Bienvenue a Montreal

A cheery hello from Montreal, where I'm based for the rest of the year.

I arrived last weekend and I'm fast learning the dos and do nots of living in the world's third largest French speaking city. It's a fun and slightly daunting prospect but here's what I've gathered so far.

1) GCSE French won't get you that far, but locals will automatically switch to English when you can't work out how to say 23.75 dollars en francais. (ooh the shame!)

2) Sitting in the sunshine on a terrace of a cafe is always a good thing to do.

3) Being French, there's a plentiful supply of good cheese in all supermarkets.

4) It's 1997 so far as Banks and technology is concerned. People still use cheques! and faxes! and there's a new fangled thing you can do on your phone called text...

5) Cross the street when the light is green and hope that SUV stops in time. They don't believe in pedestrian signals or beeps for the deaf here - scary!

More soon, A bientot.