Farewell Canada

Bonjour for the last time!

For those just joining us, you have really missed out... because this is our final blog post. For those who have followed along, we look forward to hearing about your withdrawals. However, while G&C may not continue traveling together through the month of June, we will be diverging on exciting individual adventures which you are welcome to follow on our separate blogs:

Curry: "The Curry Express"

http://thecurryexpress.blogspot.com

Ginger: "Smokin' hot Ging in TX"

http://smokinhotging.blogspot.com

Thank you all for reading, we hope you enjoyed our humor and stories. It was especially great for us to reunite after four years studying at different colleges and we were so happy to share our experiences with you! We have been friends for quite some time (17 years) and we never expected to graduate college and be able to take this wonderful trip together. Cheers, and merci beaucoup Canada!!!

Beauty and Brains

Hello dedicated readers,

On our last day in Montreal, we decided to follow a theme that we believe represents us perfectly: beauty and brains. In the morning, we went for a relaxing spa treatment to get mani/pedis (the beauty) in order to recover from all of our walking adventures. And in the afternoon, we explored "Eureka!", a science festival sprawled across Old Port (the brains). We assume you can understand how beautiful our nails are so there are no pictures, however we have plenty of photos to prove our nerdiness. We were definitely in our element at the science fest.

We enjoyed the rest of the beautiful day in Montreal with frisbee and a lovely walk down the river. We will definitely miss walking these streets.

Cheers,

G&C

Poutine our last days in Montreal to good use

¡Hola mes amis! 

We woke up bright and early for one of our last days here in Montreal and hit the town right away #nomapneeded. We bought transit passes (#locals) and took the metro to McGill, which we had already seen, but wanted to go back and explore in more detail. We took pictures, found the engineering building and the med school, and basically just pretended to be college students again #gonnamissthat

After McGill, we headed back to Old Montreal and Old Port (some of our favorite areas of the city) for more city exploring and typical local Canadian things #hiphiphoor-eh?! We are just so proud of how easily we have adapted to this city and fit in perfectly #goAmericans.

Don't we just fit right in?? #Canadianselfie

We meandered our way into a creperie where we met the most delightful owner who happened to also be a Packer fan #goPackgo. We chatted with him for quite some time-- he was a total gem. We then stuffed our faces with delicious crepes and had minimal conversation. 

In the evening, we headed back downtown to check out the Francofolies music festival, an annual event featuring Canadia's best French music artists. The first act was a chick who looked a bit like Ke$ha but could actually sing and with songs kinda deep like Adele but hell if we know, it was all in French. We also learned that the watermelon trick doesn't really work with French music. It was clear we didn't know any of the words... No matter, we got beer and enjoyed the (finally!) nice weather. #notSummerFestbuttheytried

Ford sponsored #AMERICA!!!

Quite the crowd #mostlycouples #wefitrightin #ellen&portia

We went straight from the festival to meet up with my friends, Danna and Chloe, from study abroad who were both really excited to take us out for what they had proclaimed the best poutine in Montreal. For those of you unaware, Poutine is a fat girl's dream- fries + cheese curds + gravy + additional meat toppings or side options such as guacamole or just more cheese. Below is a picture of what the 'small' looks like. We were not expecting the Canadians to show us up with greasier food, otherwise, we would have probably trained more in preparation. 

hotdogs, steak and bacon toppings make this appropriately named the "T-Rex"
Phen's lame vegetarian one is in the background, being whimpy

Post-poutine, we mingled with some of our friends' friends and experienced a bit of the Montreal bar scene #seen-one-seen-them-all



Poutine giggles on the web for 13 days,

Ginger and Curry

Rockin' out with glow bracelets

Rains and Trains

Bonjour Amigos!

Tuesday was our only full day in Ottawa, so it rained poured. All day. No relent. We set aside our hopes for our vacation from our vacation and caved to some indoor tourist activities.

First on the list: learn about the Canadian government by going on the Parliament tour! Yay! And, because it was so exciting, we want to share pictures and details with you. We have one picture and about 3 facts. Basically, we are now self-declared Canadian history experts (well, maybe Phen- Christina still doesn't know the PM of Canada).

Senate room

Selfie in the Senate!

After completely drying off (mentally and physically) during our Parliament tour, we ventured back out into the pouring rain to walk ten minutes to the museum, just enough time to get completed soaked again. We arrived at the Museum of Civilization just in time for the featured IMAX showing, The Last Reef, which was essentially a very, very depressing version of Finding Nemo. We left the IMAX still wet and now with tears of how the humans were destroying the planet and all chance for coral to survive. Not surprisingly, we were also hungry #needtoeatfeelings

In order to take control of our day, we Yelped our lunch destination, hiked through the rain, got lost twice, and turned to the Post lady for directions, and FINALLY, made it to Gainsbourg, a pub that lived up to all of our expectations. We drank, we ate, we caffeinated, we played cribbage, and we treated this pub like a Museum of Civilization. We stayed for 3 hours.

After our quick lunch break, we headed back to the Museum of Civilization (the real one) to check out the exhibits. One was about Canadian history and important "celebrities," which to our surprise was not full of Justin Beiber, Celine Dion, and Shania Twain #disappointedinCanada
The coolest exhibit, by far, was the Vodou exposition which documented the history of Vodou and dispelled all of our prior misconceptions of the practice.
In total, we spent 2 hours at this museum. Probably could have spent more if we hadn't been so intrigued by the Pub museum (their exhibits are just so interactive).


