Quebec City

Saturday, August 16th

We arrived in the late afternoon and proceded to check into our bed and breakfast and then we went back into the city for dinner and tried to stay out of the rain as much as possible until the fireworks by the river started. 

Sunday, August 17th 

After breakfast we went to a pottery market in town. We had luch at a lovely bakery that our neighbor had recommended to us the afternoon before. After lunch we walked along a few touristy streets, which are always amusing in the limited doses that we choose to take them in. The afternoon was well spent exploring the old city with a short stop at the market by the old port. 

Monday, August 18th

The day started with a trip Beau Port and the waterfall out there. This was was an incredibly convenient destination as the bus that we always take into the city center also goes out this way in the outbound direction. The walk was not bad but not the hike we were secretly hoping for. It is also filled with tourists the whole way. In the afternoon we went back into the heart of Quebec for a stroll and dinner followed up by ice cream. We called it a night relatively early as we had big plans the next day that also had to be formed a little more concretely. 

Tuesday, August 19th 

This was the day we got the adventure with the Canadian wilderness! We found a bus that dropped us of at the Jacques-Cartier national park. To be more precise it dropped us on the other side of the highway with instructions on how we would get to the park itself and very vague directions as to where the bus would pick us up that afternoon. We also found out that as users of public transportation our best shot at getting to the main visitors center and the start of our planned trip would be to hitchhike there. And we did. We also got very lucky on the way back with the hitchhiking, but had quite the experience waiting for the bus that was quite late and came shortly after a bus from the same company drove right past us. 

Is summary: the hike was lovely and it seems like camping for a few days and trying various trails would be great. As non-drivers we learned quickly that there is a lot of time pressure since we are bound by rather unreliable public transportation. I do highly recommend the park, but I would recommend that anyone looking to go by bus be informed and warned that it may be quite the adventure. 

Wednesday, August 20th

In the morning we did our best to get out of the house early and made our way over to the botanical garden. It was very small but very nice al the same. My personal highlight was the section with vegetables since I have been trying to plant more and more producing plants and herbs on my balcony. 

In the afternoon we walked along the city wall and up to the citadel, but decided not to take a guided tour. We were however able to see the short version of the changing of the guards since the big ceremony is always at 10 am.  We then continued walking through the battlefields parc up to Le Musée national des beaux-atrs du Québec. By the time we got out we were all very hungry and had a lovely dinner at a restaurant that we found coincidentally on our way back into the old city. And finally we arrived just in time to see the last night of fireworks being held over the river. We found out soon after tht this was the last of a series that had been taking place in Quebec City throughout the last few weeks. 

Thursday, August 21st

We had a very nice lazy day. My brother and I walked along the old harbor and enjoyed the weather while our parents went to the museum of civilization. Afterwards we all met up and went out for a nice dinner. 

Friday, August 22nd 

For our last day in Canada we diced end to go back into a bit of wilderness and enjoy a very relaxed day canoeing and hiking back in the Jacques-Cartier national park. We learned a little something from our first trip and stayed a little closer to the bus stop. But we still had poor luck with the bus as it was almost an hour late and by that time it was very dark and sitting by the side of the highway that late is probably not the smartet move, but unavoidable for us. 

Nevertheless it was a wonderful finale to our vacation.  

Saturday, August 23ed 

We expected long day of bus rides, but had no idea just how long it would be. Sadly I think that greyhound has been reducing the quality of their services. And on Saturday we really saw a lack in crisis management when the bus from Boston was delayed at the boarder and in turn ours left an hour late. Long story short after our driver change our second driver seemed very in experienced and lost all of the time our first driver had made up and then some. This is too bad becuase my family has been taking the bus for years and it seems our world is continuing to push us to start driving.  

The photos used in both parts of the vacation posts were taken by me or my father with his Sony DSLR.

Thank you for reading! Until next time! 

A Week in Montreal

Sunday, August 9th 

We spent most of the day in the bus from Boston to Montreal. After arriving at our little air BnB apartment we went out for dinner and took a short stroll around the neighborhood where we were staying. 

Monday, August 10th 

We decided to enjoy the great weather and this followed:

I was able to take lots of pictures during our walk through the old Montreal. Which was complete with ice cream and sore feet by the time we got home. We cooked dinner at home and were all quite tired from the day. 

