Fun weekend in Montreal

Hi,
So last weekend was a busy weekend for me in Montreal.

On saturday one of my roommates invited me to come to Cap Saint Jacques, a park outside of the city. We brought our picnic and beachwear and went to the park. First stop was the ecological farm, where we took a walk and saw some animals. My favorite were the little piglets!! Never saw them in real and of course I needed to pet them :) Then we did a little walk in the park, before going back to the car to go see the beach. Once at the beach we first had our picnic and then had a walk to a Castle nearby. It was a nice little walk. Then we headed to the beach, where I just put my feet in the water, cause it was not that hot to take a swim. We had some relax time there. After we saw you could look at some turtles, so of course I wanted to check that out :) We had a little walk till there and first we could not find turtles, until we looked further in the water. They were all sunbathing on a log of wood. Just a great view. In the evening there was a astronomy gathering at the main entrance of the park, this was the main reason we came :) We had some great info of how to take pictures of the sky and stars. And once it was dark we could go see through the telescopes of the professionals. This is what we saw: Moon, Mars, Jupiter, M57 ( ring nebula), M13 ( hercules cluster).
We had a great day and evening!

Sunday it was the Pride Parade in Montreal, I've heard it was one of the big ones :)
Never been to one so one of my roommates wanted to join and a friend I've met in Toronto was in town and also joined us. It was so colorful and fun! A lot of music and dancing :) I've seen Justin Trudeau and Antoni from Queer eye ( see picture ). What surprised me the most were all of the religions supporting the LGBTQ community, really didn't expect that, but was nice to see.
I had a great time, and at the end me and my friend decided to walk a bit with the parade to show support. It was a great day!

So after that weekend I was so tired :)
I enjoyed myself so much and ready for some more adventures.
Love,
Sarah

Toronto

Hi,
Just got back from a few days in Toronto :)
Let me tell you all about it.

To get there I travelled with a site called amigo express, a carpool site. Never done that before, it's not really something we have back home. But everything went great, did some stops along the way.
It was a 6 hours drive till there and it went like you would expect, hahaha.
I got at my hostel, who was great btw, around 17:30h. So I checked in, got the tour and got into my room. A bit further in the street I found a vegan restaurant and had some diner.
I went to bet pretty early goes the next day I had to wake up at 6am to get my bus to the Niagara falls.

So the second day I woke up real early and walked to the bus terminal, for the first time on a greyhound bus :) They split us up in 2 groups, the ones going to the  falls and the ones going to NY.
Came out a bunch of us going to the falls needed to wait on a other bus cause the first one got full.
But at the end got there pretty much on time. Still had to walk about 30 minutes to get to the actual falls, but it was a walk next the river so not that bad.
I just have one word for the Niagara falls, AMAZING!
Mother nature did great there, I mean it's just wow.
I went on the Hornblower, the boat who gets real close and personal with the falls :)
We got some red rain ponchos and on the side of the US they got blue ones.
I knew we were going to get wet, but I didn't expect to get an actual shower :) That was so crazy, I mean my hood came of just of the power of that water coming down. I was soaked!!
Had a bit of a panic cause some water got in my camera and my memory card did a bit weird, but it got fixed by drying the next day.
In the afternoon I did the Behind the falls walk. Again you get a rain poncho, this time a yellow one.
You get down 38m with an elevator, then you are in the caves behind the falls.
In one tunnel you really got a good view from behind, you just see water coming down. And you hear the power of the falls. You also get to two platforms right next to where the water falls down. On the top platform you get wet, but on the lower one you get soaked :) Afternoon shower anyone?
It's just great to see it from that close.
I also went on top to see the river coming closer to then fall down.
I just had the best day over there, nature is amazing.

On my last full day I visited Toronto itself. Didn't got lucky with the weather in the morning, cause it was pouring down. But the hostel got some umbrella's for people to borrow. I went do Graffiti Alley first and took some nice pictures there :) Then I went to the city hall to take pictures of the big Toronto letters. After that rain stopped, but my feet were soaked :( I found some other shoes at H&M, so I continued my way to the CN tower. I didn't get up but took some pictures :) For the rest I walked some more downtown and enjoyed the city. What was kinda weird for me was to find streets with houses (like regular houses) in the city. Just thought that was a bit weird, thinking of a big city. I didn't felt great cause my feet got so wet and then it got hot, so I got back to rest some in the hostel before going for diner. I went to diner with a friend I've met in the beginning of my travels in a hostel in Montreal. We had a great evening together.

The morning of my last day I walked around a bit more in the city and got some snacks for the busied back to Montreal. It was a 7 hours long busdrive, just crazy. But it was ok :)

I had a great time in Toronto :) Everyone who knows me must know that the Niagara falls was the highlight of my trip, cause I love nature. But the city was nice to visit to. I'm happy I changed my mind to stay in Toronto for a few months, cause I wouldn't have liked living there. Thats just me, cause I'm not a big city kind of girl. But I can imagine people loving to live there :)
I hope you liked my adventures so far.

