Quebec, Canada by Mel
12 dec. 2025–4 jan. 2026, Canada ⋅ ☀️ -4 °C
Hello from Quebec!
We are in French Canada, which means I can speak French! Yeah!
We are staying with Roxane, my cousin, her partner, Kevin (yes another one) and their adorable little girl, Savannah. They live between Montreal and Quebec City, in the small town of Saint Melanie. We arrived here on the 12th of December and will be staying until the 3rd of January when we will be leaving to go back home in Australia.
We are not going to do a day by day retell of our stay, but we’ll talk about the things we visited or did that are worth talking about.
We had a few days doing not much, chatting, catching up on each other’s news, playing board games and just enjoying each other’s company. Those days were great.
We are extremely lucky to have snow! And a fair bit of it for December. The kids have been dreaming of snow all year, so it is great! They did snow angels, built snow people, made a slide with snow and enjoyed the snow as much as possible before going back to sunny and hot Queensland! We did a few walks into the forest around Kev and Rox’s house. It was fun but hard! It is definitely not easy to walk in snow. But the landscapes and the stillness of the forest covered with snow is magnificent.
We also learnt that not all snow is good to make snow people: if it is too cold, it doesn’t stick together. It needs to be a bit wet and close to 0 degrees to stick.
We went to visit a traditional village, called Canadiana (similar to the one we saw in Toronto). This one has another Santa, that we visited and also a small circus act which was very good. They were doing it outside, so with a lot of layers of clothes, which made the acts even more impressive as it is hard to move with so many layers! We had hot wine and enjoyed walking around the village and listening to a group of singers singing Christmas carols.
We visited Montreal a couples of times. We had to do some Christmas shopping, so we did (not the easiest when you don’t know the shops, but we found what we wanted). We found Emma’s Pandora charm for Canada (a maple leave).
We visited the Biodome in Montreal, which is a big area (built where they had the Olympic games in 1976) with 4 different biospheres that you can find in Canada, with a few animals found in those biospheres. We saw some capibara, otters, sloth, fish, beaver, lynx, raccoons and pinguins! It was well done and interesting. We then went to the Planetarium to see a couple of shows about planets, stars and the creation of the universe. There were brilliant shows: I have always loved planetarium and this one is awesome. After that we went to the insectarium, which has some interesting way of showing insects and how insects see, feel and sound which was interesting, and at the end a room full of butterfly. It was a good visit.
The Notre Dame Basilica of Montreal is something to visit. I think it is my favourite church of the whole trip. The church we can see now was built from 1824 to 1829. A lot were added later on: the façade was decorated in 1869 and the interior was redesigned in 1872. The church is regarded as a masterpiece of Gothic Revival architecture. It is amazing. The colours are deep blue, gold and purple. The intricate dark wood carvings are unbelievable and the altar piece is massive, beautiful and a masterpiece. This is truly a must see when you are in Montreal.
One of the other things we did in Montreal was going the see the Nutcracker. The ballet was enchanting and magical. I preferred the second part with all the different dances from all around the world. I am very happy to have finally see it as it was on my to do list for a while! One more thing ticked!
We also visited the art museum in Joliette, a little town near Sainte-Melanie. It was a mix of mostly modern art and a few older pieces. There were installations, paintings and multimedia pieces. Some of the multimedia pieces were intriguing and Andrew was transfixed by one of them, showing people dressed up in strange clothes and making noises, repeating again and again. I am not sure what it meant (even after reading the description) but Andrew was transfixed by it.
Both kids were inspired and there was a room with drawing material which the kids had fun using.
In the same spirit of creation, a few days before Christmas, Rox, Savannah, Emma and I did some Christmas ornaments and decorated cookies and a gingerbread house. Emma impressed me with her care at decorating her reindeer decoration. Savannah had a special technique for decorating her cookie: she put some icing on it, then lick it, then put some more and repeat! She had great fun!!
During this time, Andrew had fun learning to cut wood and I think he enjoyed it.
We also went ice-skating, but not on an ice ring. There is a place with pathways that were frozen and you can ice-skate in the forest. As it is the beginning of the season here, the ice wasn’t the best one, but we still had fun. It was Savannah’s first time on skates, and I am very happy to have been here for that. She did so good for a first time and being 2 and half years old!
