Montreal and the cold.

It's fucking cold. Well, no, ok, not really but you can definitely notice a marked drop in temperature from when I first got here. You know how usually it's a pretty gradual decline in temperature as winter looms? Well, this is like, a 5 or 6 degree drop in a day (well, actually, I have no idea but it feels like it). The weird this is too is that it's still sunny.

Gosh this place reminds me of Auckland. Last night on the way to class it pissed down with rain for like, 15 minutes and then stopped and out came the sun. Frickin weird Auckland weather eh? I even had to bust out my big ass jacket which I haven't worn since I left. And it's only going to get colder from here. Eep.

Oh, yes, last night we had a test in my PR class which was multichoice which was pretty awesome. It was on like the first 3 chapters of the book which is fine, I mean, I didn't really study cos I mean, it's a multichoice test. Why don't we have those at AUT?? Anyway, that's not even the ridiculous part - our lecturer knowingly put up like, 80% of all the test questions online as the 'sample' questions! During the test he started calling out the answers to the first page! I would be surprised if anyone failed this paper. Seriously. Like, honestly. We did a presentation last week which was supposed to be 12 minutes long - ours was 5 and a half and we still managed to get a B. Ridiculous. I mean, I'll take it but c'mon, we didn't even do anything!

Ok, moving on to the more exciting portion of this post. Montreal. The whole weekend was pretty amazing but of course, there had to be a few bumps in the road. The first came just as we were leaving. When we hired the cars we asked for a minivan of 8, one of 7 and a car (of 5) - so 20 people altogether but when we picked the cars up they guy said that he couldn't get a minivan of 8! Which obviously meant that we had one less seat. Problem number one. My car had left early cos we had to get to the hostel by 9pm and we were already behind schedule but the rest of the group were contemplating getting two cars instead of the minivan (cos the guy would offer us a 'special' deal) but in the end they decided to just stick with the minivan to avoid all the extra costs and insurance and whatever which is fine. Someone just had to sit on the floor for the trip or like, swap seats with someone along the way. The minivan was pretty spacious anyways. Like, totally awesome with a rear view camera, touch screen radio, dvd player and a port for mp3 players. Too bad I didn't bring mine. It was a frickin Dodge which was awesome. Like, a lot better than I had thought it would be.

Anyways, the actually trip there was pretty uneventful. Traffic jams going out of the city which is kinda understandable with it being a Friday and around 4pm by this time. It also didn't help that we kinda got lost. Well, not really. We just didn't follow the exact directions that I got from the interweb. I'm a terrible map reader ok? In the end we just had to follow the same road until it turned into the 401. No problems there. It was actually pretty funny.

We arrived late to the hostel which was cool cos we called like, 2 hours in advance. Smart eh? Would have been smarter though if we had left on time... we were cutting it a bit close with our leaving time anyways. We planned to leave at around 2 or 2.30 at the absolute latest and it takes around 6 hours to drive there so we couldn't really afford to get lost or take any detours or whatever. I also didn't really count on people being late. I will next time though. (I wonder when that will be...). Anyways, as I was saying, we were late to check in and by the time everyone else arrived it was like, 11.30ish and when they did I tried to get them all organised into their rooms and whatnot which was a lot harder than it should have been. I canceled 2 of the beds that we booked because two of the guys were apparently staying with one of their friends which was fine but I don't think everyone knew that.... Anyways, while we were trying to get everyone's shit together we managed to get a few noise complaints. From the woman in the next room and a few others. Problem #2.

So as soon as everyone was sorted of course we had to go out for a few drinks right? I mean, thats what we came here for. It was raining. Problem #3. Well, not really a problem, just kinda annoying. Anyways, we went to this little bar a few blocks down from our hostel which was kinda nice. Drinks were relatively cheap but then all the Aussies with us and a few others wanted to go to another bar to see the AFL grand final which was cool. I totally went with even though I had no idea what was happening. Not all of us went though which was cool, I mean, chances are with such a big group not everyone wants to do the same thing.

