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Weekend Traveling to Québec City

10 June 2011 By In Canada, Travel

As KiKi was so curious about the Québec city, we decided to go there for a long weekend. He took a holiday on Friday and we rented a car. It takes about 3 hours driving from Montreal to Québec so we expected to see beautiful view of Canadian country side on the way.

No business in the morning

We rented a car from 9 o’clock so had to get up around 7:30 in the morning. But our body started to adapt the Canadian time and people kept partying in front of our house every night. That meant we were still suffering from lack of sleep. On the way to the rent car shop, we saw people had already started the weekend events such as sports car outdoor exhibition and free chocolate distribution. How come? It’s still Friday, it’s even quite early in the morning…People were so wake up… impossible… (-_-;)
Same model super cool sports cars with all different colors. You don’t see the end of car line on this photo.
Free chocolate :D

 

We happily arrived at the rent car office with free chocolate. The office assistant looked so kind with strong Québec accent. (Well, all of them actually sounds very kind with Québec accent.) It seemed a good start of the day. She said even like this.
- Your car is here but we have another car for you. You can take this one if you want. It’s much more economic for fuel than what you chose.
‘Hum? Why not if it’s economic. Wow, they are so kind.’ I was kind of impressed at that moment.
- And you know what? It’s Fiat
‘Fiat? so……what?’ I didn’t get the reason why she put an accent on the FIAT because it’s sort of common car in Switzerland.
- You wanna have a look? It’s so nice car, you will love it.
‘Wait wait. It’s a little too much kindness, something weird.’ At that moment, half sleeping face cucumber asked,
- Is it same price?
She replied
- It’s 30 CAD more expensive per day than what you chose. But you will save a lot moeny for fuel.



A brand new cute yellow Fiat

Sure. There is no free kindness in a shop. But I started to calculate in the head, ’30CAD more per day…but how much does it cost per day to go Québec…and…plus and…what else…hum…’ It’s too hard in the morning.
- Common guys, you can have a look at the car. It’s Fiat and beautiful. Try to sit inside to decide. The decision is totally up to you.
She disturbed my calculation with kind and cheerful voice. When I finished calculating, we were sitting inside the Fiat outside shop holding a signed contract. And the result of calculation was like this.

We will rent a car for 3 days.

With original choice,
Day 1 : 30 CAD fuel to go.(according to internet fuel calculator)
Day 2 : No driving
Day 3 : 30 CAD fuel to come back + 10-20CAD fuel to visit national park
Total : about 70-80 bucks + original rent.

With Fiat,
Day 1: less than 30 CAD + 30CAD for extra rent fee
Day 2 : 30CAD extra rent fee
Day 3 : less than 30 + 10-20CAD for fuel + 30CAD extra rent fee
Total : Less than 70-80 bucks + original rent + 90CAD extra rent

That means even if the fuel was totally free with Fiat, we would pay minimum 10 bucks more. And of course the fuel was not for free.

I spent a bit more than 3 hours to find the cheapest rent car company and that morning, we had been messed up in 10 minutes. (-_-;) Scary well trained kind people…Frankly, it wasn’t that difficult calculation but I completely failed to remember the fuel price. Morning side effect…I’m gonna ask for 10 bucks to the party people in front of my apartment. It’s all their fault :’(

In the car, I explained my calculation to KiKi but he was like this.


Sleepy stuff

“Oh, is it? That’s shame. But I was too sleepy and she spoke too much…”

What can I say, anyway I failed to remember the fuel estimation in time. Therefore we started our beautiful weekend trip with super cute yellow car.

 

Save the green planet!



ironic 2. Electric pole is wood in Montreal, Québec, Vancouver and on the mountains. It seems every where like this.


ironic 1. The shinny stuff behind the street light is the Sun.