Kev is not a fan of ice-skating, but I am. I love the feeling of ‘flying on the ice’. The kids had fun. We took a sleigh with us, so we could rest a bit on it when needed. They also had animals around, but I found that some of them had very little space to move, so I am not quite a fan of this part of the experience.
Another fun (and better) experience was the ‘glissades’. This is a place with big slides made of snow and you have a big inflatable thing to sit on and slide down. There are different lengths slides, some with more or less bumps. The one with the bumps are better! There were also other slides with bigger things to sit on, where you have to go all together and it goes a lot faster. It was fun. We were pretty cold by the end of the day though!!!! It was a memorable experience.
Of course, we had Christmas! I almost forgot to talk about it!
We did a big dinner on Christmas eve, like we do in France. Emma was very happy to help with the food preparation and she was very helpful indeed! We played games while the kids watched a lot of Christmas movies (to their great delight!). Christmas morning was opening presents and spending more quality time together. More boardgames and a few more drinks.
It was also our first white Christmas, which is magical. I truly love houses and landscapes covered in snow. I find it peaceful and magical.
We visited Quebec City as well. We visited mainly the centre and it was excellent. The city was decorated for Christmas and it made it even more beautiful to visit.
We had a guided tour of the Citadelle. This fortified military installation was built between 1820 and 1850 to protect the region of attack from the United states. By that date, the United states tried twice to invade without success. To avoid any further attack, the citadelle was built, but was never used as a defensive place, as no other attack were made! It is today the home of the royal 22ieme regiment, a French-Canadian army regiment, who has a goat as a mascot.
There is also a big, like massive, building called The Fairmont Le Château Frontenac. It was finished in 1893. This is a hotel, built by the Canadian Railway Hotel company. It is a landmark in Quebec. It has 610 rooms and suites and multiple restaurants over 18 floors. The building is 79.9 meters high augmented by a 54meters ground elevation. It is an impressive sight which dominated the old Quebec city and the Saint Lawrence river.
In Quebec City, there is a small neighbourhood called the ‘Pettit Chaplain’ with small streets and shops. When we visited it was covered with Christmas decorations and setups where you could take some pictures. It was really pretty. There are lots of shops for souvenirs and yummy delicacies like chocolate, fudges or maple syrup on stick (which we tried of course).
There is a shop which is all about Christmas: there was a queue to enter the shop and inside you can find a whole bunch of decoration related to Christmas. I could have spent a fortune in there!!! But I only bought two small decorations!
We walked in the city for a whole day and really enjoyed it.
The last thing we did that day was a light and music show in the Saint Roch church. It was a very unique experience. The whole church, the ceiling, the pillars, the altar were used to project images while beautiful music was being played. The immersive experience was mesmerizing. This is called the AURA experience and there are one in Paris, Montreal and Quebec city and I think more to come in other cities. If there is one near you, go see it!!!! It is absolutely amazing.
One of the last thing we did in Quebec, was visiting the Omega park. It is a pretty big park full of animals local to Canada, like reindeer, moose, bison, wolf, bear (we saw one), otters (very exciting!!!)… You drive in with your car and it is possible to feed some of the animals some carrots. You can see the animals very close. You can also get out in certain areas and walk around. We really enjoyed this park, as we saw a lot of animals we never saw before and in the middle of the landscape covered with snow, it was very beautiful. It was the perfect way to finish our trip in Canada.
We left Canada on the 4th of January, exactly one year after leaving Australia.
Canada was so wonderful. I enjoyed the snow: yes, it is cold (the coldest night we had was -30 degrees Celsius), but with the right gears, it is very doable. Walking in the forest with everything white around, was for me, a great experience. I truly enjoy this country, and I am hoping to come back, but maybe this time at another time of the year to experience something different.
It was also very nice to be able to catch up with friends and family over there. Canada was a great choice to finish our gap year.
That’s it for this next to last blog. The next blog will be a sum up of our year and then, we will go back to our lives back in Oz.
See you soon for one last blog.