Love,
Sarah

Toronto by night 

Behind the falls

 

English pie recipe

Hi,
While starting watching The great british bake of I've been tempted to make some english pie myself, but then totally vegan :)
Here you have my recipe :) For 2 ;)

For the pie :
- Flour 200gr
- Butter (vegan) 100gr
- Ice cold water
- Pinch of salt

For the stuffing :
- Mushrooms
- Spinach

- Soy milk
- Salt
- Pepper
- Butter
- Flour

I started to make the stuffing first cause everything needs to be cold before putting the pie together to have a good bake.
First wash and cook your spinach, then do the same with your mushrooms.
I make my saus to bind everything like this: put some butter in a pan then ad a spoon of flour to it and some salt and pepper. Now put the stove on under your pot and whisk all this together, when it all start to stick together you put some soy milk to the mix but keep whisking. Put soy milk and whisk till it look like a good texture. Now put your vegetables in the saus, make sure to get most of the water out of your spinach. Mix this all together and if necessary put some more salt and pepper.
Now you can put this aside to cool down.

For the pie put the flour in a bowl and ad the butter to it. Wash your hands cause you're going in :)
Rub the butter into the flour gently if it's all mixing together you can start by adding 4 spoons of the ice-cold water in. Keep doing that till you have a good texture. Roll the dough in a ball and put it in the bowl with a plastic foil over it and put it for 30 min or longer in the fridge to cool.

Now get some flour on your counter top and roll out the dough till it's half a cm.
Make sure to butter up your cooking form you're going to put this in and put some flour in it to, so it doesn't stick after.
Now put in your stuffing.
Then roll out the rest of your dough to use as the top.
Put it over to close your pie but cut a whole in the middle of it to let the air out.
Now brush on some water over the top to make a nice crust.

Put it in the oven for 40min on 180°C. Till it's golden brown.

Watch out it will be hot when you get it out so let it cool for a few minutes before eating it :)
Enjoy your pie :)
( Of course you can fill your pie with everything you want, if your not vegan you can of course put some cheese in it, and if you eat meat go ahead and enjoy )

Love,
Sarah

Getting used to Montreal

Hi,

I know it's been a while.
I've settled in into my room and shared housing and my roommates are great :)
Been looking for a job since I've arrived here but still no luck, had some interviews but nothing more.
Is it because they know that I'm here with a working holiday so not planning to stay long? Not that I tell them that :)
So now I've decided that instead of stressing around about not finding a job I just need to enjoy my time here and work out my next steps on this journey.
Planning now to go do some national parks with my roommate probably, so that should be fun :)
Also looking to maybe go a few days to Ottawa to visit and of course i have to go visit Toronto and the Niagara falls  while I'm still on this side of Canada.
So with all this on the planning for next month I should have enough to post also :)
What I love about the place where I stay now is that even if it still is in the city it's not downtown so really chill. I even made a friend who comes almost each day :) haha it's a squirrel and he's just so cute (if you know me you know I love animals)
My room has a view on the little garden so I have a good look at it :)
I've been to the Firework festival here in Montreal last saturday because it was a Game of Thrones theme, but did not see any dragons :) but it was nice fireworks.
Also this saturday I go to the just for laughs festival, which is all about comedy. So on demand of my sister I'm going to see the Tiffany Hadish gala :) my sister is such a big fan and I thing she was so funny in Girls trip, so looking forward to that :)
For the rest I try to enjoy myself the best I can, sometimes it's weird to do things by myself, but I'm getting there :)

Love,
Sarah

My work away with the huskies

Hi,
I know I'm a bit late with my post, but my charger for my laptop died so needed to buy a new one.
Already back in Montreal looking for a job for the summer, just got in my room for the next 2 months.

