Hello my friends :)

Don't lie, I know you missed me ! I've had a lot of work to do lately: mid-terms, papers, group works... Who said you sit back and relax while you're abroad ? Anyway, I'm back, et I'm gonna tell you everything about the crazy weekend I spent in Toronto with my girlfriends !

People here don't travel a lot by train like we do, they take coaches (buses if you will) instead. So there we were, at 00:30 on a Thursday night (well ok, technically it was Friday morning, but you know what I mean) waiting for our 7-hour bus ride.

We arrived in Toronto in the early morning. We went to the hostel to put our bags there. A really nice hostel by the way, one of the nicest I've seen so far ! We were a 6-beds female dorm with one Irish girl and one Italian girl.

We were starving, so we decided to have a REAL Canadian breakfast... And it was totally worth it ! Check this out:

We went to Saint Lawrence's market. I still don't know exactly what it is... It was an indoor market, but it looked like an outdoor market, and there was food, and clothes, and jewellry...

After that we walked around in the Distillery District. It was a really nice place to see, one of my favourite tours of the weekend.

We then took a walk along the bay. Toronto is located right next to Lake Ontario, which is one of the five Great Lakes in North America. We went on walking and arrived downtown, right next to the CN Tower. Of course, we had to go up ! Although it is quite expensive, it is really worth seeing: the view from up there is amazing ! Take a look:

We wanted to go to the Toronto Islands, which is kind of a hippie island on Lake Ontario, but the ferry was working very slowly and we would have had to wait too long, so we headed towards Kensington. Do you know Camden Town in London ? Well, Kensington is the same kind of neighborhood. There are strange wall paintings on the houses, strange stores, strange people... I loved it !

We were almost dead at that point of the day, especially after spending the night in the bus, so we went back to the hostel, had some hot chocolate and had a little chat, you know, just like girlfriends do !

On the next day, we decided to go and see the Toronto University. We visited a few buildings, but the most impressive was Trinity College: it really looked like Hogwarts ! Look at that dining room :

So what is it gonna be ? Gryffindor, Hufflepuff, Ravenclaw or Slytherin ?

And because we are girls and we have needs, guess what we did in the afternoon ? That's right, shopping ! Oh what a magic word... We went to the Eaton centre, which is a super big mall, and just enjoyed ourselves !

The next day was dedicated to the Niagara Falls ! We woke up at 5:30 in the morning (yes that's right) because we had to take a bus at 7. We had to take a cab to the coach station because, you won't believe it, the subway starts at 9 am on Sundays !! I still can't believe it, but anyway...

We arrived at the Niagara-on-the-Lake coach station at 9. We walked through the whole city (which is completely dead in the winter by the way, there's absolutely nothing to do there) for more than half an hour until we arrived to the actual falls ! However, the show was really impressive. The lake was frozen, and some parts of the falls as well,  that all made the moment kind of unique.

We went back to Toronto at the beginning of the afternoon, and then took another bus back to Montréal.

We were tired as never before, but we enjoyed every moment of our weekend. Imagine how it felt to get back to work on monday... That I did not enjoy so much. 

Never mind, I have a new objective: Bostoooooon next week ! Don't worry, you'll have all the details ;)

Bye bye, or as my friend Übercool would say: quack quack !

xxx

Laurie