MelMeer informatie
Punaise c'est un loup 🐺, c'est tros Beau la nature au Canada,il est seule ou avec une meute ? Bisous a 😘 [Dada]
Génial la photo,tous ensemble 💕 bisous a tous 🌞 [Dada]
Quebec, Canada by Kev
20–21 dec. 2025, Canada ⋅ ☁️ -5 °C
12.12.2025 onwards. Today we're driving to Mel's cousin's place near Montreal, in Quebec. We had originally planned to drive there after picking up the car yesterday, but that would have had us arriving pretty late, so we held off until today. Around 7 hours later we pulled up in front of Rox and Kev's place. Their house is on the smaller side, so we're staying in a caravan they have. It's cold so we'll see how it goes. Over the next few days we did some catching up and visited a few places. We went to Montreal a few times to visit various places and to do some Christmas shopping. We visited a small town close by, Joliette, where the kids played in the snow and we had a look at their local art museum. We went to the ballet in Montreal, the Nut Cracker. We went to the super glissades. Big slides built on a mountain using snow, which we slid down. The more people grouped together, the faster you went. We had a warmer day, 0° or 1°, so the kids stayed outside and built a really good snowman. We took a walk in the woods and stood around a fire and Andrew had a go at chopping wood. We visited Quebec city, one of the oldest cities in Canada, where we visited La Citadelle. A star shaped fortress built by the British between 1820-1850. We walked through old Quebec city, and looked at a few shops. We witnessed an amazing light show, inside the Saint-Roch church, in Quebec City. We've had, what I consider, bloody cold weather. Thankfully, the warm stuff we bought and some things borrowed have held up to the cold. We haven't thought much about blogging or schoolwork these last couple weeks, well I haven't, hence my condensed blog. We have just enjoyed being somewhere nice, Mel loves the snow scape, and seeing part of another country. I thought it would be hard here in Quebec, as I speak very little French. What I have found is that most of the people that I have interacted with, that being in some form of service industry, speak English. We talked with a bartender, and he said more of the younger generation speak both languages, while the older generation are still mostly French. In just a short time we have gotten used to the cold, mostly. We woke up to -30°c one morning. The heater in the caravan worked overtime just to keep us at 14° and we were happy to have an extra blanket. We had another day close to 0° all day, perfect snowman weather. The kids finished with two snowmen, a snow tower and a baby snowmen. Jeffery, Jeffery the second, baby Jeffery and the tower of Jeffery. They also tried to make an ice skating rink. It wasn't very big, but it worked. I saw them both slip arse over head on it. We ate some great food and I tried a lot of different Canadian beers, all with great company. Unfortunately it all had to end. On the last day, we took Kev, Rox and Savannah out for brunch. When we came back we packed our bags and said goodbye. Mel and the kids had trouble saying goodbye. We'd had a great time and would miss them all dearly. We drove to Montreal the day before our flight to make it easier for us the next day. We had dinner at the hotel and spent our last night in Canada. The next morning we got up early and drove to the airport. Dropped off the car and wandered on in. We sat and waited for our flight, not knowing exactly how to feel. Well that was me anyway. We boarded the plane and said goodbye to Canada. Even in winter it is a beautiful country, and I would like to see it in the summer. It is hard to believe our next country is Australia. See ya there.