 

Tuesday, August 11th

On Tuesday we climbed Mont Royal. I was a little disappointed by the lack of hiking involved, but I suppose I should have known that it would not be too much to an outlook that seems to be quite popular. Afterwards we walked into the plateau and then Northeast towards la Marché Jean-Talon, which was a lovely walk of about 45min with plenty of stops at locations that interested us. We bought a fair amount of veggies and everything we neede to make ratatouille for dinner that night and fruits for breakfast for a few days.

Wednesday, August 12th

I went out for luch with my parents quite the plan to follow it up with a trip to the museum of contemporary art. We left my brother at home since he didn't want to come to the art museum. I don't have any pictures here because while we were having lunch the rain started to pour. And when we left the restaurant we thought we would try our luck and stroll through the city and took quite a long way that was not really in the direction to the meuseum. As the rain got stronger, however, we decided that we would rather got back to the apt and put on dry socks. We had quite a simple dinner back at the apartment and all watched the station agent as a family. 

Thursday, August 13th

We went to the insectarium and botanical garden here in Montreal. Both were really nice but I quickly left the insectarium when some school children came in because the place got quite loud with all the kids. The gardens were also lovely with the clear highlights of the piece we saw being the Japanese and Chinese gardens. 

Friday, August 14th 

In the early afternoon we went to the biosphere which is currently inhabited by an environmental meuseum. This was certainly fun, but at this point in my visits of environmental museums they are preaching to the Choir.   

In the evening we went to a theater festival in Lachine which was lovely, but due to ever less light these pictures are from the early acts. This festival was wonderful though. We don't speak a lot of French which provided a certain language barrier, but despite this and the rain we all thoroughly enjoyed it. 

Gypsy Kumbia Orchestra

Les Sœres Kif-Kif

Saturday, August 15th 

As I am wrighting all of this we are on the bus to Quebec City for our second and final week of family vacation. I'll see how the weather and the picture opportunities are when we arrive becuase the highway is not too interesting and the weather makes a very grey mood.

I will try to post a similar post about Quebec City in about a week. Maybe I will have learned something form this one. 

Thanks for reading! Until next time, 

Eva Mathilde 

A Small Tip

For anyone who knows the Bath & Bodyworks candles, you may recognize the glass. This is one that I cherished and tried to make last as long as I could since I don't think that they make the sandalwood vanilla scent anymore. But now the glass makes a great scenting jewlery box. This particular glass has a practical size and has a lid which is great, but you can use what you have around. A mason jar does quite nicely too, and they come in all sizes. 

I hang hook earrings around the sides and let all the smaller earrings and other pieces of jewlery that I take with me rest in the bottom.  And when I am moving on, I through everything in the bottom and put this scarf over it so that it all stays snugly in place and does not have too much empty space. 

I hope you enjoyed this repurposing idea! Until next time! 

A little at home cut and color

I have been dying and cutting my own hair for years. And while the pixi is certainly much harder to cut myself, I still have not been able to motivate myself to spend the money to let a professional have a crack at it. And what if they screw it up? I mean it's only hair, it will grow back. But for some reason if I mess up its not as bad as if I let someone else try and they mess it up. So to start off here are a few pictures from the last time I did my hair. 

They are not all too flattering but I figured they would help to make my point. 

So I start by sectioning my hair. These days I only have a bang section, but I have had multiple streaks and big chunks in the past. Although this is easy to section out it is still far easier to clip everything else out of the way before the color comes into play. 

Now for the color. I use the live color xxl from Schwarzkopf and I mix the two red shades, so it often looks a little different each time. I start spreading the hair color on my roots, and as the bottom left picture shows they had gotten quite long. Then I work the rest of the color to the tips because the color does dull quite a bit and this makes it vibrant from root to tip. To this I would say that I put a lot of effort into not frying my hair with chemicals and I am working with a very short section. Please be careful with your own hair, especially longer hair, mine has proven to be quite resilient but this is not quite as stated int he instructions so better stick to those than the experiences I have made with my own hair. 

