On New Beginnings and Moving to Montreal - Feather and the Wind

It’s official! Fel and Wes are among the newest residents of Montreal, Quebec.

We’ve signed a lease on a cozy 1 bedroom apartment and, for the first time since 2013, we’ll be staying put. Well, at least until the end of June. We’re still getting used to the city, the cold and the French, but are incredibly happy with our choice so far.

I’m hesitant to say we’re “settling down” because I feel that term implies we’re missing out on something or compromising for less in a way.

One source defines settling as: to begin to live a quiet and steady life by getting a regular job, getting married, etc.

We’re neither getting married nor getting traditional jobs so that doesn’t really fit. I much prefer this definition: to become familiar with a place and to feel happy and confident in it.

For us, this move to Montreal marks a new and exciting chapter. The adventure continues, just in a different way.

Our new neighbourhood: Le Plateau-Mont-Royal

Finding a place to live in Montreal was a lot harder than either of us had anticipated. For one, Montreal has an unofficial “moving day” of July 1st which complicates things a tad when you’re looking for rentals in October. We had heard about this before we arrived but we didn’t realize that only a teeny, tiny fraction of listings would be available at this time of year.

Apparently, this Moving Day tradition in Quebec dates all the way back to the 18th century when Moving Day was May 1st to prevent tenants from being evicted in the brutal winters. This was later revised to July 1st and, while not required by law, the tradition lives on (as inconvenient as it may be). Even today, some 10% of Montreal’s population will be moving on July 1st. If we decide to stay in the city, we’ll be partaking in the mayhem of moving along with tens of thousands of other residents. Should be fun!

It took a few weeks and a whole lotta patience before we found a place we both liked in the Le Plateau-Mont-Royal neighbourhood of Montreal. I replied to an ad on Kijiji (which, ironically, is the same way I met Wes), and we took over the lease of a student who was moving to Ottawa. It’s a one-bedroom, unfurnished apartment with everything we need plus a balcony. We’re being mindful of our purchases because it isn’t cheap to furnish an entire apartment from scratch. With a bit of patience and planning, we’ve scored a couple of great finds including a gently used leather sofa bed with a brand new mattress in case anyone cares to come and visit!

Despite some minor headaches (the excited dogs that live upstairs, our unusually loud shower, frustrations with our building manager), things are slowly coming together and we’re relishing every little bit of progress at our new home-for-now. Last night our bed frame arrived which thankfully put an end to our days of sleeping on a mattress on the floor. We’ve each set up our own workspace and have even started a 4pm hot chocolate ritual each afternoon (with extra marshmallows if we’ve been particularly productive).

The excitement of new rituals

As we start to dive into an entirely new routine, I can’t help but think back to a Paulo Coelho quote:

In some ways, it can be. But these are new and exciting routines for us after years on the road. Something as trivial as Saturday brunch at home in our pj’s is a tradition we’ve never had and now look forward to. I love having a fully functioning kitchen to call my own where I can try new recipes and frantically wave a cloth in front of the detector when the fire alarm inevitably goes off. I love that our building has a gym and I can get my steps in on a treadmill while listening to an inspiring podcast without having to face the sometimes brutally cold winds outside. I love being able to work from the same desk each day and make progress on the information we have yet to share from our trips to Russia, Georgia and even places in Mexico, Hungary and Japan we have yet to write about. I love seeing Wes thrive in the new film jobs he’s been getting and the progress he makes with his French every day.

I could go on and on but I’m fully aware the novelty of these seemingly normal things is bound to wear off with time. Nonetheless, this is proving to be exactly what we both needed at this point in our lives.

Most Frequently Asked Questions

The decision to commit to one city for over 6 months was not one we took lightly. The initial idea came about in the summer at one of our lets-plan-our-lives-over-multiple-beers sessions. For weeks afterward, the thought of moving to Montreal kept coming up and it started to feel a little less crazy with each conversation.

After sharing the news on Instagram last weekend, our inbox was flooded with questions from curious friends and followers. There was a definite theme and so we’re addressing the 3 most popular questions about our decision to move to Montreal:

◇ WHY AREN’T YOU TRAVELLING FULL-TIME ANYMORE? ◇

There’s so much we love about life on the road. Between exploring those lesser-known destinations and revisiting our favourite cities in the world, we started to develop on unintentional routine each year. Since we set off on that first backpacking journey in 2015, we found ourselves travelling between Central Europe and Mexico. While others ticked off bucket list adventures and visited dozens of countries, we gravitated to these two regions of the world and were excited to uncover more with each visit.

We’d spend most of the winter months in Mexico and then visit friends and family in Canada before making our way over to Europe. This cycle worked well for us and allowed us to visit our favourite bases each year like Mexico City and Budapest. This year, at the end of August, we started making plans to continue travelling through Europe for the fall and make our way back to Mexico after spending the holidays with family in Canada. It seemed like a good idea since we’ve done it so many times before but the cycle didn’t feel as exciting this time around.

