DEL.ICIO.USAJC TRAVEL NEWS
Montreal is as logical as it is beautiful
Cox Newspapers
Friday, March 27, 2009
This is a city of bikes, a city of the arts, a city of history, a city of festivals.
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Montreal seems to do everything intelligently, from food to urban planning.
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But most of all, it’s a city of logic. It only makes sense that a huge cemetery atop Mount Royal serves also as a city park, where people stroll, bike and picnic.
And how perfect is it that a good portion of the shopping district is underground, where people can stay warm during the long winter? And that Montreal’s more than 200 miles of bike lanes have curbs separating them from car traffic? Even Montreal’s bagels make sense: They’re crunchy on the outside and soft and faintly sweet on the inside.
Montreal seems to do everything intelligently, from food to urban planning. A portion of downtown Montreal near its museums is being razed to be reborn as a festival district. The city hosts more than 45 festivals each year, so it might as well create spaces designed to host them.
The city also has more than 30 theaters, and its opera and dance communities are strong.
“It’s what we like to do,” says Celine Bernier, a city guide who gave us a tour of the city, old and new. “The winters are so long that people write, people dance, people do stuff.”
And there’s much stuff to do. We spent three days in Montreal and still couldn’t fit in everything. But we did our best.
Our base of operation was the Square Phillips Hotel, an affordable hotel (rates start at about $120 U.S. with an exchange rate of $1 U.S. to $1.27 Canadian) in Place Phillips downtown, an easy walk to many of the city’s attractions.
It’s easy to get your bearings around here with the help of the big KPMG Tower, a very tall, pink building with what look like bat ears at the top. Locals call it the Batman building.
West of the Batman building, on tony Sherbrooke Street, is the Montreal Museum of Fine Arts. It has two buildings, one on each side of the street, linked by an underground tunnel. We were thrilled to learn that admission to the permanent collection is free at all times. Temporary exhibits carry their own charges.”Imagine: John and Yoko’s Pacifist Anthem,” an exhibition of art, music and photographs, will run April 2 through June 21, commemorating the 40th anniversary of the couple’s 1969 bed-in at the Fairmont Queen Elizabeth.
Head east from Batman and you arrive at the Contemporary Art Museum of Montreal, where edgy exhibits reign. We chose to visit on the first Friday of the month, when Nocturne takes place. Our $8 admission bought us not only a look at the museum but a cocktail mingle with locals and a live music. (We listened to the music as we browsed the art; the auditorium was filled to capacity.)
Old Montreal also was walkable from our hotel. It’s filled with regal stone buildings built in the 1800s and gorgeous gardens within courtyards. The grand dame is the ornate Basilique Notre Dame, though we couldn’t go inside because there was a wedding going on. Nearby is City Hall, from whose balcony Charles de Gaulle hollered “Long live free Quebec” in 1967.
History buffs will love the Montreal Museum of Archeology and History in Old Montreal near the waterfront. It’s built on the Pointe a Calliere, the spot where Montreal was founded in 1642, whose excavation has yielded many of the treasures in the museum.
We got hungry trudging back up the hill toward our hotel, so we stopped at a place called Brisket Montreal to sample some local favorites.
Montrealers kept telling us we just had to try the city’s smoked meat. We’re from Texas. We know smoked meat. But, we were ready to try it. We also wanted poutin, the traditional dish of Quebec province. This place had both.
Traditional poutin is French fries doused with melted cheese curds (chunky and squeaky) and gravy: cheese fries on steroids. My husband’s assessment: “It’s not bad; it’s just disgusting.”
We moved on to the smoked meat. It arrived looking for all the world like corned beef — and served that way, on rye with mustard. It tasted both corned and smoky.
I’m told the idea was brought to Canada by Romanians in the early 1900s. The meat is spiced, dry cured, salted, soaked and smoked. So, yes, it’s smoked corned beef. Really tasty.
