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By sarajebbar

This week we had the thanksgiving break that we all were waiting for to get some rest from studies and classes. Since it was kind of a long break, I took the opportunity to travel to Canada. I know many of you will wonder why am I leaving the US in such a big American holiday, Thanksgiving. What’s great about the US is that they start their holidays days before the actual day so I got the chance to try some Thanksgiving food before my trip.Being in Washington DC made it really easy for me to travel to Canada unlike when I’m far in Morocco. I started my trip by Montréal. The city was in Québec, the French speaking province of Canada. Since my second language is French, I and my French friends enjoyed speaking French with the locals. We also enjoyed hearing the Quebec French accent because it was really different from the one in France, which I’m used to use in Morocco. Montréal reminded me a lot of Europe (The architecture, the language, the streets…) One of the coolest thing I did was to hike to the summit of Mont-Royal. The hike was pretty tiring and cold but the breathtaking view of the whole city from the top made me forget about all of that. We visited a lot of places like Notre-Dame Basilica of Montreal, the old port…  And I enjoyed walking through the old city of Montréal in the Christmas vibe. I also tried my first Poutine there which is a typical Canadian meal and I loved it.After 2 days in Montréal, we took the bus to Toronto. I really loved Toronto over Montréal. Because of the cold weather, the streets in Montréal become dead as soon as it gets dark. However, Toronto was such a lively city and it had a lot of places to visit. One of the main characteristics of Toronto’s skyline is the CN tower. So, we took a ferry to Ward’s island to see the beautiful skyline from front of the water. I also enjoyed taking pictures in the Graffiti Alley, trying to ice-skate in the Nathan Philips square with regular shoes on, walking through the Christmas market and trying the really good food in all the diverse restaurants of the city.One of the main reasons of my Canada was to take Niagara Falls off my bucket list. And the greatest thing was that I had the opportunity to visit them from both sides, the American and the Canadian one. The Niagara Falls were the most breathtaking natural wonder I’ve ever seen. They were just magnificent and powerful. I got the chance to see them from really close by taking the ferry to the heart of the Falls and you can feel their real power from there. We walked after that to cross the bridge that links between Canada and the US. It was really cool to cross between the countries in such an easy way. In the US side, I saw the Niagara Falls illuminations which were colorful lights projected on the Falls, and made them even more beautiful during the night. Seeing the Niagara Falls was one of the most impressive things I saw in the nature, and I’m grateful for that. And what a great unexpected way to end my Canada trip is by enjoying music, ice-skating show, Christmas tree lighting and fireworks in my last night in Toronto.