KevMeer informatie
Quebec, Canada by Andrew
28–29 dec. 2025, Canada ⋅ ⛅ -8 °C
We are now in Quebec (pronounced : ke-bec), Quebec is a province in Canada that is 1.5 million Km2 which is 15.4% of Canada making it the 2nd biggest province in Canada. Quebec also has 9 million people which makes it the 2nd most populated province in Canada, now enough information let’s get on to what we did in Quebec. Mainly we played in the snow because how often can I do that in Queensland (once every ice age), Me and Emma built a snowman, I named it Jeffery (Emma wanted to call it snowy). We made some paths in the snow and had a snow fight, it was so fun. We also made a tiny ice rink by digging a hole and then it rained and got filled up with water, We also made a slide out of snow and we slid down it about a hundred times. We stayed in Saint Melanie with Kevin and Roxane, Roxane is my mum’s cousin which make her my cousin once removed so that makes Savannah (Rox and Kev’s child) my second cousin. While we were staying with them we went to another city called Montreal three times, it’s the biggest city in Quebec but not the capital (Quebec city is the capital of Quebec). We drove an hour to get there but when we were over there we did quite a few stuff, we did some shopping and went to a cathedral, the cathedral was really interesting, there was three levels and it had lots of colours that where really pretty. We looked around and I really liked it. We also went to an art museum and it was really cool there were lots of modern art and some sculptures to. We also went to a biodome that had lots of animals, I really liked it because there were two of my favourite animals there, an otter and lots of penguins, there were also quite a few fish. After that we went to a planetarium and watched two shows, it was really interesting, then we went to an insectarium. It was awesome, there were all sorts of different insects but my favourite one was one that looked like a dead leaf, it was so well disguised that I couldn’t tell if it was a dead leaf or an insect, it was so interesting. We also went to the nutcracker ballet and it was truly amazing they were all really good dancers and some bits were funny so I really liked it, we got some miny nutcrackers as a souvenir. It sounds like we did a lot but most of the time we stayed home with Kev, Rox and Savannah, Savannah is two and a half, me and Emma played with Savannah a bit and watched a lot of TV. Kev and Rox have a nice house and it’s near a pretty forest, and we went on a walk in there, it was cool. We also went ice skating, it was really fun but also really hard at the same time, I was really bad at stopping so when I had to stop I would just stop moving my feet and slow down gradually. While we were still with Rox and Kev something happened that happens every year, Christmas happened, it was really fun we ate lots and played lots, but most importantly, PRESENTS!!! I got some little metal models I could make called metal earth, I also got a One-Piece Lego thingy and some One-Piece decorations. Not long after that we went to a sliding-down-snowy-ramps-on-an-inflatable-toboggan place, it was super fun we went up and then we slid down, it was awesome. I did it so many times that I lost count. We also visited Quebec city, it is not the biggest city in Quebec but one of the most historic ones, we took a tour in a citadel, it was cool, we saw a lot of old defensive stuff and old houses. We looked at a big cathedral and then at night we went into a church that had a light show. It was one of the best light shows we’ve seen, there were lot of lights and it was super cool. One of the last things we did was go to Omega park, it’s a place that has lots of animals, we saw otters, bears wolves, moose, elk, bison, foxes, deer, coyotes, caribou, boars, goats, racoons, horses and squirrels. We could feed some carrots to the deer and elk and it was really fun. Now this is the end of my blog now because we didn’t do much else, so 3,2,1. The End!!! (duh duh duuuuh)
Andrew (10 years old)Meer informatie
Quebec, Canada by Emma
2–3 jan., Canada ⋅ ☁️ -10 °C
Hello, this is our last blog when we are traveling. It is not a day-to-day blog. I am going to tell you what I liked a lot.
First, I really liked playing in the snow. Me and Andrew made a mini-ice rink by digging a hole and over night it froze. We made snow angels, snow man and walked around in the forest for a bit. It was cold but also very beautiful. I loved looking out over the trees with snow on them. We had a snowball fight and me, Andrew and mum made a snow slide that we went down on sleds. We went to a proper ice rink after.
Second, we went to a village. We saw a circus act, Santa and people singing. In the circus act they juggled fire, sang and did other cool things. We saw four people moving around and singing. I told Santa I wanted a big feather quill for Christmas.
Third, we went to Montréal. We went to a cathedral. It had a lot of wood. There was a really windy staircase that led to a platform. There was a big organ at the front. There were stars painted on the roof. It was beautiful. Then we did shopping. We found a pandora shop, so I got a charm from Canada. Then we went to an art museum. There was some art that I liked and some art I didn’t quite understand. I drew a picture of a landscape. There was a piece of art I really liked. It was a stool that had a cloth over it. To me, it meant you don’t know what is coming until it’s come. Then we went to a biodome. There were four places to visit. We saw lots of animals. Then we went to a planetarium. They showed us different planets. It was really cool. It looked like we were in a spaceship. After that we went to an insectarium. It was awesome. In one of the rooms there were loads of beautiful insects.
Fourth, we spent time with Rox, Kev and Savannah. We played lots of games. Me and Andrew often went into Savannahs room to play. I really enjoyed playing games. I had a good time there.
Fifth, we made gingerbread people and a gingerbread house. It was very fun. I enjoyed watching Savannah put stuff on a gingerbread person, then lick it off. I made a balloon dog after.
