Day 1: Dorval (Montréal)

Spent the afternoon in non-places: airport – airport hotel room – airport hotel gym & pool – various expanses of concrete, underpasses and overpasses in the vicinity of the airport – suburban train station - strip mall.

Nice hotel. Room with fantastic views of planes taking off and landing, small gym and pool. After getting some exercise and taking a swim to get my circulation going again after a 9-hour flight I decided to suss out the route to the train station so I would know which way to head tomorrow morning. Luckily, because though the station is very close (700 metres, according to Google Maps), and there are sidewalks on the roads between here and there (I had checked this out with Street View before booking the hotel), there are some major construction works going on between the hotel and the station, and it took me some time to figure out how to get around them and over to the appropriate side of the train tracks!

I arrived at the Dorval Via Rail station just in time to see this beauty pull out. 

Hope my train tomorrow is just as snazzy!

While sussing out the route I spotted a Bay in the distance, so I went over to see if there was anything to eat at the mall (my hotel doesn’t have a restaurant, only a refrigerated counter with a few overpriced snacks). After taking a pedestrian underpass below a highway and crossing a parking lot about as wide as the Gobi desert, I came to an IGA. As soon as I got through the door I started feeling a little dizzy, finding myself surrounded by all those long-lost Canadian groceries – plus beer and wine aisles! In this province you can actually buy a drink to go with your meal without having to make a separate trip to the government liquor store! You cannot, however, buy a single bottle of beer: they come in cases of twelve or more. Not having quite enough extra space in my backpack for that, I settled for a veggie wrap, a few oranges, a bagel for breakfast (what else could one have for breakfast in Montréal?) and a Lindt caramel sea salt bar (they had about 20 different kinds of Lindt chocolate bars on special – Lindt chocolate bars always seem to be on special in Canada! But only because they’re so horribly overpriced that nobody would buy them if they weren’t).

Well I seem to have managed to stay awake until it's dark, in spite of the fact that it's now three am where I came from this morning. Now I'd better see if I can succeed equally well in going to sleep and staying asleep until it gets light again!