We got kicked out of the museum (closing time), so we walked back to the Parliament building to go up the Peace Tower, which is a large clock tower and apparently has a great view of Ottawa from the top. There were no steps to get to the top (thank god), so we had to take the elevator... seven people at a time. After finally getting in the elevator it seriously felt like we were on the Tower of Terror. Even the elevator attendant had a funny uniform on, it seemed like it would drop any second. Upon sharing these thoughts with him, he assured us that it wasn't a ride and if the elevator drops it would be the real thing.

At the top of the Peace Tower, we really discovered this beautiful, 360 view everyone was talking about. We just had to share every photo with you. Impressive right??

We walked back to the hostel and basically crashed for the night-- rain really wears a girl out! We had big plans for the next day too... going to the local markets and catching a train back to our final destination.

G&C

A Moose!

<<<------ DOUBLE POST!!!!----->>>>

If you're joining us after a quick break from the hilarity, then welcome back! All others... we appreciate your dedication to reading straight through this double post.

Wednesday was a lovely day in Ottawa, just in time to see us off (of course). We spent the morning walking around the By Ward markets which had a lot of cute shops and stands set up with local crafts, jewelry, and clothes. We had a lovely sushi lunch outside (no umbrella picnic needed), and then headed back to the hostel to gather our things and catch the train back to Montreal.

Talk about a conceited country...

We stepped into Montreal, she greeted us with our favorite gift: RAIN. We returned home (seriously, home) to our favourite hostel, the M. After settling in and making dinner, we headed to the hostel bar for the first time and shared a pitcher of beer while people watching other hostelers display their best dance moves (it was too dark to play cribbage).

We ended the night with a girly slumber party in the room, which we believe thoroughly creeped out others in our dorm room. We have heaps of exciting plans for our final days in Canada so stay tuned!! Your reading entertainment will soon be coming to an end, but we can make new book recommendations for you if necessary.

Stay spicy,

GiNgEr & CuRrY

Ottawa: Our vacation from our vacation

Morning Good Citizens!

We have reached the capital of Canada: Ottawa! We arrived late Monday morning and decided to hit the town right away for some city exploring. For once in Canada, it was above 70 and we were loving it. Ottawa was as cute as we expected, but we realized that with our travelling skills we would be able to tackle this town easily in the two days we allotted. We also determined that Ottawa would be our vacation from our vacation because we really needed a break #whitetravellerprobs 

Spider!!

Can you tell it's not overcast??

Canada's parliament building

First day selfie #obviously

We decided to take a nice river walking path that crossed the Ottawa river so we were able to walk in both Ontario and Quebec #straddlingtwoprovinces. Upon re-entering the Ontario side of the river, it seemed that Ottawa had already read our minds with regards to taking a vacation from our vacation. We spotted (in the distance) a sign that read "Mill St Brewpub" and we instantly veered off the path and basically sprinted through traffic to get there #weneedbeer!

In typical fashion of the rest of this trip, we experimented with our beer selections... flights were necessary. We also got apps #FGC

amber, blonde, golden and brown ales #myfavoriterainbow #roy-g-beer?? 

 After we indulged in our beer, we continued to explore the darling city of Ottawa. We played some fris and of course, it started to rain (we are so used to it now). We walked through the financial district and some market areas and then headed back to the hostel for dinner and relaxing. Cribbage was necessary, but also the hostel has cable TV so we were semi entranced by Canadian reality TV.

 .

By the way, our hostel is basically a refurbished house and they have a cat. It's kinda like visiting your old crazy aunt that lives in Canada. We love it, it's so cute and perfect for our vacation from our vacation

Stay thirsty friends,

C&G

Final day in Quebec

Hello friends!!

First of all, congrats!! We have been in Canada one full week which means you have had the most exhilarating week of your life reading about our adventures! We are so happy to be in Canada still, even after 7 straight days...does that automatically qualify us for dual citizenship?

On Sunday, we woke up early (kind of) and the weather was just as we expected: rain. So we packed up and ventured to the Citadel which we mistakenly thought was an all indoor museum of Quebec's history. Turns out it was a military base with museums inside it but the only way to see the facility was to do a guided walking tour around the base....outside, in the rain. It ended up being pretty cool though, just a lot of information about Canada's history and their military triumphs. Basically, it was a big Canadian bragfest (see room dedicated to medals below).

 

#ooohcoolmedals,canada

O'Cannon Ball

State motto for Quebec (civilians and military)

After the tour, we didn't really have much else planned for the day (again, we were very confused as to what the Citadel actually was). So we walked around old Quebec some more, bought a few souvenirs and ended up at a coffee shop for our favorite old person activity: coffee and cribbage!

We decided to take a mid-afternoon break and then had plans to venture out later in the evening for a picnic dinner in the park #soromantic.We climbed our last flight of treacherous stairs in Quebec and we were feeling really great about our plans.

#onelasttime

We get to the park and it's sunny and wonderful, but then a quick mist happened. Nothing to worry about though, we enjoyed a lovely rainbow and soon the rains passed.

Mary Poppins

Sound of Music #flatgrassisalive

#USA

We started playing frisbee and set up our picnic and everything was going just perfectly...until the rains returned. And not the cute rainbow rains, these were actual rains and we were stranded in the middle of a park. No matter, we improvised and continued drinking. The picnic must go on!!

                                                   #scoutsprepared #nothingcanstopus

We ended the day back on the hostel, packing things up and going to bed early because we had a 5am train ride to Ottawa the next day. Stay tuned for G&C adventures in Canada's capital city!! #newprovince

Love and thanks for reading,

                                              Curry                        &                  Ginger

                                                Shout out to our favorite states! We miss you!