 

It was a very fine sunny day. I said ‘sunny’, that meant everybody had enough light to watch the road. But they left the street lights on. I thought it happened accidentally but we saw quite often that the street lights turned on that day. That was ironical because the electric poles was made of wood. We thought they used wood for ecological reason so we were impressed. But why don’t they pay attention to turn off the street light on this super sunny day…

 

To be continue…

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Nocturnal Veggies

08 June 2011 By In Canada, Travel

 

I know that you think, we are traveling strangely. Being in the crappy apartment, sightseeing in the supermarket…
But that’s not true, we do some normal traveler’s stuff, too. So here are the evidences. ;)

Nocturnal Veggies

As KiKi works during the day, we go for sightseeing mostly in the evening. Actually, we don’t feel like going out during the day so it fits us. We didn’t expect that hot in June but it’s very heavy and humid in Montreal. It also rains often. We came for the Sun but we are betrayed by him. It is even cold here without the Sun. What a crazy weather! I might say it can beat the temperamental Swiss weather :P

So we decided to go for walking on the 4th day evening in Montreal. It was hot and super humid but we forced ourselves to be a good tourist. Isn’t it too shame to stay in this fantastic(-_-;) apartment all the time?
Sure it is. Go child to the world!

Today’s exploration

View Old port in a larger map

We were even very cool tourists. We could take a subway but decided to walk to see more stuff on the street on this HOT day. And we were rewarded.

Mighty Squirrel

‘A squirrel !!!’

That was my shout.
I shouted loudly to make sure everybody on the street notices that I saw a squirrel. KiKi also shout to me ‘Camera, camera!’

I was so in a hurry as the squirrel was awesome fast so couldn’t get any clear shot. But we were very full in the heart with the feeling ‘Ah~ we have a squirrel in the camera memory… :D‘

But apparently, it’s very common here as nobody care at all. They completely ignored it even though it was totally middle of the city with a lot of car around.

An old European construction among the modern buildings

And they have very interesting city view. What I want to say is a lot of old buildings and very modern skyscrapers are completely mixed everywhere. We were walking in the old European city 30 second ago and it suddenly changes to futuristic city.

But I couldn’t have much time to get some photos of those interesting view. Because it suddenly got dark and windy almost like tornado.
Oh…This country is also like the other countries. When it’s too much humid, it rains. (-_-;) But we couldn’t catch that simple truth at home so didn’t prepare an umbrella.

Le Vieux-Port (Old Port)

So we gave up to be cool (walking) and got on a subway. After short traveling by old, gloomy, dirty and small subway, we arrived at ‘place d’arme’ station. But when we came out to the up-world, it was raining cats and dogs. I missed so much my huge umbrella which was sleeping in our heavy suitcase :-(

After little waiting inside huge subway station which connects to underground metropolitan, the rain’s got quieter.

Basilique Notre-Dame

The first thing we saw at the old Montreal was the Notre-Dame Basilica. Once upon a time, I believed there was only one Notre-Dame church in the world which is in Paris. But actually, it’s a quite common name for the church. We wanted to look inside, but the church closed at 6pm. And the worst part was to enter this church, we had to pay about 10 bucks. What…the…It was written that we should come on Sunday if we wanna see it for free. Well, we were not that interested in long Catholic mess, so we skipped it. But people say it is one of the most beautiful inside. Maybe we had to attend the mess…But it’s too late! We’re already in Vancouver now :P



Science center. Basically, it was closed as we were late tourists. But we still could enter since they had some kind of private party or meeting in a hall of that building. So we entered openly like a party member and played in the science hall ;) Most of stuff was locked but still we could have fun with the the rest. The security guys saw us but they didn’t kick us out :D So we kept running everywhere.
Old style buildings at old port. We felt like being in middle age France somewhere.
One of science center exhibit. If you push a button, everything moves with weird noise. We were alone at that hall so the noise echoed whole building. :D I felt like a girl in the romantic comedy film who broke the door of amusement park by night.
The port for small boats. We’re a bit early for the season, so the place was almost empty.

Bonsecours Market. What a beautiful and huge public market! It used to be a main public market in the Montreal area for more than 100 years. But now it’s a multi-purpose facility.
Beautiful building on St.Laurent river. It’s actually a totally empty night club :P
The water goes to St.Laurent River

The canon at the clock tower. We often see the canons and fortress near the river in Quebec state. It shows the war history between France and England in Quebec.
Splendid night view. I prefer night Montreal than day one because we don’t see all the rubbishes on the street :P
Coke ghost. We spent about 30 min in front of vending machines to catch this ghost.



