I summed up what I know of my plan previously, and I think that’s still accurate so far. From here I’m off for a night in Vancouver, then over to Victoria for the rest of February. I can hardly wait! I’m also going to make a point of getting down to good old Seattle while I’m in the area. The big unknown is what group I’ll be able to sign up with in order to volunteer in Haiti. I guess we’ll see how it all plays out.

As usual this week’s summary is a compilation of good articles from around the web, plus whatever other random crap I have on hand.

If you’re not a fan of touristy crowds, then you’ll be as excited about this list as I was. Ten really cool places around the world that are off the tourist map. I’ll probably be in the Caribbean anyways, so I’ll be looking for a chance to check out La Désirade. Have you been anywhere on this list? Or where on the list looks enticing to you? Ooh, or do you know a secret spot that isn’t on the list?!

This week was the first of a new series over at Monkey Brewster, New Brew Tuesday. This week’s beer was Marke Altenmünster Maibock and I’m looking forward to seeing which beers come around in the future.

To be brutally honest, your best chance at true happiness in life is a magic amulet. Studies have shown that magic amulets are awesome for improving your life in all sorts of unreasonable ways. Real studies. With that in mind, head on over to Johnny Vagabond where you can easily win your choice of a magic amulet from Thailand. Personally, I’m going to win the “Marry Liz Lemon” amulet. See if I don’t.

This week I found two more cool travel blogs. I recommend Pamela (Spunky Girl Monologues) and Chérie (The Travel bee) if you’re in the market for some more travel blog goodness.

Speaking of travel blogs, if you have one of your own, or you’re looking to start one, then you’ll want to consider the new Travel Blog Success site that launches this Monday, Feb 1st. It’s definitely worth taking a look at if you’re serious about travel blogging. I’ll also have my review and thoughts on Travel Blog Success coming up here on Monday.

Congratulations to Chris for taking a big step in his dream to get the hell out of Australia. And also congratulations to Cailin for taking a big step in her dream to get the hell into Australia. Anyone else up for a “grass is always greener..” cliche right about now?

To wrap up this weeks wrap up, here’s my weak attempt to get a photo of the huge, fluffy snowflakes we had here earlier this week. Apparently snowflake photography is very hard. It really made my day to have one more nice snowfall before leaving. If you’re super bored, you can click through on the picture to view my whole Montréal album. As usual for me, I didn’t personally take a lot of these.

Keep on truckin’!

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// shawn

Thanks for subscribing to my RSS feed, I appreciate it! Please be sure to stop by the site sometimes and leave a comment so I know you're still alive. I worry about you. Are you eating okay? Ok, see ya! -- Week Sauce: Adios Montréal is a post from: Rerunaround

Comparatively speaking, “Hello” and “Thanks” just don’t cut it. Hello sounds like a kids cartoon character and thanks sounds like an itchy sore.

“Um.. are you okay there, Janet? You’re sure itching a lot.”

“Oh dude, I know. I have the worst case of thanks on my bum. It’s driving me mad! The itching totally distracted me while I was trying to watch the new episode of Hello & Tinkles Go To PooPoo Town.”

See what I mean? As I wrap up my last few days in Montreal I know I’m really going to be sad to go from bonjour and merci to hello and thanks.

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// shawn

Thanks for subscribing to my RSS feed, I appreciate it! Please be sure to stop by the site sometimes and leave a comment so I know you're still alive. I worry about you. Are you eating okay? Ok, see ya! -- Bonjour, et Merci is a post from: Rerunaround

Nicaragua is quite possibly where I’ve had the most fun backpacking. I hate to generalize like that, but if I had to pick one place to call the “best so far”, it’s probably there. I definitely recommend it, and I also recommend reading Art of Backpacking’s Tips on Backpacking in Nicaragua. It’s a beautiful country with super nice people and heaps to do. Plus it’s much cheaper and less touristy (almost like they go hand in hand) than neighbouring Costa Rica. The picture above is the tastiest coffee I’ve ever had, which was in Ometepe, Nicaragua. Now that I look at it, I admit the picture doesn’t relay much about the tastiness of the coffee, but that’s really your problem.

So apparently bed bugs aren’t just some cutesy thing that parents made up. It turns out they’re actually fairly gross and prolific. This last year I’ve seen a few articles on them, but this post by T-Roy on GoBackpacking really sums up everything you need to know. I’d consider this article required reading for every traveler.

If you’re interested in seeing some travel shows about places you will never ever go, then check out this article that Lauren did on the VICE travel guides. I’m on episode 4 of the Liberia series and it is really great. The horrible, crazy, shocking and amazing type of great.

Also this week, Matt finally learned to scuba dive (and was nearly murdered by a Portuguese woman), Jeannie finally came up with a travel route, and Steph posted up a sweet compilation of her Montenegro pictures.

