Montreal Transportation
One of the great pleasures of visiting Montreal is the chance to explore the city at your own pace in order to see the many attractions that are available both in the city center and also in the surrounding areas. With this in mind, and the sheer number of different things that you will want to see during your stay in Quebec, one of the best ways of seeing the region is by car. By arranging car hire in Montreal, you will be able to visit all of the sights and things available in Montreal at your own pace.
Choosing the right kind of car is essential if you are to get the most out of your Montreal transportation experience. Although a small car is attractive in terms of the value for money that it offers, it is often not the best solution if you are planning to do a lot of driving, and as such, you may be better off choosing a full size automobile. If you are planning long drives, then it is recommended that you arrange SUV hire in Montreal, as this will not only provide you with all the power and space that you need in order to explore the area, but also rides much higher off the ground allowing you to see all of the sights alongside the road.
If you ambitions about seeing Montreal do not extend beyond Mont Royal, then the stunning Montreal Metro is the perfect choice. All of the different stations on the network were architecturally designed to provide commuters with the perfect surroundings in which to enjoy exploring the city. One of the main attractions of this network of underground rail services is the fact that the stations are so pleasant, and many of them are actually tourist destinations in their own right. With luminary architects such as Frank Lloyd Wright and Norman Foster amongst the many people who have designed these stations, they have become popular places to explore, and offer first class facilities for travelers including shopping malls and galleries.
For short trips above ground, Montreal’s transportation services include a comprehensive bus network, and there are always taxis available from the well signposted ranks that can be found throughout the city.
Montreal Events
Perhaps the biggest event in the Montreal Calendar is the annual Canadian Grand Prix, which takes place in early summer and attracts almost a million people from all over the world in order to watch the glamor of the racing in the famous Circuit de Gilles Villeneuve, which is located in the beautiful surroundings of the large park on the Ile de Notre Dame in the heart of the city. Traditionally, the race has marked the start of the summer festival season, when the bars and clubs are at their busiest and most lively.
The Montreal International Jazz Festival is one of the most famous music festivals in the world, and attracts visitors to the city from all over the world in order to see the best musicians from the jazz scene from north America and Europe perform shows in the many bars and clubs around Montreal. The festival traditionally takes place at the beginning of July, and is famous for the sheer variety of acts that are on display in the city.
This jazz music is traditionally followed by the Just for Laughs International Comedy Festival. This 2 week celebration of humor takes place across the city and shows are held in venues of all sizes from small bars where you can hear an intimate performance through to larger places such as the Place de Arts, where the biggest names in International comedy will perform.
Smaller arts festivals take place throughout the summer months, and the climax of the season arrives at the end of august with the International Montreal Fireworks festival. The best pyrotechnical specialists from all over the world arrive in Montreal with their shows, which light up the sky across Montreal for a week in September.
The best place to watch the show from is Mont Royal, which over looks the city, and from where you get a stunning view of fireworks launching into the sky over the many parks where the displays are held.
During the run up to Christmas, the city of Montreal has a small shopping festival that resembles the kind of Christmas markets that are held in many European cities. Visitors get the chance to shop for gifts and decorations that will ensure you have a great time at Christmas thanks to the authentic crafts and thoughtful presents that you can find.
Montreal Restaurants
One of the main attractions for any visitor to Montreal is the standard of the food on offer in the many restaurants in the city. As you would expect from a place where French Culture is so important, the dining experience in the city is truly second to none, and particularly in the French restaurants in Montreal, you will be able to dine out in style and enjoy a fantastic meal at a great price.
There are Montreal restaurants that offer all standards of culinary experience from basic casual dining through to haute cuisine served in formal surroundings, and all of them seem to share the same values of using the finest ingredients and innovative cooking techniques in order to provide customers with a fantastic experience every time they eat out in the city.
One of the most popular restaurants in Montreal is called Giselle’s Bistro. This modern French restaurant in the heart of the city is always busy during the day, when it is one of the best places to do business thanks to the small booths. In the evening, with the lights down low and the gentle music playing from the jazz band, the restaurant is a very romantic place in which to enjoy a meal.
If you are looking for somewhere a little more relaxed in which to have a meal with some friends at the start of the evening, then the famous Lumberjack Grill on Rue Gauche is the perfect choice. Offering hearty dishes from the US although with an exciting French twist, this is a great place to have a steak and frites, along with a couple of beers.
One of the most popular chains of restaurants in Montreal is known as La Grenouille Rouge. These casual dining establishments offer fast French food with plenty of classic favorites including snails and frogs legs on the menu along with quick dishes such as croque Monsieur and Camembert Rolls.
