Back to Canada ! There was a fair bit of hype going into Montreal…probably a little too much!

The drive from New York through upstate into Canada was pretty epic with plenty of lush green forrest and cops doing way more over the speed limit than me (it’s advisory right?). I might have mentioned before about America’s craft beer scene, typically they have gone nuts and you can get amazing beer almost anywhere, even at a gas station in the middle of nowhere, 6 taps….really!? The rain started as we crossed the border into Canada, selling point!

Quebec is a strange place, so staunchly French yet very bilingual, at least in the south. Which means you have this weird dilemma with the language. If you were in France you would give French a crack but in Montreal they speak both so you end up with this awkward hello in French then switch to English followed by awkward goodbye in French. Montreal was stop number 2 on our “places to check out that we might want to live in”. We were lucky to have a place to stay with our friend Parker who, originally from the West, had been in Montreal for 4 years and was happy to show us around. With the places we we were looking to possibly live we tried to keep it “local” and get in the mindset of what it would be like to actually live there. To be honest it’s not easy and you can end up dissecting and analysing the place to death which isn’t that enjoyable.

The time was spent wandering around the city talking about what it’s like to live there, watching the local hockey team the Canadiens falter in the finals, checking out Parker’s awesome performance in a local theatre production, the local markets, old town and generally just soaking it up. Alas you have a vibrant heart but there was something missing Montreal and so we move on to Toronto in search of bigger better things.

Toronto, T dot, TO. You are a big mofo! The last stop on our tour of potentials. Best be showing up for the party hey!

Toronto is big, sitting behind NYC and LA but strangely doesn’t feel that massive when you’re there. Well unless you try and get around it then it takes ages! After a large amount of time spent on peoples floors we decided it was time to splash out and get ourselves a place. Good old airbnb delivered in spades and we had a last minute (en route) warehouse apartment not far from the rather cool west end of Queen Street (Vogue magazine calls it second coolest neighbourhood in the world after Tokyo). Again the time was spent milling around pretending like we lived there. There were a lot of things we could have done tourist wise but like Montreal we figured we would be back so used it as a time to chillout, something that’s hard to do when always on the move. So that meant brunch and a BBQ with new friends Dave & Denise, dinners at the apartment, wandering up and down Queen & King streets, Little Italy and Little Portugal (hipsterville) and catching the street car (tram). You can pretty much say that Toronto is the Melbourne of Canada in that sense and we got a good feeling from it which pushed it into the frontrunner position (along with….New York!).

Not many pics from both of these cities, I think we were to busy doing our heads in on if they might be the right places to live rather than enjoying it from an casual point of view.

J & T