The last day in Canada

We woke up pretty late today because of the concert yesterday. What an experience!? Celine has an amazing and very powerful voice. I have heard her songs on the radio, in stores, at home –everywhere! But it is so much better live, you feel like she is singing to you. The only thing that was poor was all the people that made it very crowded. All in all, the concert was very good! J

But as I said we woke up late today, way too late, because the breakfast was closed. So we had to go out for food. We found a cozy café, called Brit and Chips in 433 McGill Street. The English brunch was tasty, and definitely worth the money!

After being in an English speaking part of Canada for so many days, it’s so weird hearing people talking French wherever we go. The reason why most of people in Canada are speaking English is: Because there were four waves of immigrants over a period of time of almost 200 years. The first immigrants came from the USA during the American Revolution, because they didn’t want to stay in the States. The Americans did bring their type of English to Canada. And later on when the second wave of immigrants came from England and Ireland, they also brought their type of English. Both of these languages have affected and helped form the Canadian English. That’s the reason of why they do speak English I Canada. The reason of why Quebec is French-speaking is because it was colonized many hundred years ago.

So after the late breakfast we packed our things and checked out of the hotel, because we were going to Lotte’s aunt in Ottawa. Ottawa is two hours away from Montreal. We went by train this time. It was quite expensive, 176 $ for all four, almost 1000 Norwegian kroner! But it was really interesting, we could see a lot of the Canadian nature- it’s so beautiful! 

The rain was pouring down when we reached Ottawa. We were all excited to meet Lisa who is Lotte’s aunt. Lotte has told us so much about her, mostly positive… So when we finally arrived, Lotte couldn’t wait for the doors to open. And when they finally did, Lotte ran out of the train and into her aunt’s arms. They were hugging for a long time- they had obviously missed each other! After the happy reunion between Lotte and Lisa, we all ran towards the car, trying to not get wet.

Lisa’s house was much bigger than the others in the neighborhood. And Lisa told us that Canadians usually are only three people per family. They have increased from 3.7 persons per family in 1971 into 3.0 persons now in 2012. So they want to use their money on other things than a big house. But although some of the houses were small it looked like they had a high standard. And Lisa could tell us that Canada is the country with the highest standards in the world. This is because most of the population in Canada has jobs, and few are unemployed.

When Lisa opened the door a wonderful smell met us. She had baked a Nanaimo bar, which is a Canadian specialty. It was a kind of cookie with some white foam which tasted mint. And it was topped with chocolate. It was actually good, but also very sweet!

The rest of the evening we were only talking with Lisa. And we took a break from all the tourist things. All of us had to relax before the long flight tomorrow. It will be around 37 hours in the air tomorrow (and the day after that…)

Synne S.