Montreal restaurants offer you the chance to enjoy a great meal out in the evening, and couple the French ideals of using the best possible restaurants along with Canadian sensibility about offering good value for money and honest food to diners who enjoy their meals in pleasant surroundings.
Montreal Hotels
No matter why you are visiting Montreal, you will be able to find accommodation in the city that offers you the perfect place to stay. From basic motels on the outskirts of the city that are perfect for a short break as a base from which to explore Montreal through to luxurious five star properties in the heart of Montreal, you will find a relaxed and well equipped hotel in the city that is ideal for your needs, and will offer you comfortable and good value accommodation to suit your needs.
Many people who travel to Montreal during the week require business hotels that offer all of the facilities that you need in order to be productive during your stay. From secretarial services through to internet access and conference center facilities, you will find that Montreal hotels can be found online that provide you with the perfect base from which to do business in the city.
One of the most popular hotels in Montreal for either business or leisure is the Novotel Montreal Center. This modern 3 star hotel is ideally located within easy reach of the Bell Center, and offers comfortable well appointed rooms that are chic.
A great hotel in Montreal for anyone looking for a good central base from which to explore the city is the 3 star Hotel Du Fort, which is close to the main shopping areas, and nightlife areas.
If you want to stay in a hotel where every room has a stunning view, then the 3 star Delta Montreal is the right choice for you. At 23 storeys it is one of the tallest buildings in the city, and the stylish rooms offer floor to ceiling windows that give you the perfect view over the city center shopping area.
If you want to be able to enjoy the utmost luxury and service during your stay at a Montreal hotel, then the Ritz Carlton is the best choice. Its opulent rooms and elegant design are coupled with very high standards of service that ensure guests who visit the hotel once are keen to return again and again.
Montreal Flights
As the main gateway to the Quebec region of Canada, flights to Montreal are available from all over the world, with direct services with airlines like Air Canada and Zoom available from many cities. The fact that Montreal flights are available so readily has led to prices being very competitive, and it is possible to find some incredible bargains if you are prepared to shop around, and want to save a great deal of money on your airfare.
The best place to save money on Montreal flights is by using a price comparison website. There are now so many of these services around that many people find it quite confusing, however most of these services actually take their data from the same places, and this means that no matter which of the services that you use in order to book your flights to Montreal, you will be able to get them for around the same price.
One of the best ways of saving money on flights to Montreal is by booking your ticket well in advance. Typically airlines divide the number of seats on an airplane into different price bands, and the first tickets to sell out are always the cheapest ones. Numbers of seats available on Montreal flights at the lowest airfares are always in demand because there are so many reasons why people want to fly to the city. From short breaks enjoying the culture and sights that Montreal has to offer through to business trips, people travel to the city from all over the world, and as a result, they will always be on the look out for a cheap deal.
Because of the popularity that the city has gained as a short break destination, the busiest flights to Montreal are on a Friday to Monday. People tend to want to visit the city on the weekend, and as a result, you can often find bargains during the middle of the week on days such as Wednesday when there is less demand for Montreal flights, and cheaper tickets are generally available, so if you are keen to find yourself a great deal, check out the price on the flights on Wednesday and Thursday, as these are generally the days when you can find the lowest fares.
Montreal Attractions
Montreal is one of the most stunning and diverse cities in North America, and offers plenty for visitors to enjoy during their stay. From the incredible architecture and cultural attractions through to the wild nightlife and outdoor fun that is available outside the city, Montreal is a place that has something for everyone to enjoy during their stay, no matter what their interests.
From a tourist point of view, perhaps the most impressive of all the Montreal attractions is the Parc Jean Drapeau. This stunning area in the center of the city is based on two small islands in the river that runs through the heart of Montreal. On the Ile St Helene there is a large sculpture park with a number of impressive statues to browse around, and plenty of long winding paths through the trees that allow you to find peace and quiet. The neighboring Ile Notre Dame is just as pretty and quiet, although for on several weekends during the year it is filled with engine noise when the city hosts the Canadian Grand Prix and other motor races.
Another sporting attraction in the city is the Montreal Olympic Park. Left over from the 1976 Summer Olympics, the park has become a museum of sport, and offers a number of great sights to see.
The architecture of Montreal is one of the greatest attractions of the city; there are unique buildings such as those in the Place d’Armes in the older part of the city alongside the ultra modern business center where there are sky scrapers.
There are cultural attractions throughout the city and these include the famous Montreal Museum of fine arts, and the Redpath Museum, which is the home of a large collection of artifacts that tell the story of the native Canadians who once lived in the region.
Although Montreal is a warm and pleasant place to live in the summer, arctic winds during winter can make it ice cold and desperately unpleasant. With this in mind, the city appears to move underground into a network of shops bars and bars, which has been designed to make life in the city much more comfortable during cold weather.
