Travel Guides: All Countries / North America / Canada / Montreal
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| | | | The city that laughs at itself
From the Mail on Sunday
When you talk to most Englishmen about Montreal, one of three things happens. They either know nothing about it - 'Montreal? Is that Vancouver?' - virtually nothing - 'It's in Canada, isn't it? They had the Olympic Games there' - or as good as nothing - 'Montreal's where they all speak French and they hate the English, isn't it?'
All my girlfriend Charlotte and I knew about Montreal was that it was in Canada - and it wasn't in Vancouver because we knew people who had been there. It was in Quebec, but it couldn't be completely French because they had a comedy festival, and there was also a jazz festival, so it might conceivably be boring.
However, that month in England, the summer was being overtaken by winter, while the thermometers of Canada were red and jumpy like a fox on a hot tin roof, so we decided to chance a trip to Montreal. We were never to be the same again.
Arriving in a city drenched in sunlight, we checked into our hotel. Our room at the Auberge du Vieux-Port was so large it must once have been a dry dock for the Canadian Navy, and so luxurious that Charlotte took photos of it. Reluctantly venturing forth for a guided tour, we were taken around Montreal in a large people-carrier by Louise LaFrance from the Montreal Tourist Board.
Louise, friendly, enthusiastic, deeply knowledgeable about her home town - and surely up for some Canadian equivalent of the MBE - showed us the entire city from top to bottom and, if time had permitted, would surely have shown us it from outer space. From the heights - where the embassies live, and where one rich, divorcing couple literally, and still-visibly, cut their house in half - to the poorer districts, where the staircases were built on the outside to save internal space, Louise and her people-carrier ranged tirelessly.
We visited parts of the city where, we suspected, no tourist has ever been before. It was thanks to Louise that we were able to discover the trendy shops and restaurants of Rue St-Denis, where even the pizzas looked French; the old Victorian houses high up the mountain which looked like Edinburgh with good weather; and the mad island city which was Expo '67, all giant golfballs and space-age apartment blocks.
Montreal's most blatant attempt to live in the future is, sadly, also the only place in the city we didn't want to revisit. The 1976 Olympic Stadium is a Seventies trimphone built over a giant's shower cap. Its impressive futuristic look is spoiled by the fact that the superlift which takes you to the top is in fact a loud and rickety cable car that clanks and wobbles like a mechanical elephant. By far the best thing in the tower there is a model of it made from milk cartons by local schoolchildren.
Most of the cliches about Canada are true, but they're doubled when you go to Montreal. Canada is supposed to be terrifyingly clean - in Montreal you are woken up by street-cleaning trucks at 5.30am every day. The sunlit, weather-beaten Vieux-Port gives you an idea of what a French North America would have been like, and almost makes you wish that the French had kept Canada and also invaded the USA just to impose their architecture on it. The only comparably beautiful city in America is, perhaps significantly, New Orleans.
But the other great Canadian cliche - that it's boring - is not true. Far from being the Belgians of North America, Canadians are cheerful and friendly - even the sole beggar we saw wished us a heartfelt nice day, while a derelict site near the hotel littered with cat food tins for strays indicated a pro-animal streak, unusual among French-speaking people.
Montreal
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| | | | The bizarre world of the underground loony
Canadians are also, famously, a people who share a sense of humour with us Brits. Perhaps this is why the Just For Laughs Comedy Festival is held here and why, despite the fact that you can go and see the cream of the world's comics, from Lee Evans to Robin Williams, you can have more fun watching street entertainers scare the living bacon out of spectators. One man who posed as a surrealist flasher drew enormous crowds, all keen to watch German tourists have heart attacks on seeing his large stick of celery.
Montrealers speak French as a first language, but most have no problem speaking the filthy tongue of the English oppressors who walked in unopposed nearly 240 years ago after General Wolfe captured Quebec. Possibly this is because of our nice English manners (and while US tourists are common in Montreal, British visitors are still comparatively rare). Possibly it's because no pleasanter people exist on God's earth. But if we're talking about Montreal's shopkeepers, possibly it's because of the state of the Canadian dollar.
Nicknamed the loony - a name which hints at a healthy Canadian disdain for money - the Canadian dollar is in such a bad way that if it were a boxer, it would be lying on the ground spitting out teeth and contemplating a career in panto.
One local cartoonist drew the loony as a hooker on a street corner desperately trying to solicit tourists, and he had a point. When Charlotte and I went through Montreal's clothes shops, like Visa-wielding knives through Tommy Hilfiger's butter, there were 2.4 loonies to the pound. Even Montreal's bizarre state tax, city tax and, for all we know, looking-at-people-funny tax could not obscure the fact that, frankly, you could clothe the entire population of Bristol for the price of a bottle of maple syrup back home.