On a side note: I used to use Splat and Manic Panic hair color when I still lived in the states, and can recommend them, but is it a different process since they are semipermanent dies that require bleaching for the full brightness. These dies are mixed directly with a developer they will lighten hair as they die it. This makes for one less step in the long run, but also provides a color that will fade differently. 

After dying my hair I wash it with a clarifying shampoo and rinse it with cold water so that it won't color all my towels. Then I use a nice deep conditioner to apologize for the damage done. I like Dumb Blond from Bed Head, it's a protein conditioner in the middle of the price spectrum and I have always seen good results. 

Following the shower I then take to rinse out the contitioner and shower the rest of me, I cut my hair. Now I really don't know how to describe this process, but I will give it a shot. I start at one side and work my way across the back. Sometimes I clip the top section away while I do this, and sometimes I leave it. But once I feel like the back is nice and short and relatively even I go on to the top sections. I think this is where things get interesting becuase I really do change things every time. The first time I trimmed the top I cut quite a bit off because I had left it pretty long, now I sometimes cut just a little if I'm feeling the longer hair, and some times it gets a little drastic and I will cut of some 2-3 cm. I know that doesn't seem like a lot but it's proportional. I do most of this with a straight razor that I bought from Sally's Beauty Supply a few years ago, but you can find them at most Salon Supply stores, and then I have a pair of scissors for the few bits that won't cooperate. The razor takes practice, especially when it's your own head because finding the right angle it a challenge in its self, but once I got the hang of it I really like the results. 

Then to style I have been useing a creme gel from L'oreal I believe it would be called traceless in English but I have German packaging since I bought it here. I do really like it, I find it easy to work with and it gives me the effect I want most of the time. 

This whole process usually takes about half an hour, this last time was about a week ago I preparation for my trip so that I would not have to worry about cutting or dying my hair while I'm abroad. And becuase I was trying to document the process and discovering just how awfully unflattering the light in my bathroom is, it did take a little bit longer. But I am usually able to make good use of the time waiting in between steps. 

That's it. If anyone is interested in some more details about styling my hair or anything else let me know and I will see what I can do. Bye! 

And then it was 12:30 AM

When I was sitting in my living room last night, enjoying that I have the apt. to myself these next few days and photographing most of what is coming with me, I suddenly realized that it was 12:30 and I was going to go out tonight. But since I haven't heard back from the friend I was going to meet and I totally got wrapped up in my world having way too much fun. So it began like this: 

After collecting everything and occupying my living room with all my stuff I could sleep well knowing I still had plenty of time to think about the little things I had forgotten and sort out some of the things that I really don't need. 

And then Sunday morning meant breakfast, shower and off to my grandparents' for tea. This shit can wait. I also proceded to meet up with a good friend of mine since we probably won't see each other for multiple weeks. When I finally got home for the night I threw on the last load of laundry and actually packed most of my stuff. 

And then I thought I would throw in a few tips for packing because Although I travel frequently and try to travel light, I am not really an expert and if I were to make a whole post, most of my tips would be far from revolutionary. But if, like me, you know exactly that once you get off your flight you are probably going to eat something and go to sleep then I would recommend that underwear, pjs and toiletries are near the top. This means you don't have to unpack everything before you can really enjoy going to sleep. I know that some people really like to unpack everything, but that is not my style, not to mention that this particular day is going to be 6 hours longer and about 11,5 hours are going to be spent at airports and in planes. 

It is now 24hours later (and I had plenty of distractions along the way) I am for all incentive purposes packed! My carry on is not quite finished, but I have to grab a few things tomorrow, and then clean so that I leave this place looking better than it did when my roomie left on Friday. But now I can sleep tight and know that most of the prep work is done and once I land safely I will have almost four weeks before it starts from the beginning. 

Bye! 

Just a few more days to takeoff

After I got off my last day of my internship it felt appropriate to start counting the days until my flight to Boston. And with four days left it feels like the perfect time to die and trim my hair and start doing a few loads of laundry. And then I was able to spend the evening chilling with wonderful company. 

Today was rather uneventful. I spent a few hours this morning at the flea market but didn't find anything ridiculously exciting. Although I did find some cool records that are in pretty solid shape and I was able to get quite the fair price for the two of them. And then I spent most of the day at work. Now I'm off to Finnish some more laundry and start gathering my things.