The eponymous capital of the province of Quebec is truly charming. I can't think of a more photogenic town I've been to in North America. It's old enough to bear the European comparison - this is the continent's only walled city, with proper old bits, fortifications, and urban growth extra muros - and delightful enough to entice hoards of tourists. It really did feel like I was walking around, say, Bruges. In fact Bruges is a good comparison because when I was there I was surprised at how wide all the roads were (a sign of the wealth of the town back when it was being built). This being North America, even the twisting hilltop streets have room enough for you to drive your MPV up them without having to worry about bumping your bumpers.

The weather was largely sunny, which always helps a pretty city, and while the sun was hot the shade was much cooler, which always helps a tired tourist. The setting is marvellous: a hilltop overlooking a bend in the magnificent St Lawrence river (which at Quebec City has about 10% salinity already, some 500 miles from the open seas, its estuary is so long), with actually some hills on the horizon - the land between Montreal and Quebec City is unrelentingly flat, as I discovered while looking out of the train window. The town itself has a bevy of beautiful buildings to show off, including cathedrals, churches, the town hall, the parliament building and some delightful more modern stuff too.

I stayed in the Youth Hostel, and it was a bit of a shock to the system having to sleep in a room with a bunch of strangers again for the first time since I left New Zealand in May. But hey, I'll have to be getting used to that again soon! The hostel itself was very clean & tidy, as indeed was the whole town. I didn't see a scrap of rubbish on the floor anywhere. And all the bars and restaurants were well-kept too. It was a little bit like Whistler, only in Whistler all the Old-World charm is ersatz and deliberate, while here it feels coincidental and (almost) the real thing.

One of the two major highlights for me of Quebec City was the Inuit Art Museum, which not only gives an excellent overview of Inuit history & geography and of artistic trends in the various Inuit communities, but also describes the painstaking efforts of the Canadian government since the 1950s first to encourage Inuit to take up sculpting as a job, so they can earn a bit of cash and not be a burden on federal coffers, and then to create a market for Inuit art around the world. In this they have been successful, and it seems that the push towards art production is one centrally-driven socioeconomic policy that has definitely paid off for Canada. Everyone's a winner: the Inuit have a source of income other than selling fish; the government doesn't have to spend so much on support programmes for its northern inhabitants; and the world can delight at bizarre but fascinating sculptures of seals being harpooned and of scary shamen faces emerging from polar bears.

I got the coach home, just to vary my modes of transport a bit, and am sad to say that the train was better. The one benefit was the view out of the front of the coach as we headed back west from Quebec to Montreal: the sunset was really rather nice, and I spent the best part of an hour watching the bands of cloud over the horizon turn from white to pink to purple to grey.

I walked into the house, and two minutes later Jenny & Neil came home too, so we all decided to turn right round and go out for a beer. We went to a nearby microbrewery and had a quick one. Very tasty!

On Friday I took a very bold step: I Bought A Digital Camera! Oh yes, after relentless pressure from almost everyone I've met over the last two years to enter the twenty-first century of photography, I have finally succumbed. It pains me to buy a new camera when my old one isn't even broken yet. I mean, what am I supposed to do with the 35mm? I can't just bin a perfectly good camera. But the economics of this last twelve months' film developing and processing has made it plain to me that the new camera will pay for itself in under a year. Sort of. Maybe two.

So, to celebrate this amazing change, we went out in the Vieux Port area of town for an Italian meal and lots & lots to drink. We ended up speed-guzzling several pitchers of beer and a litre of wine, ably assisted by Dave from their office who we played darts with the other night. We were in this bar with a live band who were doing really good covers of diverse music - A-Ha, U2 and No Doubt were all in there. It was a big night, that's for sure!

On Saturday I woke up feeling like I'd been spinning in a centrifuge all night. I blame the pasta, of course! The trip to the supermarket helped a little, inasmuch as I was introduced to the delights of Krispy Kreme donuts from California. But I was still feeling a little queasy as we set off on a bike trip to the Formula One circuit on an island between Montreal and the mainland. Soon, my thoughts passed from my sore head to a much sorer arse: the bike I was borrowing has a saddle that could slice salami. But, bizarrely, I felt a lot better after the picnic and the ride round the circuit. Even the big uphill bit back home wasn't too bad. I feel I might have difficulty sitting for long periods though for a while.

