Burlington

I'm now out of the French-speaking part of Canada, and am currently staying at Burlington, Ontario, which is just south of Toronto. Haven't really done a whole lot here so far, but I'm sure there'll be things to do soon enough.

Infected Mushroom

There was some kind of drum festival at Mont Royal, so Shelley and I checked it out in the afternoon. Unfortunately, the weather decided to be uncooperative, and rain was falling on us intermittently on our way to the mountain that is Montréal's namesake. We got there and didn't have to look too far to hear the sound of many drums beating away. We found a congregation of people either drumming, dancing, or enjoying the spectacle. We didn't stay too long as we feared the weather would start to hassle us again. For the same reason, we didn't stick around at the Jazz Festival, where we watched a short snippet of a couple of acts.

After dinner, it was time for one final deeply intellectual conversation with some of the fellow guests (oddly enough, ending with the mention of Snakes on a Plane), as well as one final jam session, before a few of us headed over to watch Infected Mushroom play a gig downtown. The show was great, but the timing sucked. Doors opened at 10, but Infected Mushroom didn't get on stage until about 1, finishing at around 3 (with no encore). This meant that we'd get less sleep than we would have liked before heading over to Burlington the next day.

Montréal overview

Days spent: 8
Bedbug outbreaks: 1
Money spent: More than anticipated
Theme song/s: Infusion - What Lies Ahead

Odd traffic patterns

It wasn't too bad getting out of Montréal late in the morning of the day after Canada Day, but after being a couple of hours into Ontario, we encountered a bit of congestion. The first sign of the business was actually inside a Wendy's at a highway rest stop, where the queue to get food cascaded back like a line in Disneyland. It was a similar sight in the next rest stop where we stopped (since the Wendy's line was far too long for us to bother), except that this time it was for Tim Horton's and the female washrooms.

After escaping the human queues, we progressed a bit before running into more queues, of the vehicular kind. What struck me as quite odd about these traffic tailbacks were that they didn't seem to accompany any particular roadwork or accident on the road. I guess it was just congestion due to the sheer volume of cars heading in the same direction. The jams eventually relaxed as the number of lanes increased, and traffic was flowing smoothly once we reached Toronto. We eventually made it back to Shelley's place at around 7:30 in the evening.

Sadly, I haven't uploaded any new photos, since I can only get a faint wireless connection at the moment.