Loonies apart, going shopping is actually one of the more surreal things you can do in Montreal. Not because Montreal's stores are particularly odd, but because most of them are underground. Designed to avoid consumer frostbite during Quebec State's severe winters, Montreal's enormous underground shopping city is a cross between Oxford Street and the kind of city Doctor Strangelove saw us living in after a nuclear war, except with waffle stands and BabyGap.
The shops are excellent, varied and the equal of anything in New York, London or Paris, but the unsettling thing about them is that the further down you go, the more you experience a weird kind of upside-down vertigo. Returning to the surface laden with Timberland bags, you feel like a cross between Jacques Cousteau and Imelda Marcos.
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| | | | Jumping sheep and giant steaks
Charlotte and I honoured a Canadian tradition by going jet-boating through the Lachine Rapids on the St. Lawrence River. Once noble braves traversed these churning currents in tiny canoes. Now huge launches - known, madly, as 'saute-moutons' (jumping sheep) - skip over them nonchalantly for the sole purpose of putting the wind up teenagers.
The boat guides, barmy to a man, scrambled around us like fairground grease monkeys, oblivious to the giant rocks and frothing currents that surround the boat. Screaming our heads off, we approached an enormous tidal wave. Our guide turned to me. 'Goodbye, sir!' he said happily. Seconds later we hit a wall of iron spume and 20 teenagers squealed like monkeys on a griddle.
My favourite place in Montreal was either a record store where you could buy albums for the price of a second-hand pen, or a restaurant that served steaks the size of a jetboat. Montreal food is sized the American way and cooked the French way, which you have to admit is better than the other way round. Charlotte's favourite place was the Botanical Garden. Situated in the shade of the Olympic trim-phone, it is laid out with a refreshingly un-English lack of rigour - there isn't even a maze.
The gardens would calm Ghengis Khan, especially the Zen-like pond and rocks of the Japanese Garden, with its carp, all keen to eat tourist fingers, and the nearby Chinese Garden, regal, authentic and relaxing, and with more miniature pagodas and bridges than a goldfish tank (more goldfish too, come to think of it). As night fell, and the full moon's orb began to illuminate the still darkling waters of the jade garden, security guards had to pull Charlotte out screaming and biting into the car park. It was that good.
The next day it was all over. We ate a final, enormous lunch, took a cab to the airport and paid the very Canadian airport tax which raises an interesting point: what do they do with you if you've got to the airport and you've spent all your money? Make you a citizen? We changed our remaining loonies into glum old British pounds and reluctantly went home. I don't think I've ever wanted less to land at Heathrow airport.
Sometimes a holiday is a nice break from daily routine. Sometimes it's just a pleasant memory. Montreal was more than that; it was a brief, forever memorable visit to another dimension, one where people live on steak and wine, lounge in the sun - and, just for a bit of variety, occasionally get dragged, bellowing in terror, down huge rivers.
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| | Destination Guide : Montreal |
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| | | Spectacular autumn |  | Why go on holiday to Montreal?
For a unique meeting of French and English culture (with many other ethnicities thrown in), in a North American urban setting.
Montreal is well located, on an island in the middle of the St Lawrence River with Mont Royal in its centre and parkland on top. Cosmopolitan, chic and friendly, you will dine heartily and be well entertained.
How much does it cost?
At time of writing, flights can be found from as little as £200 return - although double that isn't unusual - and mid-range hotel accommodation costs about £35 a night. A seven-night package holiday including hotel and flights starts from around £500.
When should I go?
May to September are the warmer months (July 26C/79F) and by December the city is a winter wonderland (January -4C/23F). Rain or snowfall is regular but doesn't last for long.
A string of festivals means summertime is a great, if more expensive, time of year to go. The end of September brings a spectacular riot of red, orange and yellow autumn leaves. Wintertime is crisp - coats and boots are an absolute must.
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| | | Great jazz festival |  | What should I do when I'm there?
Walk up Mont Royal from downtown to the Chalet Lookout for a view of the city. Directly in front is downtown, with its museums and department stores.
In the distance is the St Lawrence River, and the islands of Sainte Helene and Notre Dame - home to the 1967 World Fair and today to parkland, La Ronde, an amusement park, and the popular Casino de Montreal.
By the river is 18th-century Old Montreal - all cobbled streets and charming restaurants. To your left is the Plateau area and further on the Olympic park and the Biodome. Visit all these and you will have done well!
What if I'm a music fan?
Turn up in Montreal at the end of June or beginning of July and your ears and soul are in for a treat.
The annual International Jazz Festival sees the city transformed, with free open air concerts on downtown street corners featuring the likes of James Brown and BB King. Check out http://www.montrealjazzfest.com.
What can I do for a daytrip?
Go rafting in the Lachine Rapids (tel. 514 767 2230). Pick apples in autumn on Rougemont, an hour's drive south of the city. Go downhill skiing in winter at Mont St Sauveur in the Laurentians.