That evening we drove to the area of town behind the Mont Royal to have a barbecue with some friends of Neil & Jenny. It was a bit chilly sitting on the balcony, but the conversation of new people - not to mention the enormous steak that Neil had marinaded in about a metric tonne of garlic for me - was most warming. An interesting fact I learned that evening is that French people are disliked just as much by Quebeckers as English people: a French couple who also work with Neil & Jenny were telling me that sometimes they just don't bother speaking French because of the bad reactions they will get when people hear their European accent.

Driving back home around midnight we had to cross the Plateau area of town. The traffic was mad! It seems this is the area of town for Beautiful People, who don't head out before 11 and like to be seen in their fine clothes and big cars. But luckily for me it's also the home of Montreal's bagel bakeries. Apparently, New York isn't the true home of the bagel, Montreal is. And I have to say that the bagels Jenny & I picked up on Sunday morning (on another bike ride - how healthy are we!) from Plateau were simply the best I've ever tasted. Wow!

American toilets: they're too explicit! I thought it was just the Germans that had a penchant for scatological self-study, but recent experiences show me that any US or Canadian citizen has this object of research right in his face if he wants it. The only difference being that, where in Germany inspection is aided by a flat catching plate raised above the water level (allowing subsequent "off the shelf" flushing), in North America the bowl is of the normal conical design but with much shallower sides and much fuller of water. This enables both floaters and sinkers to be gazed upon in wonderment before they are sucked away in a huge Hurricane Charley style vortex of flushing.

I awoke in time to see Jenny & Neil before they headed off to work. I took it easy, reading some of the Lonely Planet Quebec they lent me and beginning to decide what I wanted to do while I am here. In the afternoon I visited the Biodôme, part of the Olympic complex to the east of the centre of town, which contains plants & animals from four distinct climatic zones: the estuary of the St Lawrence river; the arctic & antarctic; temperate forests; and tropical rainforest. Of these the most impressive was the rainforest zone, containing golden lion tamarins, caimans, capibara, tree frogs and sloths as well as hundreds of different trees and shrubs.

The building that houses the Biodôme is very concrete, and has as its backdrop the world's tallest leaning structure (which coincidentally is also very concrete - but the Olympics were in 1976 after all). The off-white blended harmoniously with the drizzly clouds that filled the sky, and was complemented by the huge puddles that had formed on the wide concrete pavement area around the building. It's a bit of an antitardis too, because I was convinced I was going to be the only person there when I walked across the desolate plaza from the Métro station, and yet inside there were crowds of people wandering from habitat to habitat, some shrieking and whistling in an attempt to get the attention of the animals.

To get there I had to use the Montreal Métro system, which is modelled on Paris with the same rubber tyred cars and the same barriers they had in Paris until about ten years ago. Being on the train put me in mind of the excellent present Simon & Hester gave me for my birthday: a coffee-table guide to the world's metro and light rail systems. Well, that's one more I can tick off! Only about 120 to go.

In the evening, Neil & Jennifer took me to an Irish pub in the Downtown area, where they had arranged to play darts with work colleagues. The beer was expensive but the food was cheap. A good night was had by all.

On Tuesday I got my arse in gear and worked out a travel plan for myself for the next few days. Then I set about putting it into action, by heading for the bus station, the ferry terminal (which I decided against in the end, because the jetfoil was the same kind as on the Mekong in Cambodia, but they weren't allowing anyone to sit on the roof - which is fair enough, as there is no seating and nothing to stop you falling overboard up there - but that didn't stop people in Cambodia - and I remember the ride indoors was very loud & cold) and the railway station to buy tickets. Then I allowed myself to become a tourist proper, walking slowly between sights and soaking up the atmosphere.

Montreal is a pleasant city, standing on an island in the St Lawrence river at the base of a big hill. It has some hilly streets and many different areas, each with its own flair. It is called "Paris without the jetlag" by Americans, and indeed there are a lot of French aspects everywhere; from the ruling that says any bilingual signs must have the lettering of the English only one-third the size of the French, to the many Catholic churches dotted about the city. But to be honest (and speaking as a European) it has much more in common with other picturesque North American cities like San Francisco, Chicago or New York than it does with Paris. Just the feel of the roads is altogether American, with big trucks and bloated SUVs & MPVs everywhere, and most of the arhitecture is American (ie big & boxy) too.

