This may contain some atrocious puns...

The people of Toronto are notoriously blurry

So I went to Toronto, and I feel I should first say thanks to Dave for giving me somewhere to stay. I went skating for the first time in many years, and certainly the first time outside ever, on a rink situated in the centre of Toronto. It was pretty awesome, although slightly tainted by the chap who slipped and hit his head and we then had to wait for the paramedics. Anyhow we decided after this that perhaps we would rather eat than skate and so I had some Thai food.

Later that same night I got my first experience of playing hockey, not exactly sure that I was brilliant but then considering that my main issues were with the skating I think it went fairly well. It was made more interesting by the fact that it was snowing while we were skating, so this meant getting to shovel snow while skating which I feel I had begun to get the hang of by the end. Still in the time it took to get the whole thing clear, where we'd started had a fresh centimetre on it. Also got to skate through ankle deep snow which was a fairly cool experience.

The old town hall, nothing more

Other than this I did lots of hanging out and just generally relaxed, which was marvellous. I also got to go out to a farm a couple of hours outside the city. It was a really nice one storey wood and marble place. I spent most of the time in an oak panelled room with an open fire reading Sherlock Holmes or watching movies. It was a lovely room, also one of the shorts makes mention of Horsham, The Five Orange Pips I believe, so that was a nice reminder of home.

How it looked from the window at the farm

Also there was a protest on the train tracks when I tried to leave, causing me to be delayed by three and a half hours, I wasn't particularly amused by this, but oh well. It seems the Prime Minister should have been talking to some Natives and hadn't so they decided I wouldn't want to be able to get Montreal, just a tad annoying if I'm honest.

Christmas at the Falls

The falls have a effective cloaking device

So I went and saw Niagara, really quite a strange place. The falls and the gorge they have cut out of the lanscape are really beautiful but then the place doesn't quite have the same kind of class. The casinos are quite cool, but it does seem to be a big mess of neon lights, discount souvenir shops and attractions of the sort you'd expect on a pier.

Yeah I played golf with Dinosaurs

Anyhow the key thing was that Stuart was also present so this gave us plenty of opportunities for entertainment. On Christmas Eve we did the exploring but the best bit was Dinosaur Adventure Golf. We played a couple of 18 hole courses in among some the odd T-Rex, Velociraptor, Stegosaurus, Diplodocus and well I'm sure you all know some dinosaur names. It was a pretty good course a few sand traps and a lot of ice traps, very hard to pick a good line over the rather uneven surface.

The guy who did the intro for the snowman
was also a musician it appears

A very Canadian sign

Christmas day started with a nice little snow shower, which seemed very appropriate. The time difference was handy as it meant all the decent TV had already been on, and was therefore available for watching on i-Player, so there was a christmas special binge, obviously. Outnumbered, Friday Night Dinner, QI, Never Mind the Buzzcocks, The Snowman and of course Doctor Who. All of which were nicely broken up with the odd game of pool, on perhaps the most unpredictable table ever, there was an interesting curve to it and the balls can out in a fairly random order. We managed to find ourselves a christmas dinner, in the Hard Rock Cafe, so could see a guitar belonging to David Bowie while eating turkey. After that we popped off to a bar and watched some christmas basketball, all in all it was a pretty good christmas.

It would appear I've been thrown in jail

The entrance to my "room"

Right so I went to Ottawa for a few days, it seemed a pretty cool place although kind of icy and really pretty chilly. There isn't a lot of stuff there but I got the feeling it was a pretty nice city, just had a good atmosphere. I had a nice look at the Canadian Parliament buildings, where you can go on a free tour, pretty sure that wouldn't happen back home. They did confiscate my belt though, as it was studded, I'm not sure what they thought I could do with it but presumably some pretty serious damage. So it's this big symmetrical building with one side being for the Commons and the other the senate, no Queen related stuff is allowed in the Commons. There is also a peace tower, apparently the largest peace monument in the world, so just stereotypical Canada there. The views from it would've been awesome but unfortunately it was a little cloudy and snowing. I should also point out that I stayed in a hostel that had previously been a jail, so I was sleeping in a cell which was different.

The Houses of Parliament, Canada style

I also went and visited some friends in a place called Perth, it's kind of small and spread out if that makes sense. Did manage to have this really nice meal of all local food though which was pretty cool. I also got a proper Canadian experience, driving to the middle of nowhere in the dark during a blizzard to get to a party. This was made all the more interesting by a suicidal deer that decided to jump in front of us, fortunately for both parties concerned we missed it (of course there I have changed my assumption about the deer being suicidal). Anyhow got drunk during a blizzard so that was cool. The next day there was an extra foot of snow or so, it just makes England's attempts look pitiful.

