These words come a bit late. A lot late in fact. January and February are weird months, I’m not really sure how I feel, what I do or what to do, if I’m living or hibernating. So in a way, whatever happened in the Autumn is my latest memory of being active and vibrant, both states of being that I’m missing right now.

The season started beautifully with an equinox gathering of like-minded women. Sometimes I forget how much I love hosting parties, and these gatherings mean the world to me. Each one of us contributes with something to eat, drink or beautify the table; the feeling I’m aiming for is one of community and sisterhood. I’m also trying to have as many women from around here as possible, to break the pattern of having to meet up in Lisbon because that’s where everything happens (not true!).

A few days later I celebrated my birthday. I bittersweet one this year: I cried for the first time on what used to be the happiest day of the year for me. A deep sadness took over me, one I was only able to sooth with a long warm bath, a self-care ritual I adopted after my trip to Japan a couple of years ago. By the end of the day, and also thanks to some of my dearest friends who came over to celebrate the day with me, I was happy again, like I was supposed and used to be.

The weeks following my birthday were some of the most blissful of the year. The weather was magnificent, I spent time with people I love, I cooked, went for long walks on empty beaches, I surfed and laughed. And then one day I got this sort of intuition telling me to go to Toronto. Other than the fact that my mum had a distant cousin living there, I had no connection with Canada, nor any intention to visit it any time soon. Plus I had been there, in Vancouver, back in 2014 during my trip around the world. The intuition persisted and by the end of November, right on the brink of yet another covid-related world crisis, I decided to hop on a plane and head to Toronto.

I can’t stress enough times to anyone I tell this story that I really didn’t want to go, I felt like I had to go. I remember telling my mum “I just want to go and get back as quickly as possible, because it means that everything went well”. And everything did go very well. And felt very well too. After almost two years it felt so liberating to travel long-distance again, I definitely got my mojo back. I prefer to travel for long periods too, but this time I opted for just one week. It was enough to wander not only in Toronto but also in Montreal.

Despite the short amount of time, I didn’t change the way I normally like to travel, where walking and just experiencing the place’s daily life take precedence over packing as many touristy attractions one possibly can in as little time possible. This cover-the-ground attitude allows me to have a sense of freedom and ease everywhere I go, while also lending itself to casual findings, like a little but bountiful gourmet grocery store called the Harvest Wagon, or allowing me to act on my whims, like heading straight to Milk Bar for a Chocolate Confetti cookie as soon as I left the luggage in my room. I experienced Toronto as an easy place to live, simple but comfortable, with straightforward and healthy-ish vibes. Given that I only stayed for a couple of days, I don’t have unbiased recommendations. Still, most places I went to I’d surely go back again, like The Library, where I had one of the best coffee lattes ever (it tasted like cacao and the texture was smoother than other lattes, maybe because I chose to have it with macadamia milk), or Impact Kitchen, where I had the kind of healthy, nutrient-dense meals I’d have at home (went there twice exactly for this reason).

After a day in Toronto I took a train to Montreal, where I stayed for a few more days. I ended up exploring Montreal more than Toronto, quickly walking from neighborhood to neighborhood, with a provision of bagels to keep me fueled during my explorations. Montreal is a foodie city, so walking was indeed key, crucial to work on my appetite because as tempting as it was to only feed myself out of bagels of all kinds of flavors (cinnamon and raisins, blueberries, rosemary, sesame, poppy seeds, onion and garlic) I also wanted to try a few inspiring and innovative plant-based restaurants. I ended up going to Casa Kaizen, a Mexican-Japanese at Plateau Mont-Royal, and to the city-centre LOV, one of the four locations this restaurant has in Montreal.

Another element I have to thank for when it comes to exploring a foodie place is the cold weather. The amount of cafes I went just to have a warm drink was ridiculous. From that never-ending list, Café Nocturne, White Heron Coffee, and Le Petit Dep stood out. No trip of mine would be complete without the usual visit to a local market, and in Montreal apparently there’s no better place to shop than in Jean Talon Market.

One thing that this trip brought to my attention was snacks, or more precisely what constitutes a good & yummy snack. I never really thought about the structure of a snack. For me a snack was a piece fruit, a handful of nuts, or a protein bar. But during this trip I happened to come across a Bulk Barn, and OMG, I was in ecstasy. I don’t know if it was the abundance, the cold weather making me extra lickerish, or the fact that I was about to take a six-hour train ride, I just wanted to take a bag of each of the dozens of snack mixes they had. Serendipitously, this article landed on my email just a few days after returning from my trip, and back home, I couldn’t help but recreate my favorite Bulk Barn snack, the Peanut Butter Bananza, with a few substitutions and additions.