*This article shall not discriminate against any group of people based on origin, gender, religion or anyything else, as I embrace all of our cultural differences. It shall only describe cultural differences without any judgement. *
In an effort to visit as many places as possible while we are in Canada, we booked a 3-day bus trip visiting four different cities along the St. Lawrence River, the third biggest river in North America. We, that was a group of six other international students and me.
We booked the trip via tours4fun.com. The provider was NGH Tours (New Golden Horse), the company provides travel services in North America and China for more than 18 years. In the description it said, that the “tour is escorted by a professional bilingual tour guide (English/ Chinese) and languages may be combined to operate the tour”. In fact, the tour was mainly Chinese with brief translations into English with a very strong Chinese accent. We had to concentrate a lot to notice the moment in which our tour guide Winter switched from Chinese to English - haha. Moreover, he always began and ended in Chinese with a short English explanation in between. It made sense, as there were mainly Chinese attendants apart from us, but it would have been nice to know it in advance. Nevertheless, it was a very funny experience to travel in such a big group I usually avoid. Without wanting to discriminate against anyone, I have to admit, that you could really tell the cultural differences between European and Chinese people. Here are some examples:
Although we were always on time for going back onto the bus, we were always one of the last as the Chinese seem to have another understanding of being punctual.
40 minutes for visiting a big museum in Ottawa or Montréal was a very short time, so that we tried to use it down to the wire. All our Chinese group members were already sitting in the bus by the time we got back.
On top of the towers or in the museums, we started together as a group, but quickly lost the others as they went through the attractions with a much higher pace than we did.
Our tour guide emphasized the spots, where we could “take nice pictures” a lot.
Apart from one evening, we ate in Chinese all-you-can-eat restaurants only.
On Friday, November, 4th, I took the Greyhound bus to Toronto. You should have in mind, that on a Friday afternoon, it takes much longer to go there than scheduled (2,5 hours instead of 1,5 hours). We stayed at the “College Inn Backpacker Hostel” in Kensington Market in downtown Toronto close to the pickup location in China Town the next morning. The hostel was ok. The pillows could have been a bit cleaner, the rooms a bit bigger, but the location was great.
Day 1:
At 6:40 am Saturday morning, we went to the “Dragon City Mall” in China Town, where the tour bus picked us up.
After a 3-hours bus ride, we arrived at our first stop, Kingston, also called Limestone City due to the historical buildings made of limestone. The city reminded me of Guelph as it has a similar size with a bit more than 120.000 residents and two universities - Queen’s University and the Royal Military College of Canada.
The next stop two hours later was Ottawa, Canada’s capital city, still located in the province of Ontario. Although Ottawa is the capital, it is only the sixth biggest city in Canada behind Toronto (Ontario), Montréal (Québec), Vancouver (British Columbia), Calgary (Alberta) and Edmonton (Alberta). First, we went to the Parliament Hill where the Canadian government is located. The parliament consists of three buildings: In the Center Block you can find the House of Commons and the Senate, in the West and East Block there are parliamentarian offices. In front of the buildings you will see a flame, which is always burning. It is the Centennial Flame first lit in 1966 by Canadian Prime Minister Lester Pearson for Canada’s 100th anniversary as a confederation. After that we headed to the Natural History/ Civilization Museum. I am sure you can spend there several hours, but due to our tight program, we only visited the exhibitions about Aboriginal people, the Gold Rush and Napoléon Bonaparte (I do not know how he is related to Canada…).
Day 2:
After a night in a nice hotel in Montréal, we visited two churches: 1. St. Joseph’s Oratory, a Roman Catholic church and Canada’s largest one, located on a hill. 2. Notre Dame of Montréal, which interior was one of the most impressive I have seen so far. It has a deep blue coloured ceiling with golden stars and the rest of the church is colourful with different kinds of blues, azures, reds, purples, gold and silver. The main entrance was closed, but we succeeded in sneaking into it unintentionally via the entrance to the cathedral. It was a special moment admiring the church’s beauty while listening to brilliant organ playing. The next stop was the Montréal Tower in Olympic Park, the world’s tallest inclined tower at 175 metres which offers a nice view across the city. Also located in Olympic Park is the Biodome facility where you can walk through four ecosystems found in the Americas.
In the afternoon, we went on to Québec City, Québec’s capital. Québec City as well as Montréal look different from cities in Ontario. You can see the French influence: streets are narrower, cars are smaller, buildings look older and there are nice small French cafés and bakeries everywhere. Québec City has a very nice waterside promenade at St. Lawrence River where we watched the sunset. The five star hotel “Hotel Jardin du Gouverneur” is one of the most famous spots in Québec City located at the waterside. When you go downstairs, you will find yourself in Old Québec with many old, pretty buildings, gift shops and so on. That night, we had dinner in a très chique restaurant francais, where we ate the best food we had in months (I had delicious salmon). From the top of “L’Observatoire de la Capitale” (Québec Tower), we had a nice view across the city.
Day 3:
After 3 months of sleeping on a hard mattress in a small residence bed, you appreciate nice hotel beds a lot! Such a comfy sleep! Unfortunately we had to get up at 5:45 am to start our way back to Toronto.
We were looking forward to visit the “Thousand Islands” in the afternoon, but we were going to be disappointed. The “Thousand Islands” are a group of 1,864 islands along the Canada-US border in St. Lawrence River. 21 islands build a National Park, the smallest one in Canada. We could book a helicopter flight across the islands for additional 160 $/ person, which was too expensive for us. Instead, we wanted to walked along the river and having a look on the islands this way. Unfortunately, the bus stopped at the helicopter airport only, not bringing us to another spot at the river, so that we had to wait for 1,5 hours while part of the group took a helicopter flight over the islands.
Thanks to Nicole, Mirjam, Ida, Luca, Judith and Florian for an eventful and funny weekend!