A three-hour drive and you can also visit the most European of North American cities, Quebec City.
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| | | Gastronomic heaven | | Where's good for nightlife?
Crescent St and Bishop St are full of Irish pubs and popular bars. For a French feel, head down to the streets of St Denis and St Laurent. Check out the Jello Bar for a funky cocktail lounge bar or Groove Society to dance.
Recover after a Saturday night out at Parc Mont Royal - everyone and their dog gathers there on Sunday afternoons to listen to people drumming, and chill out in the summer sun.
What's the food like?
Montreal is gastronomic heaven. Top restaurants are French bistro Le Paris, on Ste Catherine West; L'Orchidee de Chine, on Peel St; and Italian La Sila on rue St Denis.
For the best smoked meat sandwich on rye go to Schwartz's on St Laurent. For humungous sandwiches and obscure teas head to Santropol on St Urbain. Breakfast at Beauty's, on Mont Royal, and EggSpectation, on Blvd de Maisonneuve West.
Montrealers argue they make the best bagels in the world - to test this belief go to Fairmount Bagel Factory and watch them make and bake them before your very eyes.
What should I buy?
Visit a 1900s-era Quebec sugar shack in Rigaud and stock up on maple syrup (tel. 450 451 0831). For foodies, wander through Parisian-style market/mall Le Faubourg on Ste Catherine West.
Shopping malls and department stores are located along Ste Catherine East.
Don't worry if it's cold outside - you can walk for 30km underground in the city centre where shopping malls and department stores, cinemas, hotels, the metro and the main train station are all linked up.
What is there for children to do?
Kids have their own free Children's Festival at the Jazz Festival. The Petite Ecole de Jazz is an introduction to the music and a makeup team will paint their faces.
They can make their own tunes in the musical park playground walking on a big piano keyboard or sliding down a giant saxophone - check out http://www.montrealjazzfest.com for more information.
Tourist office
Visit Canada, PO Box 5396, Northampton, NN1 2FA. Tel. 0906 871 5000 (60p a minute).
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| | Fact File : Montreal |
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| | | Montreal | | Did you know?
Peregrine falcons nest on high building ledges in the old part of Montreal.
Language
French and English
Visas
None required
Getting there
Scheduled and charter flights from the UK.
Flying time from London
Seven hours 30 minutes going there; six hours 25 minutes returning.
Getting around
Montreal has an excellent underground system, the Metro, which covers much of the city, as well as a comprehensive bus and rail system. They are all jointly managed and tickets are interchangeable. Hop on a horse-drawn carriage to tour Old Montreal and Mont Royal. With a complex system of one-way streets, driving can be a bit tricky and parking spaces are at a premium. Alternatively, hire a bike and take advantage of a good network of cycle paths. Bikes can be taken on the Metro.
Currency
Canadian dollar
Costs
Litre of petrol 40p; pint of beer £2; moderate restaurant meal £12; 24-exposure camera film £2.50; four-mile taxi ride £5. All prices may vary.
Weather
Montreal enjoys all four seasons to the full. Rain or snowfall is regular, but does not last for long and the sun shines often. Summertime is warm and can get fairly humid; temperatures reach 26C (79F) in July. Autumn is mild and pleasant, especially if there is an Indian (extended) summer. The city then becomes a winter wonderland of snow and ice and is permanently below freezing from the end of November to the beginning of March, averaging about -4C (23F) in January.
Time difference
Five hours behind GMT
International dialling code from the UK
00 1 514
Voltage
110V, 60Hz. Plugs have two flat prongs, and sometimes a third grounding prong. Take an adaptor with you for UK appliances.
Opening hours
Banks open from 10am to 4.30pm Monday to Thursday and until 5pm or 6pm on Friday; some open on Saturday morning. Shops open from 9am to 6pm, and until 9pm on Thursday and Friday. They are also open from 10am to 5pm on Saturday and from noon to 5pm on Sunday. Most museums are closed on Monday.
Health - Before you go
No jabs necessary. Take out adequate travel insurance - medical costs are high.
Health - When you are there
If you are planning to go on a day trip north to the Laurentian Mountains, or south to the Eastern Townships, take some insect repellent with you - the mosquitos bite, and the blackflies take an even bigger nip!
Warnings
Pedestrians should take extra care when crossing the road. Montreal motorists are renowned for their aggressive driving.
Emergency
Dial 911 for emergency services. British Consulate-General, Suite 4200, 1000 De La Gauchetiere West, Montreal. Tel: (514) 866 5863.
Customs
Share in this city's sense of joie de vivre and have a good time.
Pets
Not advised. Quarantine rules apply.
Tipping
10-15% in restaurants, bars and taxis.
Tourist office
Visit Canada, PO Box 5396, Northampton, NN1 2FA. Tel. 0906 871 5000 (60p a minute).
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| | Available rental properties in Montreal |
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