En Francais S'il Vous Plaît!

Montreal it is! It was only 7 hours from Cambridge so I headed down. Another great drive.

I was on the 401, which is an amazing highway. Everyone speeds, at one point I was going 140 km per hour for 45 minutes in crowded traffic. It went through Toronto, though I didn't turn off cause Mike is gunna show it to me after the 12th. Eventually it reached it's full width of 18 lanes and I drove down the exact stretch I had on video in an earlier post before the trip. Kinda cool to find yourself doing something that intimidated the crap outta you not to long before!



Ontario is beautiful! At one point I was driving through lush forest and suddenly the road descended and cliffs started to rise on either side of the road, at the end of it I could finally see it in it's entirety and realized I'd been on the top of some plateau and it'd just spit me out onto some plains. It was light a giant wall covered in lush forest jutting out of prairies, like something out of Lord Of The Rings. It was truly epic!

I've been driving so much I'm starting to get a driver's tan. My left arm is noticeably darker than my right, lol. And it's only going to get worse over the next week.

Once I entered Quebec all the signs were in french and for a second I felt like I was back in school, since that was the last time I really read french. As I entered Montreal I immediately realized I'd underestimated the city. It's an actual metropolis. My hotel was downtown and as I went further into the city the roads got more insane. I never expected Montreal to be the most intimidating city. At one point a biker gang of Chinese guys came by. It was like 6 guys on racing bikes and one guy in a Lamborghini and they kinda hassled me for a bit, circling my car and pointing at me. It was a little scary.

So as I mentioned before, there's a huge F1 Racing thing in Montreal right now. Like an idiot I did not call hotels in advance... When I got to Vieux Montreal the sun was going down and there we're people EVERYWHERE. Saturday night... Montreal is like one giant party. There were fire blowers and guys on stilts, the whole deal. And all walking through the streets while I inched through.

Eventually I parked on a side street and called hotels. All were booked, the only few I could find were like 500$ a NIGHT! The prices quoted in my travel book were double or tripled cause of the F1 thing. Finally I found Le Hotel Du Fort and got 2 nights for 500$. WAY more than I was hoping to spend but it was night now so I had to stay in Montreal and it was the ONLY one I could find after almost an hour of calling hotels. Looks like Montreal is as far as I go...

Actually works out OK though, cause I'm here for 2 nights, then Sherry is available in Ottawa from the 9th to 12th, then Mike is open in Toronto for a few days, then I can start the trek back to Winnipeg. I decided to come back through Ontario, not the North but the highway along the lakes. I have A LOT of highway experience now, and will have even more by then, so I think I'll be OK. I won't drive at night though, cause of deer and moose.

So once I had my hotel booked I started the incredibly slow drive through centre-ville. Finally reached my hotel and checked in. Got to speak french which was cool. My hotel is really nice; better be for 500$! It has an amazing view, unfortunately I can't upload pix on the internet here. I walked around downtown a bit last night, the women here are gorgeous! But was pretty burnt out so came back and went to bed.



So last night was a little stressful. I'm kinda glad some things went wrong though, cause I showed myself I could handle it. But today is a new day and I'm gunna go enjoy Montreal!