I went to Montreal on Thursday morning for the night. It just happened to be during Canada's heat wave which was awesome. Yep. Loved it. No deal to ridiculously hot weather. Thats partly why I left Australia ha anyways, Montreal is incredibly weird to anyone thats not Canadian. The whole concept that you can drive an hour and find yourself in this little (Montreal is incredibly massive actually) French speaking place is so peculiar. Its really hard to get your head around. Id be walking round the streets and constantly have to stop and think yep, Im still in Canada. Its bizzare. It really has such a European vibe to it which is cool. Very grungry (dirty) in parts but Im glad I went. The next day was pouring rain which sucked a lot. I ended up heading back to Ottawa early because of this, but Im heading back to Montreal for the day on Sunday with Alex and her mate from back home so hopefully I see more because we'll have Dexter (Alex's wheels).

Yesterday we went to this Chalet on the lake in Quebec. The Quebec border is only about half an hour from where we are in Ottawa but the Chalet was supposed to be an hour and a half away. It took us 3 and a half hours. We got epicly lost. We dont speak French and they really didnt speak English. We had directions from 3 different people and none of it matched up ha so its a miracle we arrived in the end. The drive was beautiful though, we went through all these small towns filled with barns and hay bails and little pubs the size of like a room in your house ha cant imagine it getting very wild. It was very cool and for the first time ever Alex and I were like yep, we literally have NO idea where we are...like we couldnt even say which direction Ottawa was. Its a very funny feeling. Definitely felt VERY far from Australia at that point.

When we got to the chalet it was beautiful. Very cool to jump straight in the lake and they had paddle boats and a raft that went out into the middle of the lake then anchored there...so we swam out and jumped off it and stuff. Adrian (the owner) told us about this island like a mile out....so Alex, Dommie (hes 3) and I decided to canoe out. We got like within 200m of the island and we were super hot. Alex decided swimming would be awesome, I totally agreed. I was like 'Hmm won't it be kinda hard to get back in the canoe though?' Alex just grinned and was like 'Yeah it could be pretty funny' then jumps in the water....2 minutes later shes trying to get back in, so im counter balancing the canoe and bam, it capsizes. Dom is thrown into my arms and hes screaming, so freaked out. Hes in a life jacket and essentially is fine, but hes freeeeaaaking out. Im treading water with him around my neck while Alex is trying to somehow fix the canoe situation. She looked at me ever so calmly and was like 'Yup, I have no idea what to do here'. Just imagine me treading water with a 3yr old hanging off me, one of the paddles under my arm and his toy car in my other hand, in the air. If we lost that he woulda totally lost his mind. Next minute I see this like 75yr old french guy canoeing towards us, he yells out 'Bonjour' and Alex asked him if he spoke English, luckily he did. He took Dommie in his canoe so I could at least try and help...then hes like 'Dont worry, my brother is coming' so we turn around and embarassingly there is this guy coming out in a row boat, another guy in a canoe and like twenty people standing on this dock watching. Alex and I couldnt stop laughing but we kept trying to stop so it looked like we were taking it seriously. Essentially, without these Frenchies we woulda been in a bit of trouble. I was not keen on swimming to shore with Dom screaming while Alex pulled the waterlogged canoe. No deal. In the end these guys were able to flip our canoe and I got back in first then they passed in Dommie and Alex jumped in. We were so keen to just head back so we could get away from these people. They were incredibly lovely but wow it was embarassing.

The best part of the entire experience was when we were out there with the 75ish yr old guy, waiting for his brother to row out. I said something and he asked where we from so I was like 'Ahh Australia' (thinking he was asking cuz of our accent) and his face was like WHAT? and laughed and Im like OH no, we didnt paddle from Australia! We're from that cottage just down there hahaha soooo funny. Highlight for me for sure.

The drive to the chalet and the lake was beautiful. I loved every second. Next weekend were heading to this national park in Gatineau, just over the Quebec border where they have all this adventure stuff like highropes and ziplining through the trees. Very keen. Then next weekend were off to Toronto and then the weekend after that Im heading west to Calgary and Banff. Hopefully finding work there so fingers crossed! Ill post photos soon of the latest adventures.

The end.