Anyways, we got back to the hostel at like, 3am which is pretty normal for us now but when we got back we were in the middle of 'quiet time' in the hostel. One of the girls who came with us (and one that stayed in the first bar we were at) had thrown up a few times (at the that time I had just thought it was that once) but anyway, we were talking, kinda quietly I thought. But apparently not. the owner of the hostel came storming in and started swearing at us and told us to shut up and threatened to throw us all out and make us pay for the two nights we'd booked for. Massive problem #4. We were the first ones back when this happened so we called the rest (who were for the most part, drunk) and told them to keep it down when they got back (especially since the owner lived on their floor). Of course, some of them wanted to have a 'word' with the owner but I convinced them to leave it till the morning where Martin and I would have a talk to him. We woke up early (didn't want to make another bad impression. Plus we didn't want to waste the only whole day we had), pumped and ready to talk to the guy but he didn't start till about 10am so we ended up wasting like, 2 hours just waiting around. When he finally managed to make it down we apologised and he told us about some more of the stuff that our group had done - mainly throwing up both upstairs and downstairs, and everyone being just generally loud. Anyways, he let us stay for the next night but obviously on the condition that we were more quiet this time. Which at that point of time I was kinda doubting.

Half the group at this point were still in bed sleeping which I thought was a total waste of time, so the rest of us left and went to get some breakfast and decided to head over to Old Montreal which was pretty cool. We took a tour around the old port as well as old Montreal on a horse and buggy which was nice. A few of us also went into the Notre Dame Basilica which blew my mind. It blew my mind so much that I swore. In the Cathedral. Oops. After that we went to a Mexican restaurant where the rest of the group met us (they had just got up I think at at this point, it was like, close to 3pm).

Back at the hostel me and a couple of other guys went to a restaurant across the street for dinner. We had escargot and I tried rabbit as well (in the same meal, but not the same dish.). Both were actually really tasty. I don't think snails have any real flavour though cos all I could really taste was the bacon. It might just be more for texture. I dunno. Anyways, one of the waiters there was to me like 'where are you from?' and of course I'm like 'New Zealand' and then he's like 'I want to put you guys on a guest list for a club in the city.' And I was like 'sweet as bro'. The owner of that restaurant apparently owned this club so we were like 'yeah, ok, we'll come'. And apparently the other half of our group went there for lunch and they were invited too. It's pretty safe to say that some drinking occurred as well as some clubbing. Also, rain. Just to make this post slightly shorter. I'm almost done. Promise.

The Sunday morning we had to check out by 10am which meant that we were all up and awake relatively early. So we all went to go get breakfast - I think the original plan was to go in separate groups to different restaurants just so we didn't have to wait as long for food - but somehow everyone ended up in the same place... For our last day we decided to have a race to the mountain so we could get a better look at the city. The race was actually pretty awesome. At one point we went down the wrong way on a one way street to try and lose the other car who was following us the whole way. They obviously didn't know where they were going but like, at the last second, they got ahead of us and made it up the one lane road to the top of the mountain -which obviously meant that we couldn't pass them. All seemed lost but somehow we still won cos we were the first to park in the designated parking lot finish line. The other minivan never showed. Funny.

A few photos here, a few photos there and then we decided to head back to the hostel to pick up the others who went shopping instead/ to meet up and swap passengers/ for lunch. We were also meant to have a race back to Toronto which we would have won had we not got lost on the outskirts of Toronto. Problem #5. Ironically, we were looking for the fastest way to get back but we ended up getting lost and coming in last. Oh well, live as a team, die as a team eh?

So that weekend was pretty epic. Filled with adventure and mystery. A lot of laughs and (some) drinking. It was also a good way to bond with a few of the people in our group who I hadn't really know before the trip. I'm definitely looking forward to the next roadtrip. New york for thanksgiving anyone?