Okay, so there's more of a sense of maturity here - Montreal was founded in 1642 afer all - in the way that not all the buildings are gleaming new and some of them have had more than one purpose over the years. Compare this to somewhere like Minneapolis, which feels as though it's been knocked up in the last hundred years and whose oldest building is some 150-year-old shack somewhere in a park. It still isn't Paris though. Perhaps the outskirts of Paris.

On Tuesday I took a train to Quebec City...

On Friday morning I awoke refreshed but dehydrated. I blame the seven-hour flight and the jetlag. It can't have had anything to do with the copious amounts of beer I consumed the night before. I dragged myself out of bed and down to the free breakfast buffet, and proceeded to tuck in to a selection of American favourites (French toast, Golden Grahams cereal, bagels etc), of which the most pleasing aspect was a do-it-yourself waffle machine: just pour a pre-measured cup of pre-mixed batter, fold the lid down, and hit start. Three minutes later a perfectly toasted waffle emerged and I smothered it in maple syrup.

I met up with Niels at breakfast, and we agreed to get together around lunchtime to visit the local shopping mall (well this is America after all). We were joined by Geert & his brother Tim. The mall was described the night before by Cynthia & Jennifer as the poshest one in the area, particularly if you walked through the skywalk from the south side to the very chic north side. This proved to be true: on the north side were the Mont Blanc pen shop, the Cartier shop and the Bang & Olufsen shop. There was also a (to my mind somewhat downmarket) gadget shop, selling things As Seen On TV including a fabulous body massage reclining leather armchair that I found it difficult to leave behind.

In B&O we had a hilarious forty-five minute chat with the proprietor, who for some reason thought we were all English and was bigging up his English roots. From what he was telling us, he has a sorted life: by day, a purveyor of peerless hifi equipment; by night a drummer and singer in a band; at weekends a biker, womaniser & fast car junkie. I hope for his sake that this wasn't all a spiel to impress us and make us want to buy his $17,000 - yes, seventeen thousand dollar - speaker system (which was indeed impressive, both in technical spec - which I didn't understand, but it seems the speakers check the room they're in for furniture and adjust their output to compensate - and in sound quality).

In the afternoon we went for a swim in the pool at the Marriott, where Geert & his brother are staying. They also had a really hot whirlpool and an even hotter Turkish sauna. Then, after getting into our smart gear, Geert drove me & Niels to the location of the wedding. His wedding. It was remarkable how calmly he was taking the day.

The wedding went beautifully well. Sadly for Geert, there was no huge fork of lightning at the moment of his "I do" - the storms didn't roll in until a few hours later, and then they were spectacular - but by general agreement the service was lovely. A nice touch after the service proper was that Geert & Jennifer walked around the congregation and had a few words with each group of guests, and people stayed in their seats until they had spoken with the newlyweds.

At the reception, I was sat at a table with Sharon, one of the bridesmaids, and her friend Lisa who had her five-year-old daughter Kwami with her. Kwami was such a sweetie!! She took loads of people up to the dance floor (including me) and she was dead keen on taking pictures with the disposable cameras that had been provided on all the tables. Also at my table was Terry, an American living in London, who took some cracking pictures with his digital camera.

The evening was lovely. Perhaps not enough people were up dancing all the time, but that's only because they were busy having lots of great conversations instead. Or could it have something to do with George, the dodgy DJ? His during-dinner music was spot on, but his after-dinner sets were a little quirky. But there were enough great tunes for me to have worked up a good sweat by the end of the night.

On the Saturday, a group of us gathered in the lobby of the Marriott at twelve and we set off to "do" Detroit downtown. Our first stop was a restaurant in Greektown with fabulous flambéd slabs of cheese - very tasty. Next we went on the People Mover, Detroit's version of a light rail service that looks more like one of those Lego railways from the later Space sets - you know, a monorail all up on stilts and going round impossibly tight corners. It doesn't really go very far, just a mini-loop around the centre of the downtown area. But that's to be expected in a town where the car industry has dominated for so long.