On a congratulatory theme; Happy 3rd anniversary GoBackpacking! Way to go on quitting that job, Diana! And welcome to the travel blogging scene, Ayngelina!

I wanted to test out this video feature that my camera has, plus capture the view I’ve been enjoying from this apartment. This what downtown Montreal looks like from a 17th floor perspective. My apartment is small, and the windows are large, so this is what I see from everywhere in the apartment except from the toilet and under the sink. It’s a bit shaky and weird, but hey it’s my first time. It’s also -12°C plus wind chill, so you’re welcome to stand out there and try to do better if you like.

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// shawn

Thanks for subscribing to my RSS feed, I appreciate it! Please be sure to stop by the site sometimes and leave a comment so I know you're still alive. I worry about you. Are you eating okay? Ok, see ya! -- Week Sauce: Now In HD! is a post from: Rerunaround

This week in the Sauce™ I’d like to share a few sweet new travel blogs that I found. Plus great articles from some familiar favourites, some good phonetography shots, and I’ll sum up my new travel plans.

For whatever reason, this week brought some awesome new travel blogs to my attention. By, “new” I mean, “new to me” not necessarily newly created. With 4 out of 5 of these being written by women I wonder if there’s any data showing which gender is prevalent in travel blogging. Anyways, check these puppies out!

• The Adventures of D
• The Aussie Nomad
• Heels and Wheels (oh yea, Vote For Bobbi!)
• The Jungle Princess
• Jasmine Wanders

There’s a succinct piece up on Monkey Brewster about why us independent travel bloggers do what we do, and why many of us dig the, “I got friends in low places” approach. Speaking of travel blogging, I’ll be attending TBEX 2010 in NYC after all. Holler at me if you’ll be there also!

Yet again Forks and Jets have inspired me. This time their great post on The B’s Knees pegged Barcelona strongly on my todo list. Also in the inspiration department there is a fantastic lowdown on New Zealand over on The Road Forks — required reading if you ever intend to visit the big NZ.

Okay, so my new travel plans. I was going to head to Japan on Feb 3rd and then meander throughout Asia from there. Nice plan, and I think I will pick it up again around July-ish. In the past couple weeks a few things have pulled me another direction though. A lot of inspiration from certain writers to visit Cuba this year (which I’ve mentioned in previous posts), plus the Haiti earthquakes brought an issue I have to the forefront. I used to be proud that I had an Occupational First Aid 3 certification. It was a practical skill that was genuinely useful in all manner of situations. However, after years in my corporate carpet box, I no longer have that certification. So when looking into volunteering in Haiti it was really discouraging that my only useful skills were being hella good at video games and having a penchant for project management. I want to volunteer to do some rebuilding in Haiti, but first I am going to get my first aid certifications again. In order to do that I’m trading some home renovation skills for a place to sleep in Victoria, BC for the month of February. That gives me the time and place to get re-certified. From there I’ll try and get setup with a volunteer scheme in Haiti. Then I’ll also be regionally situated to check out Cuba. Perhaps throw some Dominican Republic and Puerto Rico into the mix. I’ll head north when it starts to get really hot in June, attend TBEX in New York, then perhaps pick up the Japan plan. I dig my new plan, but we’ll see how it unfolds. The only guaranteed part is that with no commitments I’m as prone to changing my mind as a Bangkok whore on an aircraft carrier.

Enough yapping, here’s some of the pictures I took with my phone while minding my own business around Montreal this week.

I must say that I admire the Montreal bike commuters who keep at it throughout the winter. Drivers here are not exactly bike friendly, then add to that the slippery sides of the road and the cold and you have one seriously dedicated cyclist.

My phone does an especially craptacular job of catching snowflakes. They were everywhere and as huge as corn flakes, but it’s not like you could tell from this photo. The size of the snowflakes is perhaps my favourite thing about Montreal.

Montreal has a seemingly large population of creepy fur guys. Or at least I have a very keen eye for spotting them. This guy is a perfect example, so I had to take a pic. He’s walking at about quarter normal walking speed, high out of his mind, with the proverbial fur guy leather pants, and he has no clue where he is going. The only thing unusual about this one is that he isn’t chain smoking like a bingo caller on welfare Wednesday. I won’t rant on here about wearing fur. However, the other day while riding in a taxi from the Montreal airport, I saw this huge, obnoxious billboard that said, “Fur, the most environmental choice!” What the hell?

These are the stairs at my local bank. So you take stairs halfway up then take escalators the other halfway up. There’s no “all stairs” or “all escalators” option. So while this is strange in itself, the whole fiasco also blocks the main thoroughfare of the building. Most people need to walk over or around this mess to get where they need to go. I’d definitely fire the traffic flow wizard who came up with that one.

