Montreal

Montreal reminds me of a slightly larger sized Melbourne. With its cool hipster streets, arts and comedy culture, I kind of feel like I’m home. Little cool eateries are scattered throughout the city, on every corner and in between. It wasn’t until I arrived here that I was informed that Montreal has the highest number of restaurants per Capita in Canada (2^nd in North America only to New York). I soon realised there was a lot I didn’t know about this funky, eclectic, French-Canadian city. Here are some of the fun facts I’ve learned about Montreal in my past week of living here.

• Besides Paris, Montreal is the second largest French-speaking city in the world! Everyone (except me it seems) knows multiple languages and converse in a beautiful mish-mash of both English and French.

• There is a mountain in the middle of the city – called Mont Royal (which is actually where Montreal gets its name!). Another fun fact – no building can be taller than the cross that stands on the top of Mont Royal. So there aren’t that many super tall skyscrapers here.

• Like an Iceberg – a lot of Montreal’s city is hidden underground which is known as the Underground City. The underground city is a series of interconnected tunnels beneath the city that run for over 32km. In the city are entire shopping malls, metro stations, universities, banks, museums and more!

• More than 18,000 foreign students from over 150 countries flock to Montreal each year to study – and why not? In 2013 this city was ranked the number 1 destination for tertiary studies in the world.

• More thank 85% of the worlds maple syrup comes from Quebec…. And I have eaten a decent percentage of it.

I have so much more to learn and I cant wait to learn it all in this quirky little city.

Rebecca Lyons – Bachelor of Information Technology – 11972650