We got off at the waterfront and joined the unexpectedly long queue for the sightseeing boat ride. As there were ten of us (Geert, Jen, Geert's parents, his brother Tim, Niels, Simone, myself, Dave & Lucia) we got a slight reduction on the price. Hurrah! The cruise was a couple of hours long and actually really enjoyable. (There was Canadian beer to be had which helped.) The views themselves took in not only downtown Detroit but also much of the riverside park that will soon stretch out a couple of miles east, as well as some islands in the Detroit River, and of course the south shore which is actually the city of Windsor in Canada. It's weird that Canada should be south of the US, but that's how it is just here, a spit of land that points southwest between a couple of Great Lakes.

The most memorable view was not of skyscrapers in the US or of luxurious waterfront homes in Canada, but of the sprawling black monster that is the United Steel Works of Michigan. It was reminiscent of the early industrial London landscapes painted by the Expressionists, with the same belching chimneys and huge, angular struts pointing at all angles, and even the same hazy low cloud refracting the afternoon sunlight into unexpected hues. Seen through the filter of our modern sensibilities to environmental issues, the complex looks like a gigantic bloated tick sucking the life blood out of the surrounding area. But, leaving to one side the social & environmental issues and taking the factory as a visual experience alone, it is indeed a remarkable vista, one I would want to paint if I could paint.

After the boat we walked back into Greektown, stopping for a beer in a somewhat run-down looking bar that for me had the air of a locals' pub, somewhere on the edge of a not particularly pretty town, that has gone to seed a bit but still has character. We were the only white patrons that afternoon, and I got the impression it was the sort of place white Americans wouldn't necessarily make a beeline for, but I have to say I didn't feel in the least bit threatened. I suspect the whole racial antagonism thing has become much less of an issue in reality, if not yet in locals' perceptions, since the awful riots of yesteryear. I hope, much as I did in South Africa, that there can be reconciliation, and I feel things are moving in that direction.

Before dinner we popped into a grungy-looking Detroit tourist teeshirt shop, where I gave in to peer pressure & bought an "Exit 69: Big Beaver Rd" roadsign teeshirt. Aside from appealing to my schoolboy rude words sense of humour (I refer the reader to my collection of amusing foreign chocolate wrappers elsewhere on my website), it is actually where our hotel is located. Choice! Dinner was in Pizzapapalis, a Pizza Hut-style food place with Chicago inspired pizza pies that are truly filling. I was sat on a table with Geert, Niels & Simone, and the four of us spent the time we had to wait for our pizzas drinking beer, giggling and playing Dutch rude word hangman using the crayons & paper supplied for younger visitors. It was great! The evening was rounded off in the home of some of Jennifer's cousins, where we played Europe v. USA Trivial Pursuit. Needless to say, we let the Americans win.

Sunday morning I spent packing my various bags. I was brought through pouring rain to the airport by Geert, Jen & Niels (who was also leaving that day) . Then it was a short flight in a crappy NorthWorst DC9 to Montreal, where I was met at the (ridiculously crowded) airport by my English friend Jennifer & her bloke Neil. They took me through pouring rain - I think it followed me - to their lovely flat just east of the centre of town, and we had a cosy evening of barbecue, beer and Grand Prix (Michael Schumacher coming second but still clinching his seventh World Champion title).

Three things of note spring to mind about the flight to Detroit. First, we were an hour and a half late taking off because some fool couldn't detach the airbridge from the side of the plane and made us lose our takeoff slot. Second, I was sat three rows away from the loudest screaming baby I have ever encountered on a plane - she screamed with clockwork regularity on the hour, every hour, and each scream was an uninterrupted howl which made me wonder how the baby was managing a) to inhale and b) not to spit out her own larynx - and believe me, I have nothing but sympathy for her parents, who must have had to endure these ear-rending shrieks every day of her short life).

The third, and by far the most interesting, inflight info is that I was sat next to a guy who is working for Halliburton in Iraq, doing logistics for the US forces there. He was telling me about life on a military base near Baghdad airport. It was interesting to get an inside view on the subject that so many hours of TV journalism have been devoted to in recent months. The most gripping stories he had to tell concerned the attacks on base personnel, both American and Iraqi. I suppose the telly had prepared me to expect stories about mortar attacks on soldiers, but it was a different twist to hear that, while most mortars land fairly harmlessly near the perimeter of the base, at one point a group of non-military accommodation cabins caught a direct hit. My neighbour's manager survived the explosion of his cabin only because he had happened to step outside to light a cigarette.