Sixth, we went to the Nutcracker ballet. I liked the music and the dancing. In the end I got ever so slightly bored.
Seventh, it was Christmas eve, so I was helping make food. It was delicious. On Christmas, I got a quill, a pandora charm and a toy. I am really happy with what I got.
Eighth, we visited Quebec City. We saw a massive hotel. we did Christmas shopping and then we went to a fudge shop. After that we saw a light show in a church. It was the most amazing light show ever. Then we went to a park with animals. There were lots of deer. There were otters and a bear. There were foxes, moose, bison, boar, horse, ducks and turkey.
Emma (9 years old)Meer informatie
Sum up of our gap year!
4–6 jan., Australië ⋅ 🌧 25 °C
That is it. It is the last blog for our gap year. It was the best year of my life for sure!!! I could travel forever. I love discovering new places, new art, new people, new food, new architecture… and more.
I loved spending time with my lot. I am grateful for Kev, Andrew and Emma. It was a real pleasure to spend our time together. We had had very few arguments and enjoyed each other’s company. I loved watching the kids discovering the world. I hope they will remember the experiences and the time together. I wish we could have more time together and I am dreading a bit going back home to the running around and always rushing and not enjoying as much time together. We will have to remember to make time for each other.
One of the questions, we get a lot is “which one was your favourite country?” It is very hard to choose one! I loved every country we visited, as they all have something interesting and fascinating.
Southeast Asia was a great place to start. There are so much to see, and it is well organised for travellers and still relatively cheap.
India was an eye opener and a very special experience. I loved it. I would love to go back to see more of it.
Africa (well the part we did) was amazing for the nature and the animal we saw. I will always remember giraffes walking next to elephants. Lions resting next to each other in the tall grass or walking majestically toward the water. So many pictures that I hope to keep in my head for ever.
I love Europe and it was great to visit it in summer, but it was very touristic and expansive! However, the art and history are amazing. Scotland was a highlight for me. The landscapes, culture, and the whole time there was amazing.
Ecuador was a great surprise. I didn’t know what to expect and was very nicely surprised by this country. Peru was amazing with so much culture and history and things to visit. We often think of the Inca when we mentioned Peru, but there is so much more than that!!!
Canada was amazing and cold! We loved it. I could see myself living there!
Some of the things we did that popped in my head are: getting wet in Victoria falls, the Taj Mahal and how it sounds inside it, amazing paintings and sculptures (especially the Statue of David) in Italy, being there for the first woman heavyweight world competition in Scotland, waiting for a massive family of elephant to go pass in Zambia, walking in the snow in Quebec, contemplating Macchu Pichu from above, doing my first zipline (of the this trip) with Andrew above a fort in India, watching Emma getting more and more confident doing zipline and loving it, floating on a gondola in Venezia, cooking classes in different countries, admiring massive statues of buddha in Southeast Asia, hearing ‘tuktuk?’ a thousand times, the taste of chai in India, catching up with friends and family in France, UK and Canada, baboons stealing our food (scary at the time, but fun to tell now!), watching 2 lions matting, walking in so many small streets in so many old town, the heat of northern India and the cold which surprised us in Namibia, trying food from all over the world, the colours everywhere in India, the smells (good and bad) in India as well, the poverty that we saw all over the world….
This trip was also a way of remembering how lucky we are to live in Australia: we have food on the table every day. We have electricity all the time. We have running hot and cold and drinkable water coming out of the tap. We have a solid roof over our head. We have easy transportation (car or public transportation). We have different good options for education. We have freedom of speech and access to information. We have parental leaves, paid holidays and pensions. And I am sure I forgot things. Yes no country is perfect, but we have to remember how hard it is in other countries and how lucky we are to live here.
We did see poverty everywhere we went (in rich and poor countries). There are still a lot to be done in the world. And as much as, yes, if the billionaires of this world were to donate a small part of their fortune, they could do a lot: I don’t thing they will do anything about it though. It is down to us, regular people, to give money to charity, give time to help somewhere, raise awareness to something that goes wrong somewhere and how we can help. If everybody does a little bit, the world would be better.