I arrived at Plessisville on the 16th of june in the evening, I got a ride till the place I would stay, called Randonee Mickla. In the winter they have a dog sledding company and I was there now to help take care of the 100 huskies :) By arrival I already got to see them all and meet some from up close.
There were 4 other people staying there to help out, a couple from Mexico who were very nice and 2 french guys who were not social at all. But I was tired so got to bed to be fresh in the morning.
The job was to go feed the chickens and bunnies and check for eggs with the chickens.
For the dogs we had to give them water twice a day, once in the morning and once around 5PM.
The guy who was in charge came every morning with the meat for the dogs, which were frozen chickens cut in half. So we put the meat in the back of the quad and went to feed the dogs.
All the dogs were very nice, but one dog always barked at me even if I came close to let him smell me he didn't liked me... I can't please everyone :)
The big group of dogs stayed at 2min walk from our place, each dog was chained to a pole and had their own little house. They didn't got a lot of place to move but I guess it was enough... We could walk the dogs but you had to be sure you could handle them and we had to ask a guy which we could walk, but the guy wasn't there a lot.
There were also a few dogs staying closer to us, that were the younger once (who still have to learn how it all works) and the once people left there behind.
While I was there a guy came to leave behind his 4 year old siberian husky and it was so sad. But then a few days later he comes back to see him and asks the guy in charge if gets walks, cause he's used to walk 5km a day. The guy says no because even the other dogs don't get that kind of walk.
And a few days later he came back to walk his dog and then leaves again. How confusing for this dog!! Didn't liked that :(
My best friend on this stay was Charlie, the little puppy. He was so cute and we got really attached to each other. The day i left he was following me so I had to go and put him inside so he wouldn't get on the busy road. His mom Louve was also so loving, it was sad to leave them :(
There was also one dog who wasn't a husky and the only one who could be inside and also slept inside, Boulette is 13 years old and was so nice :) our little guard dog.
I had a great time here with all those dogs!!

Love,
Sarah

My first work away experience

Hi,
So the past 2 weeks I've spent on the beautiful Ile d'Orleans.
Here I stayed in motel île d'Orleans and worked as a volunteer.
The concept work away is so you can travel cheap and on the place you stay you work max 5 hours a day and in return you get your stay and food. I've learned of this from a girl in my hostel in Montreal.

Here at the motel I was helping out with cleaning the rooms and preparing them for the new guest.
It was nice that you always got a thank you for your work after each day, even if it's part of the deal.
The two hosts Stephanie and Francois are very nice people and take really good care of you.
Just across the bridge you have the beautiful Montmorency falls and on my first day Francois took me there, because he was going for a run there with Elise the other girl who was there to volunteer.
Me and Elise stayed at the motel in a room with a kitchen and bathroom, just the perfect size for 2.
We got along great and on our days off or after work we explored the island together.
The first week Stephanie invited us to go to the movies with her and we had a great girls time :)
Also my first movie experience in Canada :)
Once a week we went to the supermarket with Stephanie and we could choose our groceries for a week, which was nice.
We could also borrow a bike if we wanted to explore the island, but I'm more of a walker than a biker.
One day of I did a 16km walk and saw some beautiful nature and the richer side of the island, you won't believe the houses I saw and the view they have. If only I had the money ;)
On the island you have all these little businesses who make their own products, like I went to the chocolatier and the nougatier. But my favorite was Monna & filles where they made everything with cassis. Everything was so good there :)

Also in 15min you're in Quebec city, so one day after work me and Elise went to visit. Or should I say she was my tour guide, cause she already knew the city. Of course the day we went the G7 was going on. We saw a manifestation, but it was pretty calm.
The city is small and cute, especially the old town. Loved visiting it :)

I just had a great time here and now it's time to move on to my new adventure.
Thank you Stephanie and Francois for the great experience :)

Love,
Sarah

Ile d'Orleans

Hi,
This week I went on a adventure on the beautiful Ile d'Orleans near Quebec City.
Why I'm here you will learn in another blog :)
So Ive been up to some amazing things on this little island.

A must see is actually just of the island, but worth the trip.
The Montmorency falls, who I"ve heard are 30m higher than the Niagara falls but of course not as wide. There is a bridge hanging over the falls and thats where I was. I'm really afraid of heights so this was a big deal for me, all by myself. But I did it and proud that i did :)
The view on the side of the falls was beautiful and breath taking. The view on the other side I didn't liked so much, but thats because you really felt/saw how high you were. It was nice but I was to scared to fully enjoy it. I went down on a lookout post to enjoy feeling and hearing to power of the waterfall. I just love nature so much and there you just felt the power of it.

The other day I decided to go to a tasting and because I love fruit I went to try out some cassis.
I went to Cassis Monna et filles and had an amazing time.
I did a little walk till there cause the weather was just so nice.
You had a little restaurant, an ice cream bar and the shop. Also you had a barn to learn more about what they do there and a little workshop area.
First I went to have the tasting, for only 2,50$ you could taste 3 wines and 1 liquor. They all tasted so good, I even liked it more than regular wine :)
You could also taste for free all of their other products, like ketchup, mustard (yes also made with cassis), but also confiture and compote. It was all just so good.
After all the tasting I went to the ice cream bar and had some cassis ice cream, who was so good and refreshing on a hot day like this. Just ate it on their beanie bag with an amazing view.

On my way to the tasting I've found a little hidden way, so I decided to go and explore it.
It was a way down, I think if I would've continue following it I would end by the water. But I just did a little walk into the little forest.

I had an amazing time on the island and would recommend it to people who are near to Quebec city. It's only a 20min drive and worth your time.

Love,
Sarah