Anyways, have a good day! Holler at me if you have something cool I should look at for next week’s round up. Thanks!

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// shawn

Thanks for subscribing to my RSS feed, I appreciate it! Please be sure to stop by the site sometimes and leave a comment so I know you're still alive. I worry about you. Are you eating okay? Ok, see ya! -- Week Sauce: New Is The New Old is a post from: Rerunaround

Some of these would be true in general for most folks, and others are very specific to my preferences. Here is just one man’s opinion of living in Montreal for one year.

Likes:

Restaurants: There are heaps of good restaurants of all type. I’m not starving here.

Architecture: Old Montreal gets all the credit for cool architecture, but regular parts of the city have plenty of cool buildings also. It’s visually an interesting city to drive around. Or in my case, ride in the back of a taxi around.

Identity: Montrealers seem to generally take pride in their city and their identity.

Language: French is a wonderful language. It’s been great being surrounded by it. Even if I did an abysmal job learning any of it.

Scooters vs SUVs: Previously living in the USA I was sick of seeing giant SUVs used to transport one person and a chihuahua to the mall. Not only are there far fewer SUVs here, but there are tons of scooters. How rad is that? I live and work downtown, so maybe the scooter population is more here, but it’s still cool.

Snowflakes: So far, Montreal has the record for the largest snowflakes I have ever seen. Not every time obviously, but once in a while the snows here are beautiful. I just wish it would snow more often.

Hockey: Anyone who loves hockey is in some small way a Habs fan. The Montreal Canadiens have won 24 Stanley Cups over their 100 year franchise history. Any hockey fan can’t help but respect that. So for me it’s been a lot of fun being around the Canadiens fanaticism.

Clean: Comparatively speaking, for a big city Montreal is rather clean. More so downtown than the other areas it seems.

Safe: Downtown Montreal feels really safe. I’ve never had any fear or uncertainty while walking around. Which is pretty good for a large city.

People: I was hesitant to add this one to the list because I’ve found that there are nice people to be found anywhere in the world. Montreal is certainly no exception and I have come across plenty of really nice folks here.

Don’t Likes:

Styrofoam: Coming from the west coast I was shocked when my lunch was handed to me in a styrofoam box. I felt like some unfortunate time traveller to the past. I half expected my fork to be made of ivory and the ketchup to come in a disposable aerosol can. Montreal is not a very environmental city.

Smoking: I didn’t think anyone other than characters on TV still smoked. Holy crap do a lot of people in Montreal smoke. It’s disgusting, and right up there with huffing paint out of a paper bag in the good idea department.

Door holders: I noticed it right away when I got here, and have mentally noted how often it occurs all year. Almost every time, the person in front of you will let a door close in your face rather than hold it open a few seconds. I’ve never seen it in any big city as often as I have here. It’s actually the rare exception when someone does hold the door for the person behind them. I also regularly see people turn sideways and duck their shoulder so as to avoid the door and slip through in the last few seconds. I always hold the door, and people often look surprised. Sad.

Pumpkin pies: These are my favourite, and I have yet to see one for sale in the city. What the hell?

Remembrance Day/Canada Day: These holidays are very important to me, but they are totally slagged off in Quebec. It is unacceptable that the national day of remembrance for those who give their life for our country is not a holiday. How incredibly disrespectful can you get? I also have no patience for childish sovereignty agendas – get over yourself.

Leases: The apartment leasing process in Montreal is ridiculous. My one year lease (jan-dec) was silently renewed for an additional year because I didn’t notify the property manager in August stating that I didn’t want to renew. August!

Provincial Government Offices: Wow is it painful to get anything provincial done here. For example, I phoned the Société de l’assurance automobile du Québec to make an appointment for my drivers license. Couldn’t make the appointment online. And the soonest available appointment was 6 weeks away. Then at my 10am appointment I waited an hour to talk to someone (I guess appointment doesn’t mean what they think it means). After all that it turns out that a lease and rental payment receipts are not proof of residency – how silly of me.

Well, that’s my list. I hope it didn’t come off as too negative, because I have really enjoyed my year here. It’s a cool city, but not one I would call home for longer than a year or so. Now I need to figure out how to get the opportunity to live in Tokyo or London.

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// shawn

ps: The photo is a tiny segment of a beautiful Montreal cityscape at Digital Apoptosis, please check out the full image, it’s wicked! Plus I can see my balcony in there.

Thanks for subscribing to my RSS feed, I appreciate it! Please be sure to stop by the site sometimes and leave a comment so I know you're still alive. I worry about you. Are you eating okay? Ok, see ya! -- Après un An à Montréal is a post from: Rerunaround