“Justice palace”, this is how French call courthouses. The junior high/ high school I attended for 6 years from age 12 to 18 was located in the center of Nantes, stuck between the main courthouse, the police station and the jail where suspects were held by the police before their trial. The Banque de France was in a nearby street and the back of the building was facing our schoolyard.
It may only be 6:23 (!) to go from Montréal to Paris, but the total trip was closer to 24 hours.
We left Ottawa Saturday afternoon and took the Greyhound to Montréal. The bus was almost empty and we were at the airport around 7 pm. A quick lunch/dinner later, we started queuing for check-in, which took over 1:30. Another line-up for security and we boarded the plane just before midnight.
We are on our way to France and will stay in Europe until July 31 st. I haven’t spent a summer in France since 2003 — at the time, I was coming back from Australia and New-Zealand and I spent the summer studying for my university exams. It was the hottest summer ever in Europe and I spent half of my time camping at the beach with a bunch of friends. Seven years later, I don’t have that many friends left in France but Feng and I should have fun nonetheless — I remember summer in France as a nice season.
It’s not that I didn’t try to keep in touch with French culture. At first, my mind stretched itself to join the two sides of the Atlantic Ocean – it was exhausting. I listened to French talk shows but I grew frustrated because they seemed to have little relevance to my current life. I tried to translate jokes but failed miserably. I threw the odd cultural reference in that no one here got.
The Parliament is definitely the Canadian landmark I get to see the most: I work in its shadow every day. Yet, it still impresses me – I always seem to find new details and new angles.
Parliament Hill is a very busy place in spring: hordes of tourists visit the Parliament, politicians and MPs are wrapping things up for the summer and locals enjoy relaxing on the grass in front of the Center Block.
You won’t find any nutritional information on products in France. I guess it doesn’t matter that much because most people follow a commonsense diet, or at least try to: eat more veggies than Nutella, nibble on bread but go easy on the mayonnaise, enjoy some dessert but a small portion of it. But in North America, a lot of restaurants offer super-fatty dishes.