I also hadn't imagined the frequency of these attacks: I learned that mortars had come in roughly once a week during the four months my neighbour had been stationed in Baghdad. And he tells me the base on the other side of the road, right next to the airport, suffers far more regular attacks. My neighbour told me that the base lies not in the desert (which is mostly green scrubland, not sandy dunes, but still bloody hot) but in fact backs onto apartment blocks at the edge of town. These were the site of intense anti-US sniper activity until helicopter gunships made it clear that the military were prepared to use overwhelming force to defend the compound.

On another note, I'm ashamed to say it hadn't occurred to me to consider the plight of those pro-American Iraqis who work at the base, who are the target of death threats and attacks from anti-American Iraqi groups. But it's only logical to assume that those gaining directly from the US presence - in other words, those like the base workers whose livelihoods depend directly on the US forces - stand to suffer first at the hands of those most opposed to the US presence.

But back to the mundane: Detroit airport has recently been expanded, it seems. The passport controls were well-organised, with plenty of people to deal with us. I was somewhat concerned when all the passengers in the queue ahead of me were having to be fingerprint scanned, but they didn't ask me to do that, so my English sense of personal liberty has not been infringed upon. I was met off the plane by Jennifer's mother Cynthia. I am grateful to her fortaking time out of a busy day to pick me up; she seemed calm but I'm thinking the mother of the bride the day before the wedding will have had other more important things on her mind! Outside the air-conditioned chill of the terminal building it was a sultry afternoon, with hazy sunshine and almost a tropical feel to it. We drove along freeways and highways, zigzagging across the northern outskirts of the city.

At one point we found ourselves on the wrong road, a street that ran parallel to the highway we were looking for. As we drove along it I gradually became aware that Cynthia's & mine were the only white faces to be seen. When I mentioned this to Cynthia, she told me that it wasn't a road she would normally ever travel on, especially at night, because it was dangerous. It felt like I was South Africa again, driving through a blacks-only township, only the people I saw here in cars and on street corners were substantially wider than any Africans I encountered. Americans of different ethnicities may live in separate suburbs, but they clearly share dietary habits.

At the hotel, I was pleasantly surprised to discover that one of the check-in girls was a compatriot of mine, who had been working here for four years. Her origins were made clear when she exclaimed to me "Ah miss me Brummie and me mates!" The room is huge, with two double beds, which means I have plenty of room to unpack my various pieces of luggage. It was a quick turnaround at the hotel, because we had an appointment with a barbecue at Jennifer's aunt's house. Cynthia drove me, Dave (a friend of Geert's from his Antananarivo days) & Lucia (Dave's Malagasy wife) from our hotel to the party.

It was so great to see Geert & Jennifer again! There were lots of other people there too. Those I met included Geert's brother Tim, his parents, his best man Niels, and a bunch of Jennifer's girlfriends: Simone from Holland, Vicky from England and Aleta from Minnesota. We formed a Euro table and had lots of fun tucking into American barbecue favourites like potato skins, taquitos and spring rolls. There was also a tasty keg of local beer to enjoy.

Later in the evening, when we had all had more than our fair share of mosquito bites, we headed back to our hotels (some of us are in the Troy Drury Inn and some are in the Troy Marriott opposite). The girls turned in early, but the boys (including Jennifer's aunt's husband Mike, and actually also Geert's parents and Dave's wife) wanted to have a couple more beers. So we went into Champs, a big sports bar replete with five hundred TV screens handily located next to the Drury Inn, and did just that. I was fighting off jetlag and I am proud to say that I managed not to doze off at all, even though we didn't leave until gone two o'clock - which for my body was seven in the morning. But when I finally got up to my room, I have to admit I welcomed sleep with open arms; I think I remember putting my head on the pillow, but that's about it.

The journey to Brussels was fun. We had lots of conversation, some serious, some frivolous, but all entertaining. Switching between French & Spanish, we even had a few minutes of English here & there. Pascale was keen to learn some English bad language, and I was happy to oblige.

