NC in North America – Part I

Day 7. Soundtrack: Boards Of Canada – Geogaddi

 

Jo and I are on the 11-hour train journey from Montréal to New York. No idea where we are exactly because we’ve been drifting in and out of sleep and we have 12 stops before we reach NYC, but after a rude awakening and a brief Q&A with customs at the border we are now at a stand-still waiting on another train to cross us. Immigration weren’t that bad really, it was much worse when I was travelling solo a couple years back. The guy talking to us was Irish-American and loved the way Jo asked if we had to fill a “wee bit” on the bottom of a form. The Eastern European guy sitting opposite us got much more of a grilling, confusingly answering questions like what “colour his pants are”. They were light brown incidentally. Mine would be too if they talked to me like that..

We flew into Toronto last Sunday and spent a few days there. Downtown has lots of financial buildings but not a whole lot else. It’s not a bad city, but hardly inspiring. It meant we could see Niagara Falls though which is very humbling. Just look how fresh and delicious the greeny-blue water looks as it flows off the edge of the Canadian Horseshoe Falls, which Louie, (our Italian-Canadian guide) tells us the Americans are jealous of. 

There are a lot of visitors based in Toronto, studying language business courses or doing their medical placements. The kind of people who soon grow weary of the hostel lifestyle, stop being backpackers and turn into that really anal housemate who huffs whenever they don’t get everything their way. A Dutch guy started working in our hostel recently and was sleeping in our dorm. He usually came in at 4am, made loads of noise getting into bed, proceeded to snore all night, giving us dirty looks and groaning in the morning when we got up to leave at 9am. Most people are respectful, but occasionally you run into a total moron, who really shouldn’t be hostelling.
On Wednesday we got the Greyhound to Montréal, saving us a few bucks on the train fare, which wasn’t much faster anyway. This dropped us at central station, where Joanna had to speak a few words of French to get us on the right subway line. Our hostel was really nice, had a café/bar in the basement and WIFI which kept me happy. The Old Town is very beautiful and we mostly spent the days just walking around, taking it all in. The city has such a relaxing vibe, at times it felt like we were in europe, not Canada which was a welcome change from the mechanical beast of Toronto. Breakfast in NYC, here we come…