Canada

Lake Robertson




Paula took me canoeing...


Ottawa, Ontario


Louise Bourgeois´s spider at the National Gallery of Canada, Ottawa




Ottawa, Ontario


Ottawa, Ontario




Ottawa, Ontario


saucisse de caribou, yum yum


Montréal


Montréal


Montréal, Québec

Sorry for the delay, I have been traveling like crazy lately...
In St. Louis I did catch up with my old friend Mike who I met 12 years ago... already! He is working as an architect for a firm in St. Louis and he showed me his office. He works in downtown, as I said before that area of the city is beautiful with big old buildings, but it's deserted all the time, only at lunch time you see people walking down the street.
I stayed longer than preview in that city because it was almost impossible to find acommodation in Chicago, there was a festival going on that week-end and all hostels and couchsurfers were fully booked, so I decided to go to Buffalo instead. When I got to the bus station the bus to Buffalo was full so I changed my plans altogether.
I wanted to go to Canada through Buffalo, because there is where Niagara Falls are. Then Toronto, Ottawa, Montreal, Boston, NY, Washington DC and back to NY.
But since I couldn't go to Chicago or Buffalo... I took the bus to Washington DC. Only 22 hours. Nothing. Piece of cake. I love Greyhound. In the end it wasn't that bad. The scenery was pretty, specially through Pennsylvania.
In Washington DC I stayed a couple of days with another couchsurfer, Jeffrey, who lived very close to the White House, I am so lucky! So for two days I tried to see as many museums as I could. I was very surprised at the city, very lively and very easy to walk around, and of course so many museums and all of the them are entry free, yippy!!! I saw the White House and the Capitol and the Smythsonian (the National Portrait Gallery, the Museum of Modern Art, the Museum of Native America, Museum of Natural History, etc) very impressive!
From the capital of the US then I took the bus to Montreal. That was a funny trip. We stopped over in New York and caught another bus which was delayed (but but of course!) around 2 am in the morning. Then the driver, he was a really sweet man, said that that was his first trip and it would be so kind of someone who knew the route to seat next to him in case he need directions, lovely. We are already late and now we have a new bus driver. People in the bus were very sympathetic so we all cheered up, no worries! The only problem is that someone was waiting for me in Montreal at 8 am (my host from couchsurfing, David) and we arrived at 1pm and neither my Spanish nor my American cell phones were working there, luckily someone let me use his phone, no problem.
Montreal was cold and rainy. It totally seemed I had gone to a totally different country, ehem, yes I was in a totally different country, Quebec! They are more French than the French and even the STOP signs in the street say ARRET. Everybody walks or use the bycicle in the streets, like in Europe, it's a very pleasant city and the old part of town it's really like being back in France. My favorite part of the town though was not the old part. I like the centre, there is a huge gay village and also there is a street with lots of metal clubs and a China town too. There is a lot of events going on and on one of the days I was walking around I found a hip hop festival, with music, skating and lots of people doing graffitti on the walls. Another day at the park near home there was a concert of Yiddish music.
I wish I had stayed longer in Montreal but I was running out of time so I left for Ottawa. Ottawa is the capital of Canada, it's in Ontario and they speak both French and English. I really liked there. It's a small city, but the architecture is so nice, unlike Montreal it really surprised me, the Parliament House because it was so grand but the modern buildings were stunning. I stayed in a hostel but every day I caught up with my friend Ben and his wife Paula. One day Ben had to go to work so Paula took me out to her parents' cottage. We saw so many farms on the way there, the grass look much greener (hehe) and so many pretty flowers. The cottage is by a little lake called Robertson and we did some canoeing, we saw fish, ducks, frogs and even a water snake and the day was glorious, not too hot but at least sunny and on the way back to Ottawa we stopped in a beautiful little town called Perth and we ate a beaver's tail with maple syrup, a true Canadian experience! In the evening we had dinner at her brother's and in the garden at night we saw a raccon (mapache in Spanish). Apparently there are so many, but for me it was the first time to see one, happy!
The day after Ben took me to see the National Gallery of Canada (big surprise, they had one of my favourite Klimt!!!) and the Museum of Civilization, which I liked because it holds a lot of Native American (or Indian American, or as they say in Canada Aboriginal) art.