Thanks to its large international population from all over the world, dining out in Montreal is one of the main attractions that the city has, and of particular note are the restaurants in Chinatown where you can enjoy a great meal and an authentic atmosphere that is both exotic and exciting.
Montreal Tours
Visitors to Montreal will always find that there is plenty for them to see and do both in the city and in the region of Quebec that surrounds it. Thanks to the sheer variety of sights to see around Montreal, it can be difficult to pack everything that you want to see into a single trip unless you take advantage of one of the many local Montreal tour guides in order to let them show you the highlights of the city and surrounding areas.
Montreal is an undeniably beautiful city, and one of the best ways of seeing the stunning sights of the city is from the air. Quebec Helicopter Tours offer visitors to the city the chance to enjoy an unforgettable trip over the city that will allow you to enjoy all the highlights of the city including Mount Royal and the islands in the center of the river that flows through the heart of the city.
If you are lucky enough to be in the city during the period when the Canadian Grand Prix is on at the start of the summer and are interested in motor sports in any way, then a tour of the pit lane is an absolute necessity. The guide will give you the chance to see all of the sleek cars and even meet the drivers at the pre race get together. This kind of experience is certainly not cheap, but as a once in a lifetime opportunity for fans of the sport, it is a superb day out.
The landscapes around Montreal offer plenty of opportunities to hike and explore, and this is one of the best ways of seeing the region. Quebec has a number of different tour companies that use the services of the local Iroquois tribe in order to get back to the natural world. These indigenous people, who still live in their traditional way and are close to the spirits of the earth are able to take visitors on an uplifting journey through their heartlands and introduce people to the true natural beauty of Canada either on foot or on an authentic Kayak expedition along the rivers of the country.
Montreal Beauty & Spas
Thanks to the cultural influences that come from the French Culture that dominates life in Montreal, the city has become a place where values such as beauty and relaxation are very important. With this in mind, and the fact that the city is now so large and popular as a nightlife destination, the Montreal spa and beauty scene is becoming more and more important, and there is now plenty of choice available for both locals and tourists alike.
There are two main kinds of Montreal spas and beauty salons, those which simply offer a range of treatments and therapies to clients, and those which also offer the kind of spiritual assistance that the spas are famous for. This second class of spa goes beyond the need to simply offer guests the opportunity to get a massage, and concentrates on the importance of the internal feelings of wellness that are very important.
The price of Montreal spa and beauty treatments are slightly above those that you would expect to pay elsewhere in the country, however this is largely due to the fact that the city is generally quite an expensive place. The best value spas are those which offer private services and are open to the public, as these tend to be slightly more accountable. The Montreal spas in places like the Ritz Carlton hotel, which are much more ornate and attractive, as well as offering a much wider range of treatment, are quite expensive to visit, but thanks to the quality of the experience that you get when you visit them, they do offer an excellent opportunity to relax and unwind in beautiful surroundings.
One of the most popular spas in Montreal is the Royal Park Club, which is located just outside the city center. This elegant and exclusive spa is well known around the city and surrounding area as a place where guests are able to experience the ultimate in pampering. Guests are invited to spend a whole day in the spa where they are able to enjoy a range of different treatments including Balinese massages and even mild non surgical cosmetic treatments such as Botox injections and skin fillers.
Montreal Real Estate
As the main cultural center of French North America and the largest city in Quebec, Montreal real estate is always in high demand from people who are looking to live in a city where the economy is so important to the region.
The city has a reputation for being quite an expensive city to live in due to the high price of real estate in Montreal, however this is not always the case, and it is actually possible to find some exceptional deals on housing, if you are prepared to search around different areas in order to find a property to invest in.
There are a number of different neighborhoods close to the center of Montreal and real estate in the heart of Montreal is often seen as a good investment. The large university campus at Concordia often means that property in the center of the city is snapped up by speculators and landlords who want to be able to buy a large flat in order to rent it out to students who are looking for an off campus place to live in Montreal.
As with most cities, it is still possible to find investment opportunities when it comes to the Montreal real estate market, and the secret is to find an area where prices are below the average, and then to invest in the property in order to enjoy good returns as the house improves in value due to improvements.
The most popular area for real estate investors in Montreal is the part of the city close to the Olympic Park. Here, family homes can change hands for more than $1 million and even small houses will be snapped up in a matter of days so that speculators can take advantage of the land they are built on to construct larger houses.
Mount Royal overlooks the city, and there are many apartments that overlook the park. These are amongst the most sought after places to live in Montreal, and the presence of a view of Beaver Lake can add half as much again to the value of these properties. The apartments are extremely popular with young professionals who want to enjoy the location and the style that they offer.
