A week in Canada - exploring Toronto & Montreal

As I'm lucky to live close to the Canadian border this year, I decided to go explore the country during Thanksgiving break this past week. Canada is huge and I only had a week off so I chose to visit Toronto and Montreal.

TORONTO TOWN HALL SQUARE

After a 6 hour bus drive I arrived in Toronto where I met up Candela, FLTA from Argentina. We spent two days exploring Toronto together just walking. The city isn't that big so exploring by foot is absolutely doable and I reckon we've seen all (or at least most) of it in two days. Our Airbnb was located in Chinatown, downtown so we were ideally situated. The first day we started off going North to see the University of Toronto and then we walked back downtown to see Yonge-Dundas square and streets, the CN Tower and the Canada sign, Old Toronto and we ended up our day in a Christmas Market in Distillery District. On our second day we went to the town hall, Toronto sign and spent some time in a big mall before heading to the airport.

We were really luck with the weather, despite the wind and the cold temperatures we had sun and a beautiful blue sky that reflected on the glass skyscrapers. I only had a glimpse of Toronto but it surely is a great city and it seems like there are many events going on and things to do. In the US I heard people saying that Canadians were very different than Americans but to me at least they had the exact same accent and Toronto looks like your typical American big city with high skyscrapers, ads, shops and restaurants everywhere,... The only difference I noticed while I was there is that in Canada they say "washroom" instead of "restroom" (ok even restroom is so weird to me, I just don't get used to it I mean come on you don't go there to "rest"...).

From Toronto, Cande and I took a plane to Montreal where we spent the rest of the week with Leo from Germany and Juliette from France too. We arrived there at night and it was -14° - I don't think I had ever experienced such cold temperatures in my life before even when I go to the mountains to ski... It was just as cold the three following days but I didn't feel it as I WAS SICK IN BED. Seems like the flu hit me hard this year so I couldn't really go out in the freezing cold but I still did for an hour or two everyday because I hated the fact that I was in a new city and I couldn't see a thing. I didn't wander very far though and stayed close to where our Airbnb was located but I got to see a lot of street art and I even found a cat café (highlight of my holidays I swear)! Montreal looks like a very cool city and I'm so disappointed I couldn't see much of it but I'll come back.

Also, Canadian French is so different and the accent is so peculiar. They use different words, actually synonyms of the words we use (for instance they say "fauteuil" instead of "siège" for aiplane seats or "feuilles" instead of "draps"), they have their own expressions and use a lot of anglicisms – "j'espère que vous aurez du fun" our Uber driver told us on our first night there.

Overall the beginning of the trip was nice and I was happy to finally be in a bigger city again but then being sick was a nightmare and I just wanted to go home! Anyway I feel better now and I'm soon off to new adventures!