Another term that I enjoyed, another term that I did my best. Enjoying all my coursework, enjoying all the challenges. Looking forward to the next term, the happiness in my mind is ineffable. I am approaching the end of my undergraduate degree, but the beginning of my life into the real society. Whether I am able to continue into graduate studies or not, the professional degree at University of Waterloo has certainly marked a significant milestone in my life.
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We departed Waterloo at 09:00 and arrived Toronto near 11:30. We then transferred onto VIA Rail train and left Toronto Union Station at around 12:15.
After entering the platform, I have to say that it is beautiful to board the classics once in a while after being soaked in the rush of modern society. The trains felt nostalgic to me because I was a fan of trains at around age of 6. I loved travelling across Taiwan with trains; I love the sounds made by trains. It is nice to experience these once again.
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We woke up, had our breakfast (I went to Tim Horton's nearby so there was really nothing to show off on photos here), and checked out at our hotel. We then went to Fort Henry, the fort built to defend Kingston city from America during the War of 1812. Kingston was a strategic location; if it's occupied, the Americans can easily send re-enforcements through the lake.
Fort Henry was built originally to defend land attack even though it is located on a hill facing the lake. The reason was that the side facing the water had a high cliff; it is easier to target...
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We woke up at 08:00 and get ourselves prepared. We had our breakfast at Hyatt's buffet, which was complementary with our room card (I have no idea why). The breakfast was normal, selection was scarce, but according to the menu, it is about $25 Canadian Dollars per person. It was a ridiculous price, the food options are simply breads (that you can buy from Tim Horton's), milk (that you can buy from convenience stores), orange juice (not even freshly squeezed), sausage, bacon, egg (all of which can be bought from grocery store at cheap price), and some fruits (again, cheap). Anyone could make a better breakfast...
Beautiful port city, freezing climate in winter, convenient public transit and underground network. These were some of my first impressions towards Montreal, the city located in southern Quebec province.
Life is not as hard as it seems; with a harsh term slipping through again, time flew away and holiday season came. Our proposed travel to one of the most beautiful cities in the world had been planned, and the time is ahead. To unleash all the pressure accumulated over the past four months, we decided to get ourselves away from Waterloo and drive to Montreal.
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Waking up in the morning wasn't that bad, except for some very severe headache due to my insanity of not sleeping until 4:00.
Our plan was to meet at my friends' house at 9:00 and leave Waterloo right away.
I checked everything I had in my bag and made sure most appliances were switched off (for security reasons. Okay more for bill reasons). Locked the door, I stepped out of the apartment.
To be honest, I have no idea why I wrote this section, so lets jump right into the "after-arrival" part =P
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Our day began with a nice bus tour. Since we did not have much time and we just arrived Montreal, we believed that joining a city tour would be the best way to enjoy the city.
At 9:15, we were picked up by a shuttle which took us to the Department of Tourism of Montreal. We then transferred to a huge tour bus that would take us around the city.
The tourism building also hosts tourists information kiosk and the coach terminal counter. In the lobby you could find various types of...
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After our breakfast (where we decided to dine in at a yum cha restaurant), we (for the first time in three days) took the local subway system and headed for our first destination of the day - Botanical Garden.
Botanical Garden is a museum that exhibits rare plants and flowers. It is composed of several large green houses and a insects museum. It is located right next to the Olympics Stadium, where the 1976 Summer Olympics was held...
Kyoto (京都), Osaka (大阪), and Kobe (神戸). These three areas form a famous metropolitan region, Keihanshin (京阪神). This region is known to be full of historical and beautiful buildings mainly because that Kyoto was one of the most frequently used cities for capitals in Japanese history.
Although Tokyo (東京) is the current capital city of Japan, the said metropolitan region is still one of the most favourited places for tourism and habitation...
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Waking up at 4:30 a.m., the weather is cloudy in Taipei.
The shuttle bus came at 5:30, yet all of my family were sleepy and still partially disabled due to "morning sickness." The ride was smooth because of the earliness; there was almost no car on the highway.
Since the ride was smooth, we got there at 6:10 which was pretty fast because it would normally take about 1 hour with normal traffic.
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Woke up at 5:30 a.m. (yes, this early again), I prepared myself for a nice buffet breakfast. The weather was still cloudy; it looked like it's going to rain anytime.
The hotel's breakfast area was large. I posted a few hotel pictures in the last article, and you could see how beautiful the hotel was. I believe I forgot to mention the name. It was Kobe Portopia Hotel, and we were told that the hotel could be used as a place for international forums, VIP meetings, etc.
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Woke up at 5:30 a.m., I prepared myself for a nice buffet breakfast (hmm I think I typed this in the last post as well). During breakfast, a really huge thunderstorm came and worried all of us; however, it stopped 10 minutes after it started.
We got on touring bus and headed directly to Kameoka, a very beautiful place that resembles what you called "wonderland." An Asian style wonderland that is. There were mountains, with fogs covering the summits, and really nice nature surroundings.
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Today was a special day. Why? Because we didn't have to wake up at 5:30 anymore!!! Instead, 6:30. Yeh I know, still early, but at least feel the joy of able-to-wake-up-one-hour-later with me okay???
So yeh, today's schedule was to play around ALL DAY in the Universal Studios Osaka. It sounds tiring eh? I thought so too; however, it somehow was the better days in this trip mainly because we didn't have to commute around on touring bus (I really hate sitting without doing anything)...
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Our last day is composed of nothing. To be precise, the schedule was to let us play around in Osaka (to where ever we wanted to go) and then returned to Taipei.
We woke up fairly late today (compare to the other days), at about 7:00 a.m.. We had our breakfast, and enjoyed the moment of delight from not having to wake up early and follow a busy schedule.
Today, we left the Universal City for Osaka's downtown region.
There are times when I wander on the streets and a thought randomly appears in my mind. There are times when I am touched by a scene or piece of art and I cannot forget the moment. There are also times when I am depressed, delighted, or angered, and simply want to unleash the stress or share the joy with text.
I keep all of my emotions in my personal blog, where my friends normally visit to follow up on my latest hobbies, concerns, and addictions (I meant good ones like music, anime, etc.).
A random idea coming from my surroundings sometimes triggers my limitless imagination. I hallucinate a lot, in a good way, and I feel that if I do not write the ideas down they would be gone forever. But sometimes ideas can be simply twisted or unethical. I cannot just put them down in my personal blog.
My novels blog is comprised of those weird ideas written into stories. This way, I can not only enhance the ideas and make them better (and twistier), but also further extend my imagination and compose stories to share my hallucination.
I really love travelling. In fact, I have travelled to more places than I have included in this travel blog, but it is super tiring to write each of the experience down. Therefore, I only picked some important ones and included them in my travel blog.
This blog mostly record my trips to foreign countries or those that I enjoyed with my family. For me, travelling is the best way to refresh myself, either my exhausted brain or my overly geeky body (yes, trained by hours of hours of coding a day).
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