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About the Vegetable Cage

07 June 2011 By In Canada, Travel

Beautiful spinning morning

Since we’ve got in Canada, we are not only the morning person but also the night person. In another word, we don’t sleep at all. It’s not because we’ve got a energizer super power with the total eclipse but because of our lovely holiday house. OK, OK, let’s be honest. It’s sorry to say a house, more like a rabbit cage. But as we’ve put the potato and cucumber in it, let’s say it’s a vegetable cage. However, I don’t care the size to sleep, I don’t use two room to sleep anyway. Then why we don’t sleep? It’s because of the dream.

First two night, I had very weird dream. There was a girl who shouted right into my ear from time to time and group of people were chattering under my bed. I also went to drive with bunch of African guys listening ‘Boom Boom’ hip-hop music with full bass. And the worst part was somebody put a police siren next to my bed and it rang every 10 min. What the…

But finally, the third night I’ve woke up with a girl’s sharp screaming. And I realized it was not a dream, everything was really happening in the real life. The only fortunate thing was that they were not inside my room but just under my window. When I looked down the street, there were a lot of traffic and drunken people in front of our apartment. Our room was 7th floor but I heard all the noise like hearing in my room. The super quality apartment has the super quality sound isolation. Actually, we’ve learned much later that the next 2 roads from my apartment is one of the biggest party street. So all those drunken people go home passing by the road in front of my room and a lot of police cars are there to keep them ‘safe’. So we cannot sleep by night because of the extreme noise and also cannot sleep when they’ve gone home(around 5 in the morning)because of the glorious sunshine all over the room (the room is face to east). Therefore, every morning, I look like a forgotten potato under cup board for 3 months.

 

And KiKi look like this when I wake up later than him,
and like this when I wake up earlier than him.

 

We also have special event in this room. The whole house can enter the 14 inch television include KiKi.
I sometimes have to run next to the window with my food middle of cooking. Because we have fire sensor straight up the stove but we don’t have the cooking fan. It seems the fire alarm hates butter melting smell as he shouts when I do it. So when the butter is well melt and the steak cooked nicely I have to run and wait in front of the window till they become all cold and crappy to finish cooking a while later. Or I can just bear the ear piercing alarm sound but I have enough noise by night, it would be nice if I can avoid it at least by day. So I run.

 
This is the famous smelly corridor. It smells like group of homeless and alcoholic guys eating spoiled curry with old cheese while smoking cigarettes.


This is the most exciting part. The elevator stops sometimes 20cm higher or lower than floor. And also from time to time door doesn’t open so you have to push it very hard to escape.
This is the romantic balcony. It’s very narrow and old. Forget the romance, it’s better not to enter to keep us alive.

 
Stop complaining. We have some good point, too in this apt. As we are on 7th floor, we have nice view from window. The silver roof church between trees.


And the position is close to everywhere. The center, shops, festival area, most of famous places and public transport. Most of them are in walking distance.

 
And it’s good fun to watch people from up position. When I don’t feel like do anything, just stand in front of window and watch people. I can spend more than 2 hours on this activity.
Our friend, policeman. They don’t sleep, non stop working for 24hours. Even they showed me a Hollywood spectacle for the last day event. They chased 3 guys and arrested them in front of my window at 2:30 in the morning. About 5 police cars gave techno bar effect in my room when I tried to sleep hard. That was very fun but I was like a sick chicken the next day.

 

So for somebody who want to visit Montreal, I strongly do not recommend this apartment. It’s not only crappy but also expensive. ;) (Unless you don’t come home often and have non stop party.)

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4

Curious Veggies

06 June 2011 By In Canada, Travel

 

Morning Person

That was not true.
I expected to have a long and good sleep on the real bed after 7 days sleeping bag life. But I didn’t know the jet lag is much stronger than the tiredness.
I woke up 4 in the morning so tried to sleep more. But eventually, I saw the sun rising and the clock in front of my bed showed correctly every hour. KiKi resisted a little longer than me but he also started to work at 7 in the morning.
So we became morning person even though we didn’t really want to be.