The other food you can’t miss in Montreal is the bagel. It’s nothing like a New York bagel. These bagels are made with eggs and a touch of honey, so they’re flavorful, and they have a crisp, irregular exterior. Fairmount Bagels has some of the best.
Of course, we ate a good bit of French food, too, Montreal being part of Frenchy Quebec. Two of our favorites for duck confit and similar fare were Restaurant Julien on Union Street, where we dined in a romantic courtyard, and Le Caveau, dining rooms that ramble through an old church near the Batman building.
At the end of our impeccable service at Le Caveau we learned that our waiter thought my husband was a film director. But service probably would have been good in any event.
For a more casual lunch, we enjoyed Beaver Hall, near the aforementioned brisket place, where we had some nice mussels and a fish called brandade.
One more word about food and I’ll move on. Well, two words: bread and cheese. Just as they’re some of the best bites in France, they’re tops in Montreal.
We stopped at Le Fromenteir cheese shop, where we pick up several varieties of local cheese (smelly and delicious) and some rustic bread studded with raisins and nuts.
A good place to walk off food in Montreal is the Botanical Garden. This is one of the world’s great gardens, and you can easily spend a day exploring it. Don’t miss the Chinese Garden, with its pavilions and lakes.
Inside the gardens is the Montreal Insectarium, a fly-shaped building filled with 160,000 creepy-crawlies and winged wonders. Some are mounted; others are on the move, including an army of leaf-carrying ants on an unenclosed tree. After watching them in fascination for five minutes, I started to feel like I had them on me. Time to leave.
Near the gardens is Biosphere. Built for the 1976 Summer Olympics, it now showcases flora and fauna of four ecosystems: forest, river, rainforest and polar.
You can get to the gardens and Biosphere on Montreal’s Metro subway system or in a cab. A caveat: Cabbies can’t be counted on to speak English or to employ the air conditioning. I like the trains (the fare is $2.75 Canadian).
On a rainy day, I explored the Underground City, an amazing maze of shopping, dining and such below street level. This vast system of tunnels totals about 22 miles and includes 10 metro stations, 1,700 shops, 200 restaurants and seven hotels, among other things.
We took a drive up to Mount Royal Park, 494 acres designed by American Frederick Law Olmsted. The park includes the aforementioned cemetery, paths for hiking and biking, a lake and a fabulous view of the rest of Montreal.
It’s only 725 feet high but as Bernier, our guide, said: “It’s our mountain. Never tell a Montrealer it’s not a mountain.”
Finally, we joined a friend from New York for drinks at Dublin House pub, located in a parking lot a couple of blocks from our hotel. Montreal’s vibe might be French, but it’s an international city. When it’s a friendly pint you’re after, you just can’t beat an Irish pub. Once again, voila: It’s logical.
If you go
Stay:
Le Square Phillips Hotel and Suites, 1193 Place Phillips. 514-393-1193, www.squarephillips.com.
Eat
Restaurants: Beaver Hall, 1973 Cote du Beaver Hall. 514-866-1331;
Brisket Montreal, 1093 Cote du Beaver Hall. 514-878-3641;
Le Caveau, 2063 Victoria St. 514-844-1624;
Fairmount Bagels, 74 Fairmount Ave. West, 512-272-0667;
Restaurant Julien, 1191 Union St. 514-871-1581;
Dublin House Pub, 1219A University St. 514-861-4448.
Visit
Contemporary Art Museum of Montreal, 185 St. Catherine St. West. 514-847-6226, www.macm.org
Montreal Biodome, 4777-De Coubertin Ave. 514-863-3000, www.museumsnature.ca.
Montreal Botanical Gardens, 4101 Sherbrooke St. East. 514-872-1400.
Montreal Museum of Archaeology and History, 350 Place Royale. 514-872-9150, www.pacmuseum.qc.ca.
Montreal Museum of Fine Arts, 1279080 Sherbrooke St. West. 514-285-2000, www.mbam.qc.ca.
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