We were in the middle of our 8 week stay in Budapest when we realized how much we enjoyed being in one place. The thought of packing up and starting another segment of travel through the Balkans started to lose its appeal.

Long story longer, we reached a point where we weren’t feeling fulfilled by bouncing around from place to place. As exciting as it seems to live life out of a suitcase, it can also be exhausting when you’re not living a well-balanced life. We felt like we were losing momentum on our progress with each move and never dedicating enough time to growing our blog and video production business. It was a challenge for us to create the quality content we wanted to share with the world while experiencing a new and exciting destination and simultaneously planning for the next trip. I admire those who can manage but we felt we were spreading ourselves thin and not giving each project the attention it deserved.

I think some refer to this as burnout but it felt like more than that for us. It’s a feeling we’ve grown familiar with over the years and you likely remember a similar stage in our lives about a year and a half ago when we decided to base ourselves out of Vancouver.

All this to say, we agreed it was time to look for a place to call our own, make connections in the community and have a home to come back to after our travels. So, we’re committing to Montreal until our lease is up in June and we’ll take it from there!

◇ WHAT MADE YOU CHOOSE MONTREAL? ◇

If you’re familiar with our new province of Quebec, you may know we’re living in a predominantly French speaking part of the country. While Canada has two official languages, Quebec is the only province where you’ll hear more French than English. The idea of moving to a region that is entirely new to both of us almost makes it feel like we’re still travelling.

We’ve been here less than a month and already we’ve noticed so many differences in the way things are done in Quebec. There’s a strong sense of cultural identity among French-Canadians and living in Montreal allows us to experience a side of our country we know so little about.

A big part of our focus over the next six months is to grow and develop the skills that we would often put on the back burner while travelling. We wanted a city where we could each grow professionally in areas like travel, food and film (here we’ve got all 3!). For me, the focus will be on my freelance writing and travel photography. I hope to build new connections in the travel industry as I dip my toes into the world of culinary travel and broaden my writing portfolio outside of this blog. For Wes, it’s developing a more stylized approach to his videos as he works toward filming bigger projects like commercials and music videos. He’s also committed to learning two 3D programs that seem extremely complicated to me: Houdini and Blender.

Perhaps one of the biggest draws to living in Montreal is the diverse arts scene. There is so much history here and we’ve noticed more of a European influence than other Canadian cities. When it comes to food, Montreal consistently ranks as a top foodie destination and we’re looking forward to sharing our favourite restaurants as we discover them.

Even though we’re only just starting to experience the joys of Montreal’s long winter season, I’ve already taken a peak at Skyscanner’s deals for last-minute flights. We favoured a city on Canada’s Eastern side because we know non-stop flights to Europe are readily available for whenever we get that itch to travel ;)

And lastly, a major concern for us when deciding to move was the cost of living. When you’re used to travelling to cities where a complete meal will cost you less than $5 CAD and your monthly Airbnb is usually under $500 CAD, the thought of coming back to Canadian prices (and taxes) was a bit daunting. Prices for rent in downtown Montreal happen to be a lot more affordable when compared to other major North American cities. This means we’re able to live in a very central neighbourhood in Montreal for about 60% of what we’d pay in comparable areas of Toronto and Vancouver.

◇ ARE YOU STILL GOING TO BE TRAVELLING AND MAKING VIDEOS? ◇

The short answer is not nearly as much as before. But with Fel and Wes, you never really know! This is unfamiliar territory for us so it’s hard to say we won’t be travelling. We may not be exploring exotic destinations as frequently but we are looking forward to sharing more about the places we know and love. I mean, we’ve been to Budapest 5 times and when people ask me for advice I don’t even have a post with our best tips to direct them to! Not yet, anyways.

As far as YouTube goes, we’ve still got a couple of videos about our adventures in Russia to share with you. If a spontaneous trip does come up (which is entirely likely knowing our terrible habit of booking last-minute getaways), our videos will take the direction of our Meeting Georgia video as opposed to our former, more casual travel vlogs. We find this allows us to be more fully present in our travels while still capturing a destination’s beauty and sharing it in a more cinematic way.

I applaud you if you’ve made it to the end of this post! My original attempt was to keep this update brief but, over 2,000 words later and I’m still here. At times it seems like rambling (even to me) but I love documenting these highlights in our life and this blog is a great outlet to share these moments with you, too.

So thanks! For your understanding as we travel less, your support as we evolve personally and professionally, and your patience while we work on sharing some exciting destinations, valuable information and occasional updates about our new life here in Montreal.

Adios amigos,

Fel and Wes

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