My poor mum and my poor body! I really suffered in Toronto and Montreal and my husband was the same in Vancouver. The food poisoning lasted pretty much the entire time I was with my mum.

Toronto

I arrived the night before my mum so I could go and pick her up from the airport. She always has a really panicked look on her face before she sees me which makes me laugh. We trotted about but could never be too far away from the hotel!

#NiagaraFalls
Something was looking out for me because my stomach wasn’t so bad that day and a bloody good job too because I don’t know what I would have done. Niagara was the best thing about Canada and my mum had a really good time too, so I was happy.

Montreal

We got the train to Montreal and I think it was maybe 4/5 hours. My stomach was all right on the train too, luckily.

Montreal felt very European in parts and a lot of the people felt very French. We watched a light show in the church which we both really liked but my stomach! I had very little appetite at this point, probably scared of eating as much as anything else.

I had a lot of things I had wanted to eat in Montreal but then couldn’t. We shared a galette and a pancake but I really did not want to eat at all, my mum had to have most of it. We managed to have poutine but I’d rather stick to chips and gravy from the chippy, there’s no need for the cheese and it was too salty (but that’s just food in North America to me).

We’d practically done nothing by this point because I was in AGONY in the room. At one point housekeeping were in the room and I had to shoo them out. She was saying, Miss Emily, we’ve not finished and I was like, it’s not an issue! We went to Montreal Museum of Fine Arts but pretty much everyone would not speak English. After 5 years of French at school, I know very little. My mum can understand basic stuff though, so we survived.

Toronto

Got the train back and it was delayed by 1hr30 mins so we were on it for nearly 7 hours. I got a lot of reading done.

Back in Toronto, we wanted to go on a boat – couldn’t. We wanted to go up the tower – couldn’t. All we could do was loop around the hotel, never straying too far.

Some food we/I managed.

My mum’s flight and mine were at similar times, so off to the airport we went together. Stomach was kind of back to normal but I lost so much weight! My pants were hanging off me.

Do I ever want to go back to Canada? Not really but it was nice enough. I suspect my stomach-issues haven’t added to the good memories either.

Emily