Le weekend

Le weekend has been spent wandering around town. Friday- downtown- shoe shops and smoked meat (v nice). And an art gallery, for le culture (OK, enough of the 'le's)
Saturday- the Old Town and the Quartier Latin.

Today I went to Mont Royal, the big park on the mountain. I walked through the cool shade of the trees, and sat by the lake, watching the world go by. On my return, I passed the Tam Tams, a big drumming free-for-all run by hippies every Sunday afternoon til the end of summer. Basically crazy people dancing to a frenzied increasingly-faster beat and everyone else watching politely from the banks of the hill. Lovely atmosphere though. I particularly liked the old woman who must have been about 70 in a pink flamenco dress shaking her castanets in an entirely different rhythm to that of the drums. They were still going when I walked past this evening, oblivious to the fact it was dark and all the tourists had left.

I also went for a walk to a street I read about in a magazine-Vautier or something. I think it must be the old Jewish quarter because it was full of bagel shops and the odd Orthodox Jew. I had a wonderful *real* coffee in a cafe where they played folky blues music, and the noticeboard had adverts for yoga classes and requests for 'a house where I can write, alone'. On the way back I bought half a dozen bagels from the bagel shop where the man who served me turned out to be a lecturer in political science at McGill! It turned out he'd visited London a few years ago but couldn't remember where except that it was South West ("Ipswich?" "No, that's not in London....") Anyway, he was very kind. And it turns out I actually do like bagels.

Basically this town is full of hippies and it's great :-) I have a wonderful picture of a car painted purple with flowers that says things like "Paix dans le monde" (World Peace) and "Je suis fiere d'etre un parisien putain" ("I'm proud to be a parisian whore" Not quite sure what that means but we'll gloss over it...) I'll put it up when I sort out my photos.

I'm really enjoying having some time and space alone to explore things, and feel totally free. It's very liberating.

I start tomorrow! Am actually really looking forward to it.