Just when I thought my travels had ended after a very nomadic summer, I found myself headed back to Montreal for the second time this year. My friend Melanie was moving there to work as a nurse and I decided to keep her company on the drive up marking my first real Ontario (and Quebec) road trip.

I got up early and headed to her house around 6.30am on Thursday morning. We met up and drove in her heavy Toyota, loaded with her life in the back seats. We stopped at Nova Era café on College Street for a "wake up" hot chocolate and pastries... and we were off!

Although I won't go into too many details of my trip, since it was only really 2 days, mostly settling her in her new apartment, I do have to tell the story of our trek up to Mont Real.. the Montreal hills..

We decided to go up so I could see the view of the city that I missed on my last trip there. We wandered up trying to plot our direction South and West (up) taking some pictures along the way. When we finally made it to the top, we could sense that the day was ending.

We took some pictures of the panoramic city view and headed to look for an even higher point. As we wandered the trails, and stopped on a small hill with a hydro tower, I stopped, and looked up to find out that it wasn't a power tower we were next to, we were at the base of the famous cross on the hill that lights up at night.

We continued in search for the other higher lookout point only to find out that we had walked to the other side of the hill, nowhere close to where we wanted to be. We did find a lookout point, but this one looking West, to the other side of the city where the sun was beginning to set. I then noticed that people were now majorly speaking english.. how odd. We're on the english side of the hill! We turned back, passing by the now lit cross, signaling that night was about to fall.

We began to merge into the French side as I noticed most people now beginning to speak French more commonly. We were now headed South and I knew we had to head North-East. However, the only way down, seemed to be on the path we were going on... We attempted to take shortcuts, taking every opportunity we had to move down the hill. We tredded often off the beaten path, down steep terrain, clinging to the roots of trees so we didn't end up practicing tobbogan without snow on our butts down the hill.

Night was now quickly falling as we passed wooden bridges, wandering almost randomly through heavy forrest always trying to maintain a downward direction. Melanie spotted a blue beakon... we had reached our first lookout point. We could now follow the path we took to get up here, but we couldn't afford the hour long walk, it was nearly dark. We decided to cut through the forrest by walking into dark trees. It was beginning to get pitch black and I was feeling unconfortable and tired. We reached a caban.... we felt that at any moment, a guy with a chain saw and a hockey mask would pop out any second now... this is getting spooky, let's get the hell out of here I thought!

Right next to the caban, we saw a familiar path... Steps! They led onto the major road down the hill! We got down and followed it all the way to the base of the hill and to what I callled "Urbanity" ... my made up word for our return to civilization.

But..uhh.. we weren't at where we started. We were far South of our entry point, past McGill University... but at least we knew where to go. We walked for another little while until we reached a park which Melanie knew.

How convenient, we were perfectly aligned with Portuguese village so we stopped for some pasteis de nata and other pastries.

We were on our way home. :-)

Here are some pictures of my trip. Please note that it's a large file ( about 3.5MB) so if you don't have a high speed connection, it will be a bit of a wait. Press play to begin. Enjoy!

EDIT: Seems this takes a long time to load the entire website, so instead click the link to view the video
Pedro in Montreal Video