Cape Cod, Mt Tremblant & Ottawa

Ever since I came back to Montreal, I've been trying to enjoy more the things that are local to me now. After all, I don't know how long I have to enjoy these things. Like everybody else, I could get hit by a car and lose my opportunity to enjoy them, but more importantly in my case, I could find myself living far away in a few months.

So, in the spirit of seizing the occasion, I went to a few places not too far from Montreal in September.

I went to Cape Cod with 6 other people for the Labor Day week-end. We rented a house over there. It was the first time I went on vacation together with so many people. We got there on a Friday night. On Saturday, we went to Provincetown. If one has been to other coastal New England towns, one won't find much novelty there except for the concentration of gay people. Most people from our party stayed at the beach that afternoon. I decided to go drive around to explore the area a bit more. Only, I didn't realize there was no cellular signal at the beach. So, after exploring for a couple of hours and not hearing back from the others, I went back to the beach to see what was up. The others had gone and I saw that I had no signal there. So, I went back to town (where I had signal) to try and contact the others and look for them on Commercial Street (the main strip where most of the action is in Provincetown). I wasn't able to reach them with the cell phone, but I did bump into them. A girl whose things had been in the car I used to drive around was really mad that I strayed from the group.

The next day, some of us went to Martha's Vineyard. It's posher than Cape Cod. I liked the town of Oak Bluffs with its "gingerbread houses".

A few weeks later, I went to Mont Tremblant (Quebec's best ski resort). I took a tour to go there. It was painful to get up so early (we left Montreal at 7:30) and the guide wouldn't shut up and kept telling the unfunniest jokes three times (once in bad English, another time in even worst French and finally in Chinese) while I was trying to sleep on the bus on the way to our destinations. On top of that, there were a few kids that just kept crying all the time as if someone was trying to cut their arms off. When I saw Mont St-Sauveur, which is basically a small hill, and the puny, uninteresting village sitting next to it, I was wondering whether I had made a good decision to come on the tour. We then went on a small, boring boat cruise on the Lac des Sables in Ste-Agathe-des-Monts and had to suffer some pretty intense crying from the small children on board. I then remembered why I never liked nature before I first moved out of Quebec: it's because nature is so unimpressive and boring in Quebec. Further along on the way to Mont Tremblant, I thought my day was completely shot. I tried to read to make time go faster, but it was impossible to concentrate with the multiple children crying so intensely.

When we got to Mont Tremblant, things started turning around. Even though the place is in the province of Quebec, it presents some natural beauty. The village and its surrounding infrastructure is reminiscent of that of Whistler. The mountain itself is nothing compared to what you'd find back West, but it was definitely a notch above what I had seen so far that day. One could take a gondola all the way to the mountain top. But, given that we had many hours to spend there, I decided to hike the mountain instead. On the way up, I saw a chipmunk. A bit later, I heard some leaves moving. I thought it was another chipmunk, but it was a black bear! I was pretty close (25m?) to it and when I tried to take a picture of the animal, it heard me and ran away. It's the first time I ever saw a wild bear in Quebec. The only other time I had seen a bear in nature was in Whistler. I hiked some more and yet again heard some leaves being shuffled. This time, it was quite close and wasn't from a big creature. Again, I thought it was another chipmunk. It turned out to be a small snake. On my way down the mountain, I saw a young deer grazing. In one day, I managed to see more animals than I had ever seen in Quebec. I also saw a beaver's hut.

On the way back, they put a movie on, so the kids kept quiet.

The following day, I went to Ottawa. I visited the grounds of Rideau Hall (the governor general's house) and the mint where they make special edition coins. I walked a bit, had some food and came back to Montreal. Ottawa's a pretty city, although it may be a bit too sleepy for people looking for excitement.