First experiences of Montreal

I honestly can't believe I've been here less than a week. I've done so much and explored so much of this place. I love how I can be walking right through the city downtown and a block away there will be a park. There's always grass and trees not far away, and it's really lovely.

Everybody speaks french. This is definitely a french town. Signs, posts, menus, EVERYTHING is in french. They'll always start in french, and then I stare at them non comprehendingly, and they happily switch to english. I'm ridiculously impressed! Nearly every single person speaks fluent english. Even kids. So talented. I really wish french was pushed more in primary/high school. Despite being told people are 'snobby' with english, I disagree. The locals I've met seem very obliging to me, and most of them had english as their first language anyway.

I've met two other UNSW students who are here for exchange who just happened to be staying in the same hostel as I. Andrew Robertson and Hannah Amos - both pretty cool kids and are keen for anything.

Everything is pretty much in walking distance, and it's probably doing wonders for my health. There are 'bike stations' every second block, and how it works is you pop some money in the machine and then you can take a bike, as long as you return it to any other station within an hour (or however much time you paid for.)

The bike paths are everywhere, through Parc du Mount Royal and Old Montreal/Old Port have the best ones. I'm planning on buying a cheapy bike myself once I've moved into campus.

The balloon festival was lame to start with, definitely a family and kids event with jumping castles and very tame rides, but the balloons at sunset made the wait worth it. I took nearly 200 photos and only picked a few random ones to put on FB. When I have more time I'll go through them and find the best ones.

Sadly due to date problems I missed Carly Rae, but I'm not too concerned :P

I've a new found obsession with Bagels. There's this little place that is famous for the best bagels in Canada, and I'm addicted. Blueberry and cream cheese ohhhh yeahhhhh.

I have a feeling my GHD didn't survive the journey :( I'm annoyed at the airline. Apparently you have to pay 25 bucks to check luggage in, and my suitcase was 1kg over the limit so they made me pay $125!!! And then they lost it and I was without clean clothes for three days. And I got no compensation! Hisss.

Everyone is so ridiculously friendly at the hostel. I've probably doubled my life amount of friends in the last week. You literally just say hi, and then BAM you're out getting drunk with them. It's the best.

The average hotness of male travelers is also very high! So unexpected. So many attractive people with awesome accents and everyone seems very happy to buy the Aussie girl drinks. It's a pretty great life. The one bad thing is no one seems to drink wine here (wtf?). EVERYBODY will be drinking beer. I tried one, and it was actually much better than any Australian beer I've had, so I've conformed to peer pressure.

There's just so much to say and I've only really brushed the top. It's going to be a great six months.