SO. Last Wednesday was laundry day again, needless to say it was rainy. Once the rain calmed, I hiked Mont Royal with Will. Unfortunately I didn't bring my camera, as I didn't want to risk it getting drenched... A fog had settled into the forest as we took a shortcut to the top via a series of sketchy pathways. Whenever we reached a point where we could see above the trees, we could see that everything within a quarter mile radius looked like either Costa Rica or Jurassic Park (wherever that was filmed), and beyond that, just CITY. For miles and miles and miles. Mont Royal is a quaint little (in reality, gargantuan) rainforest-esque mountain tucked away in the middle of an even more enormous, highly-developed urban area. We reached a lookout with a parking lot, and it was teeming with guidos and raccoons. Okay, there were only like seven raccoons, but there were definitely a lot of guidos. The animals congregated around these benches where some people sat to admire the city, begging obnoxiously for food and attention. The raccoons however, were really cute and friendly! Okay, no more making fun of guidos. Lol. But really, there were seven raccoons (I counted), and they were running RIGHT up to people. All I could think about was rabies. We continued onward. The sun was setting as we finally made it to the Chalet. The Chalet is a big, regal-looking building at the top of the mountain with a beautifully decorated courtyard out front. Standing outside it, you can see all of Southwest Montréal (don't quote me on that, cardinal directions in this city don't make sense). Inside, you will find some vending machines. About six of them actually. That's about it. It sounds totally lame, but how much worse would it be if you just walked up to a few standalone Coke machines after conquering this giant fucking mountain? The fancy building is a façade to make people feel accomplished. And it works. Anyway, it was getting dark, and as we began our descent back into the city, we found that every road either took us back UP the mountain, or in the complete opposite direction of where we needed to go. After four months' worth of walking in circles, we went against what we'd learned from every horror movie in existence, and we trekked blindly through dense, pitch-black forest, kind of in the general direction of where we thought we started. We found our way back to Pointe au Guido, which signified some accuracy in our nighttime jungle-wandering. This time though, the parking lot was completely full, with more cars, a bus, and a limo parked on the side of the road. It seemed that the lookout had a nocturnal tourist infestation. And if THAT wasn't off-putting and potentially dangerous enough, the raccoon count had grown by four or five times. Parents watched in awe as their children toddled among the thirty-some raccoons, HAND-FEEDING them Ritz crackers. At what point do you decide this is acceptable? You freak out and tell your kid to back away when the creatures try to stand up using Jimmy's pant leg as support, and yet you struggle to get the camera out in time to snap a photo of his or her little fingers waving a cracker centimeters in front of rabies, West Nile, the plague, or otherwise. Whatever. It was really random, and quite entertaining at the time... AAAAND later that night, Li and I went to Bassdrive as we usually do on Wednesdays, and it was great fun, as it usually is on Wednesdays.
Thursday night, I went to Blizzarts to see Capital J and Bankai, but I left early due to extreme, uh, fatigue. LONG story.
Friday was the Massive Beach Party, the epic all-day dubstep/dnb festival. The guy who organized it all, Dave, recruited Li and I to work at the door to sign people in and take tickets. The whole thing was supposed to take place at St-Jean Drapeau (where Piknic was), but for some reason they denied us the venue at the last minute. SO, it was held at HΩ from 2pm-10pm, and then the late evening portion was held at this indoor volleyball court called 365. Li and I were only asked to work the daytime part, which was... well, it was kind of a joke, because virtually NOBODY showed up. Well like 25 people showed up...but all except two of them were either DJs or they were on the VIP list, so we only made $40, ALL DAY. So basically Li and I got paid to hang out at a desk and listen to music and play with the giant dog that belonged to the owner of the club. Once 10pm rolled around, we went home to recuperate from the long day of rigorous work for a minute before heading to 365 to enjoy the rest of the music.
Saturday I took a train up to Québec City. It was delayed almost an hour due to electric issues, but once we took off, it took about three hours to get to our final destination. Once we pulled up to Gare du Palais in Québec City, I went into the main hall to use the courtesy wi-fi, to sort out accommodations. I found a guy named Simon on CouchSurfing who offered to help me out, he said he was hosting someone else that night as well. He said he could pick me up at 10, when he was picking up the other CouchSurfer. So I walked around taking photos for a few hours. Québec City is absolutely beautiful. In Montréal, about 85% of people you interact with on the street speak French. In QC, it's closer to 99%. Most all of the streets are newer-looking cobblestone, all the buildings, both old and new, look like they were shipped in from France. Everything's on really steep hills, so walking around completely destroyed my legs... I've never been to San Francisco, but I'd imagine the roads being similar.
This is Gare du Palais, where my train came in.
At 10pm, I went and stood outside Gare du Palais to wait for Simon to pick me up. While I was waiting, this dude strolled up and asked if I was waiting for Simon too. My fellow CouchSurfer's name is Alex, and he's from Adelaide, Australia. He'd just flown in from Mexico, and before that he'd been traveling through Central America. Apparently this was his first CouchSurfing experience as well, we discovered as Simon pulled up. Simon's a Québecois computer programmer who, while vacationing, hosts CouchSurfers. After he picked us up, we parked and did some more walking around downtown, grabbed dinner at Subway (hahahaha), and went to this really busy pub for a beer. The pub played really interesting music that night, such as the Juno Soundtrack, Bloc Party, ACDC, Tokyo Police Club, and Arctic Monkeys. Anyway, we all talked about our homelands and music and families and whatnot. Then we left to Simon's house a little bit outside the city, where he provided us with our own beds and towels, and once morning came, a big breakfast of fruit and cereal and juice and bread. In the morning, he dropped us back off in the city. He was a wonderful host overall, definitely made mine and Alex's first CouchSurfing experience an incredibly awesome one.
Simon, Me, and Alex, all looking as awkward as possible.
My first Couch house!
Alex's next destination happened to be Montréal. He couldn't find a Rideshare, so we ended up taking a bus back together on Sunday night. Before we left Québec City though, we did a lot more walking around and photo-taking.
All these chairs have poetry engraved on the seats, they're all arranged kind of outseide Gare du Palais.
Alex is staying in the extra room in our apartment for a couple days. Yesterday we sat at home and watched Extras, and then Taurean had a friend over and cooked us all an amazing seafood curry. Relaxing day.
Then today I made Alex try poutine, and afterwards we climbed Mont Royal. I brought my camera this time!
MMMMMPOUTINE
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