6 Apr 09

Well following yesterdays quite photo heavy post, todays is going to be a lot more wordy and less visually pleasing. It's been a bit of a rough day, and if we had been writing this two hours ago, the story might have had a less optimistic tone!!

We awoke this morning after our last night at Clarence Castle (great name for a rather nice hostel!) and rather swiftly packed the remainder of our belongings and headed to the train station (via Cora's for breakfast...a hearty full English style for both of us) for the next leg of our journey. Rather helpfully (and British rail companies have a lot to learn!) we checked in our luggage and so were free to amble around the station unencumbered by our steadily increasing suitcase weights! After a short wait we boarded the train and began our journey.

The main thing to note about North American trains is that they haven't learned the meaning of high speed yet. Whereas a 300 mile journey from Newcastle (ish) to London might take 3 hours to 4 hours in the UK, Toronto to Montreal took 5 hours for the same distance. And this was supposed to be a fast train. The journey was pretty uneventful although we both got a bit of cabin fever by the end of it and were getting increasingly annoyed by a pair of girls in front of us who were very loudly giggling and chatting in Quebecian French (therefore incomprehensible).

The weather all day has been very wet and miserable which probably contributed to us being a bit stressed upon arrival in Montreal. We had to walk for about 20 mins to get to the subway station, which then swallowed Mez's ticket. Then when we tried to get off the subway train, nobody would move and so the suitcase became a battering ram! After we finally got out of the subway, we got our bearings and made our way to the hostel. Except that we couldn't find the hostel when we got to the road it is supposed to be on. With the help of a very friendly local, we finally found it and checked in.

You may have heard the two of us talking about this with a bit more enthusiasm before the trip, but our accommodation in Le Sous Bois is what can best be described as a wooden cabin situated within a courtyard down a sidestreet. With a more objective view, we have a dry relatively warm place to stay for our time here.

Feeling more than a little stressed we decided to try and find somewhere to eat. We walked for about 20mins and stumbled across a Vietnamese restaurant where we hastily went inside out of the rain. The food was excellent, we shared some "imperial rolls", a chicken curry, stir fried beef with crispy noodles and grilled pork with rice.

Fully recharged we made out way back to the hostel and are now sat on our airbed writing up the days events and unwinding a little. Lets just hope the reports of bed bugs are exaggerated!!