We were mapless and in-car-satnav-less, so just outside Brussels we stopped and had a look in a Brussels A-Z to find the way to Therese's flat. It turned out to be relatively straightforward, seeing as the motorway we were on ends in Ixelles, the area of town we were heading for. We parked up and then found that there was nobody home, so I rang Therese and she gave us directions to a bar where we could wait in comfort. It was a cool bar, too, with lots of great beers and lots of beautiful people. Paulina came to meet us there, and then Therese turned up too. Then Claude rang me to say that he could make it from Leuven into town for food. We went to find a nearby Portuguese restaurant but it was closed, and we were just about to enter a Vietnamese place when Claude turned up.

It was fab to have five friends of mine from different parts of my life in one place with me! Everyone got on famously with one another. My linguist pleasure centres were tweaked by the way the conversation drifted from English to French to Spanish, with some Portuguese and Italian thrown in for good measure. And the food was great too. (I managed to impress the Vietnamese owner's wife with my fresh spring roll rolling skills - but then again, I was in Vietnam only a few months ago, so the way to do it was still - sorry for this - "fresh" in my mind.) The evening ended late but still too soon, and we (minus Claude) walked back to Therese's gorgeous brand-new flat and got ready for bed.

The Friday was a day of highs and lows for me. It started off so well, with a super-strong Brazilian coffee at home followed by a gentle stroll to Le Pain Quotidien, Belgium's finest chain of brunch bars, where we gorged ourselves on yummy breads, spreads & jams over coffee & juice.

Things took a major turn for the worse when I foolishly decided to buy a topup voucher for my mobile phone. Too late I discovered that Vodafone Belgium has nothing to do with Vodafone Anywhere-Else. The man in the shop refused to refund me my cash, because I had already scratched off the panel to reveal the topup code number. Dan, if you're reading this, we are talking serious bouts of deja vu here! After over an hour of "communication" with various Vodafone offices (I use quotes because 90% of the time I was either on hold listening to shite muzak or being passed from person to person or being cut off) I was helpfully told by a woman in Madrid that I should find a Belgian who trusted me and sell them my credit! Which in the end I did; Therese kindly bought the topup card off me for her mother. But I was in a foul mood after all this, because I had wasted my friends' time. And their money: because I was unable to make calls - even free ones to Vodafone - from my phone, Pepe let me borrow his, and then I burned up 10 euros of his credit just being on hold to Vodafone Spain. It was all too much.

After some sightseeing in central Brussels (you know, the usual stuff: Grand' Place, Cathedral, a couple of tasty Belgian beers somewhere) my mood lifted again when I learned that we were to meet up not only with Therese but with a couple of blasts from the past in the form of Inka & Alison. They were over for the weekend visiting Therese, and had just arrived at lunchtime. We all got together and had a drink in a bar. Then Paulina went off to see friends, the Powergen connection girls took Therese home - she was knackered after a very long week at work - and the three of us had another wander around and a bite to eat, before also heading back to Therese's flat.

Pascale & Pepe kindly dropped me off at the station that evening, and I bade them farewell in a truly Belgian location: facing the wrong way on a bit of roadworks outside the wrong entrance to the Bruxelles Midi! I found my way into the station, and was appalled to discover that the incompetence one has come to expect of British railways had travelled along the Eurostar route and blossomed into farce at the Belgian terminus. The queue for check-in stretched out into the normal part of the station, and there were only two police officers in booths to check passports. This was much more shambolic than the procedures at Waterloo, and the only reason I can think of for it is that, being August, most of the staff were on holiday. However, despite leaving fifteen minutes late, a very full train arrived on time in London. From there I caught a generally much shittier train out to Guildford and Chris picked me up & took me home.

The next few days I spent in a bit of a tiz, between helping to dig a pond in Chris & Kate's garden, doing two years' worth of tax returns, sorting out what I wanted to bring with me to Australia, and generally getting used to the idea of leaving chunks of my life behind in Europe. I managed not to cry when I said goodbye to Kate on the Thursday morning (she couldn't come to Heathrow with us) but I blubbed uncontrollably after Chris & the girls had left me in Terminal 4. Without wanting to sound melodramatic (oh, okay, I do want to sound melodramatic of course, because that's me, but anyway, whatever) this really was the end of an era. By the time I return from my time away, everyone will be a year older - which in the case of Sophie, Livi, Ryan & Charlie will make a big difference - and the world will have moved on in ways I can't begin to predict. But I have a sneaking suspicion I'm going to enjoy the next year of my life.