I would also like to talk about tourism. It is a great source of incomes for a lot of people and countries. But it is also a source of problems: environmental, economic as it push locals away from areas where they used to live, cultural as instead of doing jobs, people switch to tourist job related and knowledge are lost… and other issues that I am probably not aware of.
I am obviously not saying to not travel, but maybe to travel better. For example, in the Galapagos, we learnt that cruises don’t bring any money to the island: they bring everything with them and very little is coming back to locals. They are also usually not friendly to the planet.
Trying not to use big platforms like uber, as the price the drivers are paid is insanely small compared to normal fees. We did use Uber at the beginning of the trip, but they we avoid when possible.
The same is true for platforms like tripadvisor and such. To list your experience or your tours, they ask for insane prices which make it very hard for small local companies. You can look for ideas on it, but book in person when you are there.
As for accommodation, I am conflicted as we used booking.com a lot. I know this is a massive company and when we book apartments, it takes it away from local people. But I am not quite sure how to not do that. As a family, booking a hotel room is so much more expensive in most case. When we can cook in an apartment, it means we don’t have to eat out every meal and we save some money doing that, so we can travel longer. If someone as a solution, I would love to hear it!
I know I will do more research, for our next trip, to make sure we travel as smart as we can for us, but also for the country and people we will be visiting.
If I were to give one advice to someone who want to travel: DO IT!!!!! It doesn’t have to be a year but go! Don’t wait, we never know when we can’t travel anymore, so go now!!!!
To do a gap year, is a lot of work: a lot of planning, booking, researching. If you do it with kids, you had to take in account their education and how you want to do that, so yes, it is some work, but it is so rewarding!
I know we will travel again, Not another gap year, as it will be difficult to get enough money again and enough leaves from Kev’s work; but we will travel again. If I could, I would travel forever for sure. This is my thing, but there are 4 of us in the family, so we have to take everyone’s preference and find a middle in it. We will probably travel for 5 to 6 weeks every couple of years. It will have to do!
Well, that is it for me. I hope you enjoyed reading us. I loved writing about our adventures. I know I will love reading our blogs in several years from now. I hope it gave you some inspiration to do your travels or simply that you travelled with us in thoughts during this year.
Thank you for following us and see you around!!!
Mel
A sum up of my year.
I had my concerns when we first started. I was not sure I wanted to do a gap year. I had no idea how I would handle being away from what I knew, and not being where I was comfortable. Away from family, friends, the house, the dog, even work. Just a couple weeks in however, most of these concerns had slipped away. I had no idea how I would handle being a traveller. Turns out, I do ok. I had my moments. I can honestly say I muttered a few times “what the hell am I doing here?” After a while we just flowed along. I lost track of which day it was, it didn't matter. We worked with dates as we moved from place to place. I got to see how others in our world live, and feel incredibly fortunate to have grown up with what I now see as privilege. To be able to trust that the water out of the tap won't make you sick, or worse. To even have running water! To not be surrounded by shit and rubbish and consider that normal. Yes, I have seen some truly astonishing sights, grand things that I can hardly believe were made by humans. I have also seen things that made me feel incredibly uncomfortable and deeply sad. Poverty on an extreme level. People working their entire lives with no thought of “retiring”, and forget travel. No Centrelink payment, no pension, just work. While in the same city, opulence and wealth on an incredible level. I have seen the world, and it is beautiful. It also disgusts me.
After having said all that, would I still want to do it and see it all again, or even more? Absolutely! I encourage anyone to travel, even while influencers still exist on this planet, I would do it again in a heart beat! I just can't afford to.
Final paragraph for the blogging, and maybe my last blog ever. I spent a whole year with my family. We had our difficulties, we had our arguments and we had our moments when it was all a bit too much. We also shared so much. We shared moments of joy, laughter and sadness. We shared discovery and wonder. But best of all, we shared our time together, and I would never trade that for anything. I would spend every day for the rest of my life with my family if I could. That's not possible, so this year was extra special because of that. I thank Mel again for pushing me before the trip, and putting up with me the whole trip. Without Mel, it wouldn't have happened, and it has opened my eyes to a lot of things. I am forever grateful. That's it, that's all I have to say. Bye bye.
