Monthly Archives: August 2007

I Missed the Best City in the World: Montreal

Reviews and Rants, Travel

I got back from my vacation last Sunday (August 19th) and wasn’t happier to be home. I seriously missed my friends and the city of Montreal.

Small review of the trip: it was awesome. I visited Denmark, Sweden and Norway in 18 days. Not a lot of time, but any more would have killed me, as I get homesick within 2 weeks. I saw quite possibly the most beautiful places on earth… the mountains of Norway are breathtaking, no lie. Stockholm in Sweden was such a nice, clean city; I found it equivalent to Montreal but more “European” and well-maintained. Definitely a place I would consider moving to, as their living conditions are superb. All I need to do now is pick up Swedish and I’m set. 🙂

Speaking of languages, I have decided to learn German at Concordia. During the trip, I spoke with the tour guide (whom I’ll never forget) that inspired me to learn. She knows six (6) languages! How crazy is that? English, French, German, Swedish, Norwegian and Danish. Hopefully I’ll stick around Concordia for more than six weeks this semester.

My tour group was overall pretty fun to hang out with. Everyone was always in a good mood and respectful towards others. The hotels were decent, except two of them were crap. One didn’t have A/C (it is common in Scandinavian countries, as they don’t usually get continuous hot weather) and the other hotel was a bit ghetto overall (broken hair dryer, missing sink knobs, awkward room design, etc.). The food outside and inside the hotels were terrific, but extremely expensive. A can of Coke was equivalent to 10$ CDN. The Scandinavian countries’ minimum wages are much higher than North Americans I believe, hence the high prices. I got to check out some cool tech and gadgets though; the Sony Ericsson W880i phone was one of ’em. If it was quad-band, I would have bought it in a heartbeat (and quite possibly have buyer’s remorse right after, since I already have a perfectly working phone!).

One thing I found particularly cool was that a lot of people in Copenhagen use bicycles as a means of everyday travel. They have dedicated bike paths alongside cars; that’s how popular the transportation is. Of course, you still have your buses, trains and metro systems which work very well. The bicycles really keep everyone fit there… you sure as hell don’t see obese people around… which brings me to say the girls in Europe are HOT. 🙂

I Haven’t Forgotten About You My Dear, Dear Blog

Ramblings, Travel

Long time since I did an update, mostly because I had nothing important to say. I should write down a few things today so I can look back once the future rolls out to see what I did at the time back then.

First off, I’m hitting up Denmark, Sweden and Norway for 18 days this month. I’m leaving tomorrow at about 7:00 PM on a KLM flight with my parents and brother. The last time I flew with KLM was when I went to Turkey for a whole 2 months to visit my grandmother. I recall the flying experience with KLM to be pretty damn good (I’d say second best airline, after Swiss in my opinion). The only downside to this flight is that there will be a transfer in Amsterdam for a second flight to Norway (I much rather a direct flight). Hopefully everything goes by smoothly and no delays occur.

One thing I would like to mention is that this travel is a tour organized by Globus. Last time I toured with them (in the United Kingdom) I swore to never use their services again for the sheer fact that your liberty to explore the cities/countries at your own pace is strictly limited. Don’t get me wrong; the whole tour was fantastic but I felt like we were rushing at times and that most of the traveling was done on a bus going around the city with few stops. Why am I going back with Globus again, you may ask? Well, I don’t really want to miss out on this golden opportunity to visit these countries as I may not be able to travel to Europe again for a while (rising prices are discouraging my parents to fly out East…) so I should really enjoy it while I can. Anyway, the food and luxurious hotels really do kick ass. 🙂

I am going to miss my friends, however, for the 18 days that I will be gone. I’m heading out for some sushi tonight with the boys before I disappear from Montreal. Another thing I would like to mention is that I wish I didn’t miss out on the camping trip organized by ACYOC Toronto. If they had stuck to the same schedule like they did for the past 4 years of my participation, I wouldn’t be missing out on a wonderful experience (especially since more of my friends are going this year). I even told my mother not to book our trip at the end of August for the sole fact that I can go camping again this year. Damn shame…

The past two months have been pretty slow, both at work and at home. I need to push SPOS on our existing clients and seek new business opportunities. I’d like to have more time to myself to do projects of my own. My strength training workouts stopped last week when I sprained my ankle (first time ever!). Bleh.

The invitation website that I’m working on with Seb and Dave is slowly coming together. There’s still a lot of stuff to code, but Dave and I have an overall plan on what to do first to get the ball rolling. If I have any spare time on my trip, I should be able to code a large portion of the site (I’m thinking those long bus rides between cities might be a good time to do some programming).

Wow, a lot of topics covered in this post. Time to get some sleep for tomorrow’s adventure.