 

Curious Veggies

We had lunch with super expensive meat which I had accidentally bought at the bio corner. And I started to be curious again about this noisy city so decided to visit the tourist center. But of course I didn’t know where it is and my believed google map didn’t show the proper one :( But I surly saw the big information center mark on the city map on the street, so just went out and KiKi also came out leaving the work behind ;)

Happy veggies. The excitement of new place.
The weather was nice and warm. 

 

New Culture
Near our apt, we found a pair of shoes. They looked in a good condition but nobody was around. Maybe the Quebecois are very kind to share their shoes with people on the road. But unfortunately the size was not mine and KiKi didn’t like the style.
They also have a different definition of parking for bicycle. It seems very common to use a bike in the city and they park them double layer when they don’t find enough space. So I should prepare my mind not to get shocked when I see somebody park their bicycle on mine.

 

City of Churches

We found the city map on the street without much problem. (I saw a policeman on the road but I didn’t dare to ask to him this time.) To go to the information center, we had to go through downtown. Sightseeing time :D

It seems they have a lot of church in this city. I saw a church almost every 100 meter with little exaggeration. But strangely, most of them were closed. Shouldn’t be the church for everybody? :(
Church of St John The Evangelist. I like the red roof. But a lot of homeless or punk teenagers often stay in front of its door. So I couldn’t get a chance to approach it.


St. James united church front view. (Open, Shazam~)


St. James united church side view. (Hum…se..sesame…?)

 

More prevention gives more curiosity. I was eager to look inside. We went front, side and behind of the church but it was really closed. So I knocked. (Keep knocking, and the door will be opened for you. Luke 11:9) But it didn’t work this time :’( I became very frustrated potato.

Well, it kind of worked actually. Just it was not this door but another one. There was another church near St. James and they were fixing something inside the church. So the workers left the door open. Yupee~ We went in the church passing by a head banging guy listening a heavy metal music in front of church door. Why not, church is for everybody ;)
Cathédrale Christ Church de Montréal. The gate shape was very special and the towers were more like a castle.


It has wooden ceiling with warm ambiance. It reminded me an african church in New Orleans from a Hollywood films. (^^;)
Nice sculpture with very precise details. By the way, maybe it’s too luxurious to be a humble african church in New Orleans. Who knows, I’ve never been there anyway. (-_-;)

 

And finally, my frustration went down like clogged toilet being plunged. There was a huge church (even I didn’t notice it’s a church. It looked like a government building.)near the information center and we allowed not only to enter but to have a guide. It’s called Cathedral-Basilica of Mary. As it is 3rd biggest church in Quebec, the architecture was very impressive. Its inside was very bright and beautiful. But strange thing is I don’t know this church is for ‘Who’. It was rededicated in 1955 to Mary, Queen of the World, by Pope Pius XII. Its model was Saint Peter’s Basilica in Rome but instead of the statues of the twelve apostles on the façade of St. Peter’s, the front of the church is topped by statues of the patron saints of thirteen parishes of Montreal who donated them. And they had a pope photo right next to a apostle drawing and luxurious mortuary chapel for auxiliary bishop inside the church. Well, I am not catholic so I don’t know how they feel about that but I felt they built this to cerebrate themselves.
Cathedral-Basilica of Mary
Beautiful dome and piece of veggies
It was very bright with natural sun light.


Holy water was in a giant shell. Those shells were too enormous to believe they are real.


It’s the place for bishop to give a preaching. Jesus never gave a preaching at such a luxury place. But why pope or bishop?

By the way, look, it’s Google map result for ‘church near Montreal’. So many of them, it’s like Seoul.