Quebec cunningly chosing cloud cover

Queen Victoria looks at her lovely library

The House of Commons, Canada style

Now for a little rant about trains, because I'm English and that's what we do. Now I wouldn't say the system back home is great but they seem to have decided to make it far worse out here. The main problem I feel is that for some bizarre reason they seem to think it should be like getting a plane, with a queue to board and sometimes checked baggage as well. Now this can lead to a train spending over half an hour waiting at a platform, why can't people just wait on the platforms and get on and off when the train arrives, it's crazy. However the trains are pretty spacious with free wifi so that makes up some of it. But being delayed for an hour so no apparent reason: signalling, train broke down, "someone on the line", etc. is just preposterous.

If Carlsberg did Icicles...

Right so I have been in Montreal and am now on a train to Ottawa. The first couple of days it snowed fairly incessantly which is less fun than we seem to think it would be back home, it is just rain but colder. This may have been because I was wandering around the city and couldn't really enjoy it so much.

Maire-Reine-Du-Monde

Notre Dame

It is quite a different a different place to Halifax, the people are decidely more French and I don't necessarily mean that in a good way. It also seemed the sun had decided to shun the place while I was there which was a shame, couldn't see the tops of the buildings half the time. There were quite a few pretty building though, some slightly older and more European stuff. I went and had a look at a couple of cathedrals, Notre Dame and Marie-Reine-Du-Monde, went into Marie as it was free which I considered a big plus.

SQUIRREL!!!

There were some pretty sights though, found this wall covered in icicles that was awesome kind of like stalactites. Also climbed up Mont Royal which was a bit of a challenge it was fairly deep snow which made it more difficult. Saw a few cross country skiers, unfortunately the views of the city were rather obscured by a collection of grey clouds. The place seemed to be littered with statues as well, one of which was a Mountie so that was stereotypical.

A view of Montreal from Mont Royal

Icicles on a wall

Met some cool other travelers, a guy from England a few Canadians, a Nigerian (who I couldn't understand), a Czech (who I could just understand) and an Aussie who was in the country for one day and got ridiculously drunk. So that meant the evening were fun and fairly long. Also trains seem to like using their horns out here

Je suis Montrealais

Ok, so I didn't get round to writing anything last week, shoot me. I would say it was because I had exams, but we all know that writing would've been great procrastination, so no it was because my laptop cable had died and I couldn't turn it on. Anyway I didn't get up to much last week.

This week I have done my exams which was fun, obviously. Since then I have been drinking and playing some pool. I also discovered that American football is more dull to watch than curling so pretty high praise there. I have also seen the hobbit, I liked it but it wasn't the story I remembered reading as a kid which was a shame. There were a few guys dressed up and we had Gandalf sitting on our row which was interesting

There is a tree in front of my window ok

I'm now in Montreal for the start of some christmas travelling. Was amazing flying in at night and seeing all the snow on the ground, have never seen anything like it. Turned up in the hostel and met another english guy and went for some drinks, found a bar with $10 pitchers and open until 3 in the morning on a sunday night it was great. I also feel I did fairly well considering I didn't eat for 10 hours before drinking for 5. Which reminds me I met a nice stereotypical Canadian at the airport, just says hi and we spend some time in a bar, chatting about rugby, places we've been and those we want to see, the normal stuff. Anyhow Montreal is really quite french, people are speaking it everywhere so I don't have a clue what they are saying, think it's about time I go and do some exploring though.

11 became 12 and I got to shave

Right, so, in the past week Canada seems to have heard that it has a reputation for being cold.  So it has got down to about -8 in the day, which I'm pretty sure has never happened back home. Fortunately Halifax hasn't yet cottoned on to the fact that as it's by the sea it should be windy, so that is a pretty handy fact. Anyhow it's still pretty dry and clear skies, although I feel I should make the obligatory fuss about the fact there has been a small amount of snow, so here we go, oh my God it's snowing! Snow!! SNOW!!! Good, glad I got that out the way, can move on now.

Today I discovered that a peanut butter twix is a thing, and quite a tasty thing at that. However that does not make up for the severe lack of pasties here. What else am I supposed to eat when I fancy something filling, savoury, easy to eat that isn't a sandwich? There's nothing that quite fills that spot like a cornish pasty or perhaps a lamb and mint one, but no can't even find anything vaguely similar.

Went to the hockey again, this time the Mooseheads won 7-1, essentially they have a fairly awesome keeper whereas the other team didn't. Got to see a fluke goal as well, it went in off the glass that protects the crowd, really quite embarrassing for  the keeper. This time saw some guys get penalties for roughing, perhaps they'd had a few too many pints of lager and felt a bit fighty. Now, Cananda has a few places which I would descibe as unpronouncable and the team they played were from one such place, Chicoutimi Sagueneens, not even sure which one is the place. I have a suspicion one of those words may be pronounced Shoe-Book-Toe as the announcer seemed to keep saying it, however that may just be a list of things he had to remember who knows.

Anyhow I have exams soon so not doing a huge amount of anything so there's not much else to tell. Oh, and I should probably mention that I'm at the Uni with a puppy room to help people relax during exams.