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So the past few days have been absolutely crazy. Feel grateful because we're writing this blog entry quickly before we finally enjoy a full night of sleep. Since we left Seattle the other day we have already covered a big chunk of Montreal AND started on New York. Of course we only scratched the surfaces but we made a good effort.
Montreal was a really interesting experience. It was quite stressful at first because we didn't have any access to internet - but were trying to meet up with friends in the city. It took a while but eventually we managed to use free wi-fi on a bus to meet up with a local Montreal study who is also going on exchange to Warsaw! Our university in Warsaw has made a Facebook group for incoming winter semester exchange students, so a lot of us have already added each other and hence why I was in contact with him. We were absolutellyyyy spoilt again as the guy, David, spent hours and hours and hours walking around Montreal with us showing us the wonderful city! Even though he recently sustained an injury to his foot! We got to see two of the big universities in the city, McGill and Concordia, as well as the Old Montreal Town, Old Port and a vast amount of the CBD. One of the most interesting parts about being in Montreal was that everything was in French. Matt has been in countries where the main language is not English, but I haven't! So it was quite bizarre seeing a different language everywhere. Despite having studied French for ages, I was too rusty to actually use any of it :( but luckily everyone can speak good English too which was helpful.
Old Montreal was a really cool place. And it was big too - lots of little streets, an old port, open spaces around churches and so on. We also went to "Five Guys, Burgers and Fries" (for those who don't know, it's a yummy burger place we found in the U.S.). It was funny because in Montreal the whole menu was in French and the title of the place was "Five Guys, Hamburgers et frites", so it obviously didn't have the same rhyme… In Montreal we found a lot of cool arty things as well, such as multi-coloured fountains and big modern sculptures - a lot of which were amongst the old buildings, so that was a cool contrast.
We also coincidentally hung out with a family friend of Matt who was on exchange from Otago and studying in McGill. She had just arrived in Montreal and saw that we were in the U.S. and asked if we were coming anywhere near Canada. We told her that we were arriving in Montreal the next day! Haha. So we also hung out with her for a bit and went for a burger, looked around the city, etc. It was nice seeing her and speaking with another kiwi about impressions of the city!
So we did Montreal quite quickly, but that's ok since we feel like we saw most of what you would go to see as a tourist. We caught a bus at 1030pm-ish. If you guys didn't know already, we are ABSOLUTELY exhausted at this moment - as we've had barely any sleep in the past few days - especially with only about three hours on the bus ride into Montreal!
New York
We got to the U.S. border at about 1am - we had to get off the bus whilst they searched our bags and we had to check in with immigration. It was pretty frustrating because we knew we had very limited time to get any sleep whilst we were on the bus since we were expected to arrive in New York around 6:30am. We actually arrived about half an hour early -_- We spent a while sitting in the bus station because we were a bit disoriented about what to do and where to go. So we sat around for a while, grabbed some breakfasts, freshened up then walked to our hostel - the New York Budget Inn. Unfortunately because it was only like 7am we couldn't check in to our room yet, so we dumped our stuff in the luggage room and decided to go exploring. We ended up buying this 72 hour hop-on hop-off bus tour pass which is been REALLY good value for money. It also includes a four different tour routes in NY, such as downtown and Brooklyn, a night bus tour, a boat cruise around the statue of liberty, and a discount card for food and activities in various locations throughout New York! If anyone of you come to New York - we got our pass with the New York City Sights company (usually see them in yellow shirts, blue buses). It was supposed to cost like $99, so make sure you bargain with them because they drop the price quickly if you moan about being poor and say no. We ended up getting it for $59 which is definitely worth 72 hours of entertainment as well as quick transport around New York.
Our first tour was of the downtown area - which included Times Square, the Financial District (Wall Street), China Town, Ground Zero, and so on. It's really good because we had great tour guides speaking the whole time, telling us what things are, pointing out cool architecture, celebrity gossip and lots of joking along the way.
After this tour we hung around in Times Square for a bit longer. There was a massive Samsung Galaxy stage and heaps of people wearing blue or white caps saying Samsung'" on it. Matt and I hung around for a while to see what was going on and before we knew it, we were wearing the hats too and listening to them unveiling the new Samsung smart phone watch as well as a live concert - right in the middle of Times Square!!!
It gets crazier though. We also won tickets to be in the audience of the Late Show with David Letterman whilst we were just walking along the street. The problem is we couldn't take our backpacks, so we quickly ate lunch at Olive Garden (yam) and pretty much ran home, checked in, changed our clothes and got back JUST in time to make the show. It was really great watching it all and being a part of it! We need to get hold of the episode because we will be in it clapping away haha. However there was a very strict rule that no photos were allowed to be taken while the show was being recorded, which was a shame because we could have taken some really cool shots.
We carried on our sightseeing after the show finished. WE headed down to Grand Central Station and the Public Library. Both had absolutely beautiful architecture - in fact we've noticed that most of Manhattan Island does - there's either very old looking buildings with crazy designs or super sleek, modern buildings. After this we decided to sit down in Bryant Park for a while to relax and rest our feet.
We decided to do the night tour with our hop on hop off pass which was impressive too. We did all of the downtown area again but in the dark, and also went over Manhattan Bridge and throughout Brooklyn - including the coast of Brooklyn which gave us an AMAZING view of Manhattan Island. We are definitely going to go back to take some better photos because it was really stunning.
So we are now going to enjoy a good sleep for the first time in a while. Last night we only got about three hours after a poor attempt to sleep on the bus, and the night before was about three hours too with our late flight from the west coast to the east. We have also been walking an average of nine hour days for the past four days so we are really pushing our boundaries at the moment!
We're not sure what the plan for tomorrow will be. Most likely we will do the boat cruise to see the statue of liberty, and then do the bus tours around central park and the upper east side of Manhattan (where GOSSIP GIRL IS SET)… We also managed to bargain with a guy selling comedy show tickets so tomorrow night we are going to go and watch some stand-up comedy for a mere $10 each. So I'm sure there will be a lot to write about again.
P.s. THANK YOU DAVID FOR SHOWING US AROUND :) See you in a few weeks!
P.p.s Our toothpaste was stolen :(
Tip of the Day: Buy hop on hop off bus passes. They're really good, especially if you bargain with the street people selling them.
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