Appreciation for night view. My cucumber also looked liking here because he stoned for a while like part of buildings.
It’s like the city I expected to see in Paris before going there. Small cafes in the stone building, the paved road with stones, old style sign board and the lamp posts…
Chapelle Notre-Dame de Bonsecours. You see, Notre-Dame again ;) It used to be a pilgrimage site for sailors who visit Old Montreal. They expected to have bonsecours (good help) for their sea voyages.

It was a very beautiful place but was strangely empty. We don’t know it’s because of the rain or the early season. We will check it out 2 week later (they start school break at 24 June) on sunny day.

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Super Size Veggies

08 June 2011 By In Canada, Travel

New stuff

On the way to supermarket, there was a hotel named Quality hotel. Weird…When they insist too much, we have an opposite feeling. ;) It reminded us the honest bazar in Egypt. :P

One of the most exciting part of traveling is going to supermarket. Because it’s the place you can really feel that you are in a foreign country. So we went to supermarket with a camera :P  It was not so difficult to find them and most of them were very big inside.

 

Of course, the cheese country boy was very interested in cheese. He chose a unusual one called OKA cheese and it was a good choice. Because we found out later that it was one of the region specialties. It was very mild and had full of milk flavor but the taste was a little bit weak for us as we are the strong gruyère lovers.
Oh, I’m a happy potato. As you know the potato matches well with the bacon ;) Bacon is very cheap here compare to Korea or Switzerland. 500g of bacon is about 6-7 CAD. We chose a very Canadian one, bacon marinade in maple syrup. Does it sound weird? Yes, for us, too. But don’t worry, it’s not sweet ;) Taste normal, we smell a little bit of maple syrup, that’s all.
Oh, luna luna. I’m covered with chocolate :D The whole nutrition bar for woman ;) It’s too sweet for me thought :( I don’t know if KiKi liked this healthy(?) bar for woman.

 

Oh my gosh, they really have this kind of square cake with super colorful butter cream like Hollywood movies. The size also huge. Well, it couldn’t succeed to attract us though. Sorry (^^;)
We can find the fresh lobsters in most of supermarket. Maybe it’s popular. But we were not brave enough to cook this living thing in our kitchen.
Oh, they sell frozen sea food like fruit or vegetable. I mean we can choose the quantity and scale them at the counter. I really wanted to try some but we were driving to Quebec city on the day. It would be gross if they melt in the rent car so I had to give up. Krrrrr (>__<)

 

A lot of bean cans. Do Canadians like beans? or is it because they are in the same continent with Mexico?
Mhahaha…I missed ya, my favorite, cheese cake. It exist in many different form and size everywhere. So I don’t need to travel 40 min by train to taste one like I had to do in Switzerland ;)
Have you ever seen this in Paris? ;) We were so curious what it was and it was…

 

just steamed mini potatoes :)
Guess what they are~ Long mini potatoes. It taste like potato but it’s very annoying to peel them :P
Oh, What a shiny red apple. So pretty. The skin is super thick but it’s worth to dig it even though I almost broke the front teeth. It’s very sweet and juicy. Red monkey banana. It was our first date with him and he passed the test. It’s kind of juicy compare to normal banana.

 

Cheap stuff

Girl’s best friend, strawberry :) They are big and sweet. Can you belive it? It’s just 1.30 CAD. But KiKi thinks it’s not natural, being abnormal sweet. Hum, could be…?

The general food price in supermarket is slightly cheaper than Switzerland and similar to Korea. The meat and season fruits are very cheap compare to those countries.

