The Rest of the Trip
Alex and I got up at our leisure in Montreal, packed up, checked out of the hostel, and walked over to Cartier Square. We grabbed a cup of coffee, and then moved right on to beer. Seeing how our train's departure for Quebec wasn't until 4pm, we had a couple more beers, and a little lunch too, before we numbly stood up to start walking over to the train station in the Centre-Ville.

We made the train with a bare fifteen minutes to spare, and I was thoroughly sweaty from lugging my backpack through Montreal's crowded streets. The scenery between Montreal and Quebec was beautiful, and it's apparent that the population of Quebec, especially along the St. Lawrence, is significantly denser than in Ontario.

We arrived in Quebec on time, and for the first time on the trip, we were at a loss as to which way to go. I knew that our B&B was near the corner of Rene-Levesque and Moncton, but Moncton wasn't on any of the Centre-Ville maps. Hoping that a semi-local would know better, we hopped in the bac of a cab, and in broken French I told the driver where we needed to go. It was not a problem for him at all.

Mme Poirriot showed us our room, told us when breakfast would be, and handed us our keys. Then we set out to see some of Quebec before the sunset would turn all the pictures orange. After a nice dinner, we grabbed a table over on la Grande Allee among the crowds of the annual Quebec Festival d'Ete(summer festival), and split three pitchers of Rickard's before stumbling back after 3am.

We slept in on Saturday, and didn't get out the door until after 2pm. We walked over to Vieux Quebec to check out the Citadel, lower Quebec, and some more of the festival before sleepily returning to the B&B for an afternoon nap. I popped a blister there and we went over to get some dinner and a last drink in Canada.

We got up this morning, ate breakfast, caught a cab to the airport, and shook hands goodbye. I went into my terminal at Quebec's airport, which is thankfully very small, and didn't even have to wait for a ticket agent or security. What did happen though, was that Air Canada, without informing me, canceled my flight from Montreal to Toronto, and rescheduled me for Tuesday(2 days from now). Apparently, they reported that they were unable to reach me at the phone number I provided. Yeah, you Canadian geniuses. It's a voicemail number. Leave a voicemail. But they did not. Apparently, calling without leaving a voicemail is sufficient enough for them to justify bumping me without informing me.

As politely as I could, I informed the ticket agent that I was not going to wait around in Montreal for two more days, so she clacked away at the keys for several minutes before announcing that she got me a seat on a Toronto flight(bypassing Montreal entirely) that was departing in about 25 minutes. When I asked if I would have enough time to make it, she laughed out loud. A little annoyed, I soon found out why. Including security, I had all of about thirty yards to walk.

I huddled into a window seat on a crowded little commuter plane, landed in Toronto, waited for about an hour to get through customs, and made my way to where I'm sitting now. Many things were recommended that I accomplish before leaving England's little brother to our North, and the last one I have not yet accomplished is to eat a Tim Horton's donut. There's a Tim Horton's right next to my departure gate, so I'm going to go knock that down.

I'll be back atcha with pictures and final thoughts, once I'm back within our safe borders.

wolfpack had this to say:
John, Great story about your trip,glade you are enjoying your trip, maybe you and my battle buddy can go to lunch when you come back home !!HOOAH !! YOU are the Man.

8:07 AM, Jul 9, 2007

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