Bonjour mon amie! Ca va?aaaa wee wee (this is how emma thought the french spelt it...you wouldn't have thought she did french for 7 years...) Waiting in the security check queue at heathrow airport we were pulled out of the line for an "Arms up chest out" body scan, after saying "O GOD, i bet we get picked for that!". This was approx 2 mins after saying goodbye to our parents! It was then that we knew our 3 month adventure had begun haha!! We were welcomed with RAIN at montreal airport but thankfully we had a ride waiting for us in the form of em's uncle, chris... Jetlag was over pretty quickly and the next day carol took us on a drive all around montreal city...unfortunately it was the blind leading the blind! We briefly met em's cousin Nicole who gave us loads of info about bars and shops in downtown montreal ;) One of which was "lil ilaly" which we later translated into "little italy"! In Old Port, Montreal we came across this inuit/traditional native shop selling very expensive fur coats/scarves/hats and actual bear skins...eeew! We were fascinated by the furs and the woman gave us hats to try on...fabulous! We had some cakes in a little patisserie and found out that montreal is famous for its maple syrup! We then went for a drive up Mont Royale to see the spectacular view across Montreal. Ironically after being in a fur shop, carol managed to run over a little animal (groundhog we think?!?) with her big truck with very big wheels. We turned around in the back seat to see the tail of this poor animal have momentary spasms...carol got in a fluster and we tried desperately to contain our laughter. But don't worry she went back to check on it...and it was not "spasming" anymore...whoops... Later when recounting this upsetting tale to an unsympathetic chris it was described as "a cat with short legs"...this set us off again!!!! We also experienced a canadian supermarket called "Loblaws" where we discovered canada has very strange tastes eg. baked beans in maple syrup and milk in plastic bags?! The next day we were let loose on the montreal metro system...NOT the TUBE! We managed to get a free train ride to the station we needed to buy our three day pass from, unintentionally. SO CHEAP! We walked around the town and experienced a vast array of architecture and passed through chinatown. We naively went into a store searching for prawn crackers but came across a dried octopus for not a bad price! needless to say we made a quick exit without our prawn crackers! On the way back from our trek we popped into the "funny little man" shop which translated is...the jewellers down the road from the condo. Em had managed to break her watch on the second day of the trip...she actually snapped it in half! so we went to see what he could do...when presented with the broken watch he searched around and found a manky leather and rubber strap. He quickly fixed the strap and em tried it on...voila...perfect fit!! one problem...he asked for $5...WHAT ARE YOU KIDDING ME...?! he wanted 2pound50 for half of an old manky strap...nuh uh! we were disgusted with this price and while he was out back, we discussed a better deal...when he came back em said is that the best you can do????so he lowered it to $3...asking us if we were students we told him we were travelling...em took for ever to get her coins out by which time he'd changed his mind and gave the money back for our travels YAY FREE STRAP!!!!! the moral of the story is...half of an old manky strap does not cost $5!!!!! ...this was the end of the third day...oh god only 85 days to go!! Tune in for the next installment! Us xx