View Larger Map

Eh…maybe not. I didn’t know Seoul has that much ^^;

View Larger Map

 

Downtown

Oh~~ City City. It’s almost been a year to be in a big city. People People. Why are all of them on the street? It’s so crowd. I was scared not to see enough people on the road when I arrived in Australia. But now I feel weird to see such a crowd on the road. What are they doing outside? Actually, it’s like Korea. But I kind of forgot. -_-;

By the way, general impression of this city is very messy. A lot of constructions places are mixed with pedestrian block, rubbishes are everywhere, dirty wall and broken roads. Well, I think most of big cities are like that but I feel it’s messier than Seoul. Hum…maybe I don’t have objective criticism for this, you know, I love my city ^^; Oh, but I can tell it’s more green than Seoul. There are more trees and flowers in this city.

They quite often have hanging flower pot on the road, at the window and in front of house. It looked very nice but I sometimes got scared for KiKi when he walked near them because some of them were high but some of them were not.

They also have something with Switzerland. It means we often see the word ‘Swiss’ in the the name. KiKi looked quite happy with that ;)

And a surprising thing. They have a lot of sex shops and striptease bars. Not only behind the city somewhere hidden place but some of them were quite in the center with big neon signs and show window with items. And the shops’ doors were widely opened so we could see its inside clearly. Well, why not, it’s just a shop. But I haven’t see them much before so I’ve got quite shy alone in the street :P
A watering guy for hanging flower pot
Franglish? It’s written ‘We do not sell watches. We help you to buy them.’ What do you mean? You don’t want my money?


 

Place Ville Mary

In front of fountain of Place Vill mary
Skyscrapers

 

Around 6pm, we went to place ville mary. It’s middle of downtown so we can see nice view of sky scrappers from here. But our body condition was like midnight (It was midnight if we were in Switzerland.). So we decide to have a little coffee break. Unfortunately, as both of us don’t like coffee, we couldn’t get enough caffeine with chocolate drink and tea. So we didn’t talk, just watched around us half sleeping.

Ahaaa…It’s been so long time to drink a chocolate drink smelling exhaust gas middle of noise ;) It maybe sounds weird, but I felt very nostalgia for this situation :)

 
Do you see something strange? They don’t have the front number plate.


EA office. KiKi said it was the first time to see a video game company with his own eye. But he refused to take a photo with it because it’s not Nintendo. Patriotic chum.
It made us so laugh ‘Les Bagnoles’ but we like the idea very much. As you can see, it’s the film, ‘Cars’. But they have a law to write all the titles in French against anglicism. Most of countries use a lot of English word these days. But they try to keep their language middle of English speaking country. Bravo!

 

By the way, we should sleep more tomorrow not to drown in the soup bowl while having lunch.

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12

Flying Veggies

05 June 2011 By In Canada

Sleepy stuff

It’s Cucumber and Potato’s pot changing day. After long planting in Switzerland for 5 years, we start to get curious about another land. With no much thinking, we decided to go to the other continent, America. For me, potato, as it is the first time to go this land, I expected that I would be super excited on the departure day. But…our train was too early in the morning after raining Festi’Neuch and the sleeping-on-the-cold-hard-floor-with-sleeping-bag gave me strong back pain and a cold heart. So we were excited somewhere very hidden place in the mind but we couldn’t express it with our physical condition.
Dried veggies

 

Bye, Switzerland

We stayed in the airport like dried vegetables and got a little surprise. The flight departure time’s got 10min earlier than original time. It was the first time of my life, what a nice surprise. Sorry for somebody get ‘too on time’ in the airport but we are going~ ;)
Leaving behind the cloudy Geneva, we jumped off the European land.
Run faster!


Geneva airport


Geneva jet d’eau from the sky

 

Flying veggies

Ah…Finally !
I got little head ache for taking off and felt hungry. Yes, that meant my brain(actually, stomach) had woke up. It seemed my lovely cucumber woke up, too. He started to tap the screen to choose a movie.
I waited for lunch desperately but it didn’t come out soon enough for my stomach. :( I almost felt like fainting so I had to take some photos to forget the hunger even though I was on the aisle seat. Today, we had only high position cloud so we could see beautiful French farm land from the sky. Look at the photos which I took crushing KiKi.
Green green farmland


Sheep on the green field


Movie time

 

Lunch time :D
Stewardess start to serve the lunch and KiKi looked very excited to hear Quebecois. That was quite remarkable accent for me as well. I felt they open mouth wider pronouncing ‘e, eu, oi’ and the intonation was totally different from French or Swiss french part. It sounds very friendly.  Not like my Swiss friends warning, I could understand with no much troubles. Well, actually, they only spoke few sentences such as ‘poulet ou pâte ?’(chicken or pasta?), ‘Vous voulez boire quelque chose?’(do you want to drink something?) :P We will see more in Canada. By the way, the food quantity was a bit less than usual but taste was good or simply, I was super hungry.

