Montreal

This is an e-mail that summarizes the second part of our trans-Canada tour

Hi all,

I have been wanting to write this e-mail for a long time now, but I was pretty lazy! A lot has happened since my last “report” :)

I stopped in Toronto I believe? Well, after Toronto, we went to Montreal. We stayed there from August 31 – September 6.

Montreal is the most beautiful among the three main Canadian cities (the other two being Vancouver and Toronto). It has a very European feel. I’ve never been to France, but everyone says it is the Paris of North America.

The city combines natural beauty, civilization culture and urbanization. I also think it boasts the most interesting architectural experiments in Canada (I am not claiming to be an expert though)! You walk around to see hundreds of street cafes and restaurants, and the food is AMAZING :)

Our visit to Montreal was the most touristic in its nature, since we clearly understood the difficulty of finding a job there because we do not speak French, the city’s first language. We stayed at a bed & breakfast house called Manoir Harvard. Our host, Robert (pronounced without the T of course!) was an extremely nice and sophisticated person. He served us hot cooked French gourmet breakfast every morning :)

We have been to:

Olympic stadium:
This is where the 1976 summer Olympics took place. We want up the Olympic tower to see the spectacular panoramic view of the city.

Montreal’s Biodome: It is the nicest recreation of an ecosystem I have ever seen! We saw the best of 4 worlds. My favorite was the Antarctic, where we saw penguins for the first time in our lives :) :)

Montreal’s Botanical Gardens: These gardens host more than 22,000 plant species… to be quite honest, we were not interested in any of them :) what we were after was visiting the thematic gardens. We visited the Chinese garden, Aboriginal (original Americans – i.e. Red Indians) garden, and others… but our absolute favorite was the Japanese garden… absolutely breath-taking!

The Insectarium: Honestly, this was the most disgusting part of the trip… but I learned that I weigh close to 60 million ants :)

La Basilique Notre-Dame de Montreal: (French only, sorry!) This was a breath-taking experience by all mean. It was around this church that the whole city of Montreal built (Montreal started as Ville Marie, a French missionary village) and we visited at a time when they were having this light and sound show narrating the story of the church and Montreal. The most spectacular scene was when they turned on all the lights of the alter… a sight you should never miss! - Ville sous Terrain (The Underground Village): This is a network of passages and metro stations under the ground… but the greatest parts were the underground mall (3 levels below the ground) and The Atrium 2000 (ice-skating ring).

While we were in Montreal, we also took a two one-day trips to:

Quebec City: It is a charming little city, especially the old part of town. It is full of majestic castles and historical monuments. We took a 6 hour walk around the city. Yes, we were dead tired afterwards, but it was very very very much worth it :)

Ottawa City: This is the official capital of Canada. There is where the houses of the parliament and the government halls reside. The location of the government buildings is of great importance, since it sits on a small hill, overlooking both, the French and the English speaking provinces of Canada, Quebec and Ontario. The most interesting thing, however, was that we saw a lot of Lebanese and Shawerma places there! We even saw a street Shisha café! It was actually very pleasant to see them :) and to hear Arabic spoken was great too!

After Montreal, we went back to Vancouver, and took two one-day excursions to two near-by cities: Kelowna and Victoria.

There’s nothing in Kelowna… we drove for 4 hours just to spend 15 minutes in the city, then drive back the whole 4 hours again :)

Victoria was a pleasant surprise! It is the capital of the province of British Columbia (BC), and hosts its Parliament Houses. To get there, we had to take a 1.5 hours ferry, and it was a GREAT! The city is really cute, and full of flowers and gardens. It has a very strong English culture… they even say that the Victorians always try to be more English than the English themselves :)

The good news is, though, that we are actually going to live in Victoria :) :) :) Ibrahim has landed a job with Mars Canada, and his first assignment is going to be there :) We will be island people :)

We are really excited about finally starting our life here!

Victoria might be a challenging place to pursue my career, but I am not worried. They have one of the best music conservatories in Canada, in addition to one of the top Canadian universities :) I might go back to school :)

Well, this has been quite a long e-mail… my apologies!

Two days ago, we played Omar Khairat music CD in the car… and tears just started to flow! I really miss each and everyone of you… I miss home too :( but it’s ok…

I had to much to talk about :) Of course, again, photos are available on
http://photos.yahoo.com/toujana

Enjoy them :)