Canada

Montreal

Montreal

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It is Canada’s second-largest city, but feels European. The most widely spoken language here is French. Narrow streets meander through some beautiful marvels of…

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Saskatchewan – Land of the Living Skies

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Canada being where it is on the earth is a cold country. Snow and ice just becomes part of your surroundings when you live here. Here, Mother Nature showcases her pure beauty in the form of vast expanses of lands and skies. The clouds and sun compete to paint the skies with lovely colours every day. You can drive out of town for ten minutes and find yourself on a lonely country road amongst land covered with nothing but snow. This is the land of the living skies, as Saskatchewan is fondly called here. Saskatchewan is a fast-growing province of Canada which is strong in farming, the energy sector (natural gas and oil), potash, diamond and uranium mining.

Having been brought up in a city like Delhi all my life, little was I aware of the stunning beauty of nature. Every day after I landed in Canada came with a lot of surprises. I caught the tail end of the winter of the province when I landed in March. Saskatchewan has a long and cruel winter from mid-September to mid-April. I saw knee-deep snow heaped up on my in-laws front and back lawns. The branches of the bare trees were caked with frost and snow. I also saw my first snowfall a couple of days later, the sugar-like flakes slowly getting dusted on roof tops, tree tops and just about everywhere. The frost would be adamantly stuck on our car windows. We would have to scrape it off our windows every morning to be able to drive. It does make it look exactly like what we call frosted glass!! And the snow crystals do look like the way we draw it in cartoons!

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C2C – Chennai to Canada (from 30ºC to -5ºC)

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We then stood in a custom queue for Visitors. There were two lines one for Permanent Residence and another for Visitors. Custom officer checked our passport and Visa and guided us to another hall. Inside the hall, it was a long queue. When our turn came lady officer asked us to sit at the waiting area inside hall. She has started checking our documents. She took almost an hour to check our documents. We then proceeded to baggage claim area. As soon as we entered in baggage claim area, we saw  number of porters standing with trollies.4 Bags 10$, above 4 bags, each bag 3$.We came in baggage claim area and none of the conveyor was displaying our flight number. We rushed to BA counter, but there was no staff at the counter. We were unable to find any co passengers also at the airport. We were searching bags all over the baggage claim area. Near one belt conveyor we found few bags. When we went there we saw our bags. We quickly started collecting our bags. One from one corner,   second from another corner, third from some other place etc. While collecting we thought definitely the other  2 handbags which we had deposited afterwards   must be missing , but luckily we found those two bags. Now counting started 1, 2,3….One bag is missing. To our surprise the bag which had all Kitchen items specially (Rolling pin and board for Chapati) and groceries was missing. We were then searching  BA staff  so that we can inform about our missing bag. There was no BA staff at the airport. Then we saw a lady coming towards baggage area and she was BA staff. We informed her. She asked us to fill up the form about missing baggage and ensured that they will search the bag and will let us know the status within 24 hrs. We then decided to hire porter as it was not easy for us to carry 10 bags in 2 trollies.

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Casa Loma – Toronto’s own Camelot

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On the right side of Great Hall there was Billiard Room and Smoking room.In the Billard room Management of Casa Loma has arranged a small documentary about Casa Loma which is included in the ticket.It is very nice documentary and give all the tourist idea about Sir Henry Pellatt and his life’s up and downs.After watching documentary  I realized one thing “Samay kisi ka nahi hota” or you can say all that has happened in his life was “Grahon ka khel”. Richest company   turns into Bankruptcy. I was so sad after seeing the documentary. Sir Pellatt himself has to  abandoned his dream of Castle for a fraction of worth during bad time.Then we went to next room Sir Pellatt’study room

Study Room : This is another beautiful room with nice wall paneling , beautiful artistic work around fire place.This room has a mahogany panel which conceals the secret  door on either side of the fireplace that leads to staircase leading to First floor.

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Montreal City tour

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On Saturday we had started our journey.Our train departure time was 0645 from Toronto (Union station ).Business class coaches were quite good , spacious and clean . We were given warm welcome and assistance by VIA Rail friendly staff.The difference in Business class and Economy class here is only food.In Business class food is included where as in Economy class we have to buy food.As a usual routine we got our tea , biscuits and later breakfast in train.In the end they had served complimentary wine.It was a 05 hour journey and we reached Montreal at 1200 noon.As we were entering in the Montreal City we can feel just by looking at the road , houses and other infrastructure  that it is a completely different city not similar to Toronto.
When we were booking our Hotel we thought of two factors; one is cost/location i.e. distance from railway station as our return train was also early morning train.Secondly as were not able to decide on Hotels as per reviews posted in Google we decided to go for a chain and brand Hotels which are tried and tested.Thus we finally booked our room in Sheraton Hotel Montreal.Our decision of choosing a Hotel Near Central station and close to city centre helped us a lot as we have not used any public transport / Cab service in Montreal.So we walked from station to Hotel.It was a 06 minutes walk.

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Niagara Falls

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Over all Canada is peaceful.. full of chinese, desis and almost all nationalities.. How is Canada better than USA? well the rules are strict,…

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Toronto & Niagara

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We really enjoyed the colorful aquarium with so many different species of fishes, specially the sharks and the divers feeding the sharks and playing with sting rays. We came out and saw a Railway museum just opposite CNT. I have strong fascination for trains and it was free (The only free thing in Canada)… we went inside the park where different locomotives, trains and old stations were on display.

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Maid of the Mist at Niagara Falls – Explore the Roar

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Finally our turn came and we also boarded the huge ship on the upper deck. There was automated announcement and guided description of the tour in both English and French.But none of the passenger was bothered to hear the announcement. All were ready to take pictures , video as well was planning to protect camera from water spray. Then the tour started and it took us first towards American side falls and then taking U turn towards Canadian waterfall. Slowly -2 we were approaching Main falls and we had started feeling the spray of water and its intensity. After reaching very close we decided to keep our camera inside. It was an out of the world feeling. One can feel the flow , pressure of water by going so closer to it. I  was feeling as I had achieved something big .My dream of visiting Maid of the Mist finally came true.

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Toronto – Royal Ontario Museum (ROM)

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In the visitors guide we can find special mention of “ICONIC must see treasures of the ROM” of each level. Thus one can not miss the special display. We took almost 01 hour to complete level 1 itself. As usual we got tired and hungry so we went to Café at ROM.We were sure that we will not get anything vegetarian to eat and may be we have to returned with just eating French fries.

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Toronto – CN Tower and Ontario Lake

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This is all I experienced in my one month stay at Toronto. So, In a way I am kind of liking it. Let see what is store for me in future. I will share soon.

In the first week of our stay here we went for apartment hunting. We had taken subway and got down at St. Andrew station. We actually reached 1.5 hours early at the place just to get the feel of city. When we were exploring areas around St. Andrew station, we reached right in front of CN tower. I couldn’t resist myself and somehow convinced my hubby that we should see this. As it was Saturday the Reception hall was full.

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