is that the first language is french, so it really is like being in another country. but the scary thing is that people will assume you speak french, and i had no idea what to do most of the time that happened. exciting.

so we put our money in and before we knew what was going on, FLASH FLASH FLASH FLASH. and then we just kind of sat there. what just happened? on the booth it said there were a bunch of steps, like choosing a decorative background, etc. we thought maybe we did something wrong since the machine didn't seem to be doing anything. but apparently it takes THREE MINUTES for your pictures to be processed. and the choices of decorative background are: 1) curtain behind you or 2) no curtain behind you.

the pictures turned out all right, even if i have a double chin in one. katharine chu has them somewhere, so i can't post them for your viewing pleasure.

we went back upstairs and asked fredrick where we should go exploring. he pointed us in the direction of mont royal and off we went.

TO BE CONTINUED...