 

How is it possible? The chicken legs were only 2.18CAD per kg. I know that it’s not their favorite part but that’s too cheap. Even though it’s my favorite part, I couldn’t dare to buy them because it reminded me the film Food Inc. (-_-;) By the way, chicken legs are 1/3 price of chicken breast. It’s paradise for Koreans ;)
It’s really a meat country. Even if it’s frozen meat, the price is 1/2 of Switzerland and 1/3 of Korea(The beef is expensive in Korea). Happy meat lover(me).
Those chunk of meat is only 7.23CAD. But the super flash red color scared my cucumber again. By the way, that pepper was so strong. :’(

 

Another good friend of girl, blueberry. They were so~ good. The package was about 7-8 cm height. Can you believe it? It’s just 3 CAD :D
Soy sauce. It’s supposed to be cheap in Korea as we use a lot for Korean cuisine. But it’s even cheaper than Korea. Only 98cent! (I look like a shopper but I don’t have any relation with this supermarket :P )
How can I show you this extreme super size salad pack…We ate 2 times per day for 5 days.

 

Swiss food, Korean food

Advertisement in the elevator of our awesome holiday apartment. By the way, what’s the first food? I’d love to try, honey~ ;)

As it is a multicultural country, I’ve seen a lot of different countries’ restaurants. There were some unusual cuisine such as Macedonian, Palestine, Portugal, Egyptian etc. That’s too shame that we couldn’t stay more to try all of them. There are also Swiss and Korean restaurant and some of Korean restaurants are cheaper than Korea :D

 

So direct name. It looks like a copy of Toblerone.
What’s that? Why everybody has hidden this one from me in Switzerland for 5 years?

 

I guess it’s Galbi…?
Which one? We have many different kind of BBQ…I guess Bulgogi or Galbi.

 

Super Size Veggies
Fennel doesn’t look like a hand here, more like a face.

I thought only USA has the super size food… :P

When cooking book says 1 onion, which country’s onion is it?
4l milk, vinyl package. Do they pet a baby cow at home?

 

It seems nuts are loved by Canadian. But it’s hard to find a small pack for traveler.
It was the smallest mayo. KiKi was almost happy but unfortunatly, he didn’t like the taste. By the way, it has weird volum. 445ml. Why not 450?
This butter was also the smallest size we could find. We took 4 weeks to finish it.

 

I didn’t know the Red bull also has super size. The bottom left is the size we know. Strangly, middle and the big size have same price. I don’t sleep and run for 2 days with normal(small) size. So if I take the big one, I might be able to fly :D
It doesn’t look big on this photo but it’s at least 3 times bigger than the one I saw in Korea.
4l ice cream.  The container is huge, I guess we cannot even put it in many of Swiss freezers ;)

 

We thought it’s a supermarket but actually, it was a huge drug store. They even have index like supermarket. It’s very odd to see such quantity of drugs. And it’s very easy to access to them…
It looks like some kind of nutrrtion pills. Do they really buy them just like that?
A lot of diet products. What about asking to make small size package for food instead of buying a diet pills? :P

 

Cooking time

One of good thing in Canada for me, wherever you buy the food, they are not salty. So potato don’t need to eat huge quantity of plain rice to finish one sausage ;) But it was hard to try many different food because most of packages were too big to finish at once for a couple. We had to eat at least 2-5 times same meal.

What is this pale egg… It looked very strange when I cracked the eggs. Maybe they were afraid of being eaten. Are those sentimental eggs normal here?
Pizza in Canada. I would say it’s more like american style (so as korean style) than italian. I like both of them so I’m happy with that but I expected to have cheaper pizza here (I don’t know why though…). It wasn’t that cheap, broken dream…(-_-;)

 
We tried to have a real Canadian breakfast :D After long search, we could taste a very good maple sirop from traditional market. It was not too much sweet and had rich fravor with dericious smell~
As they like pancakes, the pancake mix is cheap and huge. With one pack of mix, we could eat 3 times per week for 4 weeks. 1.5-8CAD per pack.
Have you tried lime, mint and honey pancake? That’s very refeshing :)

 

That was our supermarket tour in Montreal. There are still a lot of things we couldn’t try because unfortunately, we have only one stomach per person. I might buy some extra stomach to have at least 4 like cows :)

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