Kev
This is the last blog of the year, I’m doing a sum up of the year and mum made a series of questions that I’m going to answer. 1 Q. What did I think about it A. It was really fun, I’ve had plenty of incredible experiences and numerous time where I never want to stop, this year has changed my life in a good way, I want to travel forever. 2 Q. What’s your favourite part A. I don’t know, every where we went had good stuff but one of favourite places was Scotland, the land scape is beautiful and the castles are amazing. I also really liked Canada, the snow was really fun and it made the trees really pretty. 3 Q. Bad things about the gap year A. My least favourite thing on the gap year was taking buses, especially 24-hour ones, some of them were really uncomfortable and hot. 4 Q. What advice would I give to somebody who wants to travel A. Don’t eat at the big touristy places, eat where the locals eat, it’s always cheaper and better. 5 Q. Do I want to travel and if yes, where A. Yes I would travel again and the places I want to go are Japan, China, Antarctica, Egypt and Mexico. 6 Q. Anything else I want to add A. No.
That was the last blog for the gap year and one of my shortest, thank you for reading them and I hope you liked them. I will happily accept all donations to me and will be delighted if everybody please gave at least $50 to a poor little kid like me who only has I don’t know, 800 bucks, please give to me. Anyway, The end, to not be continued.
Andrew (10 years old)
This is me sum up of the year. I thought it was a very awesome year. I can’t believe it has been a year already. My favourite part was sandboarding. The worst thing about the year was how many buses we took. This is a piece of advice if you want to travel. Never take Flix bus. I want to travel again but this time to Japan. That is the end of the last blog. Hope you have enjoyed the adventure. Tips will happily be accepted. Good bye.
Emma (9 years old)
I (Mel) asked a few questions that the four of us had to answer to sum up the gap year. Here there are:
Best country for Food:
Mel: India and France.
Kev: India
Andrew: France and India
Emma: India and Thailand
Best country to see animals (pick 2 max):
Mel: Zambia and Namibia
Kev: Zambia and Namibia
Andrew: Zambia and Namibia
Emma: Namibia
Best country for landscapes (pick max 2)
Mel: Uk (Scotland), Ecuador and Peru
Kev: Peru and Scotand
Andrew: Scotland and Ecuador
Emma: Scotland
Best activity (pick 3):
Mel: Classes (cooking or craft), safari and visiting cities
Kev: Adrenaline, safari, trying food and visiting cities
Andrew: Adrenaline, amusement park and safari
Emma: Adrenaline, classes (cooking or craft), shows and massage
Best locomotion system:
Mel: Tuktuk
Kev: Feet, tuktuk and rental car
Andrew: train and plane (only the one with tv)
Emma: Tuktuk, train, sand buggy.
Which country I would like to come back to (pick 3 max.):
Mel: Laos, Scotland, India and Canada
Kev: India, Scotland and Canada
Andrew: Uk and Canada
Emma: Namibia, Scotland, Canada
The gap year with the 5 senses
Taste
Mel: Chai tea in India
Kev: Whisky sour in Laos, Tandoori chicken in India, Haggis in Scotland
Andrew: Nicholas Flamel main meal in Paris and meat Nshima in Lusaka
Emma: Lasagna in Italy (good), Mango sushi in Colca canyon in Peru (bad)
Sound
Mel: Muslim call to prayer in India, Chai guy in India, Hippopotamus laughing in Zambia
Kev: Elephant trumpeting in Zambia
Andrew: Chai guy in the train in India
Emma: Uggghhh (after learning we are going to visit a museum) and “Why a bus???!!!”
View
Mel: first view of the Taj Mahal and the first view of Machu Pichu
Kev: The Andes mountains in Peru and Ecuador
Andrew: Scotland landscapes
Emma: Seeing a wild rabbit in Scotland, seeing Millie (a horse) in the UK
Touch
Mel: Alpaca wool (so soft!), old stones touched by people for hundreds of years.
Kev: Hot springs in Colca canyon in Peru
Andrew: Touching fresh sushi in Toronto
Emma: Chai cup in clay, marble in the Taj Mahal, sting ray in aquarium in the touch pool
Smell
Mel; Incense in religious site
Kev; Spices in India
Andrew: Smelling the meet cooking in Lusaka
Emma: Soy sauce (good), the rose perfume from a shop in India (good), pee street in Bangkok (bad).Meer informatie
