I really liked the atmosphere of the city: it is very green, there are tons of nice cafes, crazy brunches, ... Each neighbourhood has its own typical style: Downtown, the Old Town, Mile-End, where the Hassidim Jewish community lives among young students and entrepreneurs; le Plateau, where French people live; the Gay Village, with all the bars and clubs; and more. My favourite part of the city were the people, everyone is super openminded and genuinely nice, I learned a lot from them over the span of 5 months. Also, Montréal is very international, people there come from all around the world and consequently, the language is interesting and basically “Frenglish”.
I really wanted to discover Vancouver. The first trip I did was to a National Park, Mont-Tremblant. There are plenty of great parks in Canada and I wish I could have visited more. I went there with three of my friends, we rented a car for almost nothing (super cheap and super easy) and we slept at a B&B right next to a lake. We did a few hikes with great weather and enjoyed a nice evening at the lake. Next on my list were San Diego and Vancouver: visiting these two cities in 10 days was a challenge, though. First, I went down to Ocean Beach for five days, a small beach town in San Diego, where I got to enjoy the sun, got (super) sunburnt and ate (a lot) of Mexican food. If you ever go to San Diego, make sure you go to Ocean Beach (and to the USA hostel there), it is the best! Afterwards, I went up to Vancouver with Chris. The city is really diverse and it is possible to see downtown and in an hour get out of the city and find yourself on top of the Grouse Mountain with a beautiful view all the way to Vancouver Island. After my finals, we headed to Belize and Mexico for two weeks. Going from Montréal where it was snowy and -20 degrees to the Mexican weather was pretty intense but it was nice to finish the exchange experience at the beach.
One of the main reasons why I chose Montréal as my exchange destination was that its location is great. It is close to the Niagara Falls, New York, Boston, Ottawa and lots of other cool cities. However, as I travelled along the east coast of the US already I wanted to see a bit of California and 15