We watched 3 so so movies, some shorts and served once more small meal, chicken rap before landing. hum…what kind of chicken can be conserved for 2 years? It had expiration date in 2012 Sep. :(

Yoohoo~ Canada!
We started to see the Canada from the sky. It has very interesting landscape. Everything is very straight and flat. Field, houses and the cities.
Straight line fields


Scary well ordered city


Montreal Olympic park

 

Welcome to Canada

After 7 times passport checking from Geneva to Montreal, we could step on the Canadian land. Little hot, humid and the smell~ hum. different air.
14:20. We took only 2 hours to get here in Montreal. Fancy to weekend trip? ;)

We asked where we can get on the subway to a policeman and he described the way very precisely and added one more word, ‘Did you come all the way long only to eat Subway?’ huummm…He showed the way to the Subway sandwich shop. Apparently, they don’t use the word ‘subway’ but only ‘metro’. So this time we went to information center and they gave us a little map to get to our holiday apartment. We straightly bought one month public transport card (73 CAD), get on the bus and then KiKi lost the little map. I should feed him some fatty food to get his pocket tighter. So our first adventure in Canada began. We started to rove from the metro station and suddenly, a lady jumped to us and asked where we were looking for. Oh…scary friendly people.
We little bit worried she would ask some money after the conversation like Egyptians but she just went away. Oh…she was a real kind person. It’s been so long time this kind of people.
Look at the traffic light, we are in a different city!

But actually she didn’t really know where we were looking for so I asked once more to a policeman. He bravely jump to the driving road and show the way to us. I wondered if it was really necessary to get in the dangerous driving road but anyway, we followed his instruction which wasn’t that really clear. After 1 hour walking, we arrived at our suppose-to-be-lovely-holiday-apartment. When KiKi said it looked like this apartment, I wanted to keep walking. ‘No, it can’t be this. It will be further, it should be further!’ But the life can sometimes be very cruel. That was really our suppose-to-be-lovely-holiday-apartment. Very old building with strange smell and super miniature type studio. We almost felt like scammed. How they can sell this sad quality apartment with that price…That’s the risk of internet booking. We got little sad at the moment but quickly adapted the situation and went to dinner.

 

While we were going to city center with google maps’ help, we realized that the metro station was actually 10 min distance from our apartment. The kindness doesn’t always mean helpful. ;)

We chose a restaurant which looked quite good, St. Hubert but actually, it was between family restaurant and fast food. We ordered food with welcoming drink, Mojito but the welcoming drink wasn’t for free, also not like Egypt ;)
Welcome to Canada ! (Mojito 9CAD)

When our food was served, we were quite surprised at the huge quantity. Both of us ordered the smallest size but it was normal size in Switzerland or Korea. The coleslaw salad was also included in the meal and we could get unlimited refill. We could feel that we are very close to U.S.A :)
Half size rib (14CAD)


Quarter size grilled chicken (12CAD), you know KiKi has huge hands


Impressed KiKi

 

Tired. We had very long day with 6 hours time difference. We started to have sand in the eyes from 6pm and the body felt melting around 9pm. Let’s go home!

We walked along the street to get home. It seemed quite interesting this city >.< Ohhoho. Besides, we found out there will be free music festival(Francofolies) for 9 days in front of our apartment. What a luck !
Near China town
Stylish second hand clothes shop
Yes, they are absolutely right ;)

 

Ah~ real bed. After 7days sleeping bag, this small simple white bed looks even luxury. I have feeling that we will have very good sleep tonight.

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