All too soon my stay in Quebec City came to an end and so too did my pre-arranged planning. I’d always intended to do Toronto, Ottawa, Montreal and Quebec City in about two to three weeks, but before I came to Canada I didn’t have a plan for the remaining time there. I didn’t decide on that till I was in Montreal: my last stint in Canada would be to go to Nova Scotia and Prince Edward Island, specifically Halifax and Charlottetown.
…
After a good stay in Montreal I took the train to Quebec City, which was about a four to five hour trip. I was reminded of the previous train trip I’ve done in North America back in 2014 from Boston to Salem (and back). I was particularly reminded of how slow trains are here. When you take a train in North America it’s almost like you’re going back twenty to thirty years compared to train travel in Europe, and the Netherlands in particular. Trains drive very slowly and stop often, for indeterminate reasons. Here they take tickets and put little slips of paper above your seat to show the seat is taken.
This was a nice (or not so nice) harbinger of what was still to come for me after Quebec City, when I took the train to Halifax. But that’s a tale for another blog post.
…
“There’s no Canada like French Canada, it’s the best Canada in the land” – South Park
After my stay in Ottawa and Gatineau I moved further into French Canada, to Montreal. There is no mistaking being in French Canada. Signs are all in French. People first address you in French and switch to English if you answer in English instead. I once made the mistake of answering bon jour with bon jour. Luckily it was at a cash register and I understood the follow up question of whether or not I wanted a bag (I didn’t, I had my own) so I didn’t have to say I didn’t speak the language.
Coming into Quebec Province proper I noticed something that still freaks me out: cars only have license plates on the back, not the front. Outside of Ontario a lot of provinces apparently don’t require cars to have plates on the front. It’s a weird thing to see, it’s almost like the cars aren’t finished, you know? Freaky.
All right, that was a bit of a tangent. Moving on.
…
Ottawa is the capital of Canada, but despite that it is a far smaller city than the sprawling metropolis of Toronto. I stayed with Annabel and Alex (not tour-guide Alex from Toronto, in case anyone wondered) in Gatineau, which lies on the other side of the Ottawa river in Quebec Province. Ottawa was just a short walk across the bridge from there. Whereas Toronto is very much Anglophone the French influences are a lot more pronounced here and you see a lot of bi-lingual signs. This is especially true for Gatineau, but in Ottawa as well.
Usually the city is pretty quiet, as I would find out for myself on my last days there, but when I arrived it was for Canada Day weekend and the city was absolutely packed! On Canada Day the Canadians celebrate the birth of their nation. Interestingly this celebration is bigger in Ontario than in Quebec Province where Canada Day is the day most housing leases run out and new leases begin and is thus utilized as Moving Day.
…
The next stop on my little round the world adventure thing I’ve got going on right now was Canada, and right away the differences between Canada and Iceland (or at the very least between Toronto and Reykjavik) became apparent the moment I set foot off the plane.
Temperature Toronto = 2.5 x Temperature Reykjavik
My god but was it hot! I’d gotten used to temperatures of ten to fourteen degrees Celsius and (save for a few times) wearing a coat. No coat needed in Toronto at the end of June. In fact, if you don’t want to die from heat exhaustion leave the coat at home (or in the travel bag in my case). When I arrived it was around 30 degrees Celsius. I remember thinking that I’d finally found true summer weather!
…
Let me preface this by saying that I love Pokémon Go so far. I haven’t been able to play much, being abroad and all and limited to free Wi-Fi zones, but it’s a fun game. Not sure how long I’ll be playing it as it’s kind of a grinding game and I have a history of getting tired of grinding in games after a certain point. Of course I also have a history of coming back to these games periodically (cough, Diablo 3, new season, cough) and that might happen with Pokémon Go as well. We will see how it goes, but for now I like it.
And so do a lot of people.
And, conversely, a lot of people hate it (fair enough, no game is for everyone) and the people who play it. From some corners it is met with skepticism, ridicule, and even violence. And it’s this backlash from non-players that I find most interesting. For years I’ve seen campaign after campaign trying to get people (not just kids) to go outside and play, and walk, and exercise. Suffice it to say these campaigns have been less than successful.
In comes Pokémon Go, a game that actively promotes and stimulates people (not just kids) to go outside and play, and walk, and exercise, and a very vocal group decries this as horrible. Now that people are finally going outside and making their presence known eyebrows are being raised. Man, those are a lot of people out on the street, parks, landmarks and residential areas all of a sudden. I get that this can be overwhelming, but isn’t this what we’ve all wanted for years? That people go outside again? Yes? No?
…
This blog post was inspired by a challenge I faced in Ottawa, Ontario, Canada, on a lookout over the river, parliament, and the locks of the Rideau canal. The view from that lookout was absolutely perfect, so I took a lot of pictures. I also wanted a picture with me on it, and not just any picture. I knew exactly what I wanted: I found the angle and composition so the picture would have the locks on one side of me, and parliament on the other.
And then came the challenge of getting this picture. I went through several photographers over a span of two days (exhausted the supply of people on the first day and I had other places to be so I had to come back later) before I finally found someone who both saw the possibilities of the angle and understood the directions I gave her.
…
Okay, I lied, I did two more small tours on the last day in Iceland. I couldn’t help myself, when you’re in Iceland you just have to do things! For me this last day was a long one. First I had dragged two of my roommates off to a bar crawl and didn’t get back until 3:30am. I slept well though, so that was good. No hangover either, despite the fact that I drank a bit more beer than I’m used to. All though, in retrospect, about six beers in five hours isn’t really that much.
…
The last of the three tours went to the south coast of Iceland, all the way to the small town of Vik, and back. Took about 10 hours there and back. Like the tour up north the land down south is more rugged than the Golden Circle, but not as rugged as the north peninsula. This time the group was large again, so we went with a big tour bus.
…
One of the things I really like to do when I travel is to take pictures and I do take a lot of them (easily in the thousands). I put some of the photos I took in Iceland and Canada (Toronto, Ottawa and Montreal) in Google Photos and shared them on my Google+. It was hard to make a selection, but I think these came out all right.
Links: