What's on St. Catherine Street? It's been years since I've gone down there for anything except . . . nope. It's been years.
I forget that tourists keep that part of the city alive.
But that street is about 10 miles long. Your party sections are Crescent Street between St. Catherine and 'de Maisonneuve'. And the French prefer St. Denis street about 3 miles to the east.
Hotels? This is high season, though with high gas prices I gather it hasn't been a great year for the hotel business. The Novotel is 2 blocks down the road on Crescent Street at the corner of Boul Rene Levesque.
Parking? If you're coming up on an FJR you are probably OK for street parking - no one steals those. I don't think the Novotel has indoor parking. The streets downtown are covered by a convoluted parking meter system that no one likes.
A quick check of Hotels.ca shows the Novotel at $149 a night, the Days' hotel (about 2 blocks west and 1 block south of the Novotel) at at $171 and the Maritime Plaza (corner of Rene Levesque and Guy streats) at an average $193 (one night at 119, the other at $267), the Quality Inn Downtown on Crescent is $143.
All prices are Canadian dollars, presumably without taxes.
But your best bet for hotels is to head to www.Expedia.com or www.Hotels.com and do your own research - the ones I've pointed out are 3 star - you might want to move up to a better hotel, you might not mind a 10 block walk to the night life or you might want to crash at the Y . . . Use Google maps (or Mapsource or Streets & Trips) to help you with hotel selection. A seach of Google maps on "crescent street in Montreal' apparently had 1500 hits . . .
Crossing the border is simple enough - look the officer in the eye, no sarcasm, hand him (or her) your ID papers (I don't think they require a passport yet, the Americans certainly don't when going the other way).
Crossing the border can take a while because traffic lines up - I would leave the Northway ahead of the border at exit 42, tank up (gas is somewhat more expensive up here), take the highway (11) at the exit east for 2 miles, turn left onto route 276 and then 2 miles north to the border crossing there. Once across, you take the first left and head back to the main highway, 2 and a half miles back to the west and you are slabbing it north to Montreal on highway 15.
Point 1 - your credit card charges 3% or more for exchange - if you have cash, use it and know what the exchange rate is. Often you will see a benefit - other times they'll try to rip you off. If you arrive before 4 PM on Friday, you can stop into a local bank and convert some US dollars into Canadian - don't go overboard because you will lose converting it back unless you can find a local soul to take it off your hands for what you paid for it (which is to the other party's benefit).
North of de Maisonneuve you'll find art galleries and luxury shopping on Crescent and then along Sherbrooke Street.
There is usually a festival of some sort on during the summer - you missed the Jazz and Comedy festivals, both of which are world class. Research 'what's happening' on the web, though apparently there's a 'Blues Festival' this weekend in the East end of the city . . .
https://gomontreal.about.com/od/montrealeve...ugustEvents.htm
Good food? Lots of excellent restaurants here and the selection is as broad as it gets - formal French, Italian, Thai, Mexican, Steak - too much to detail . . . about the only thing I've never been blown away by here in town is Seafood.
My personal favorite steak house is Moishe's (high end) and if you want to try a uniquely Montreal variant of Corned Beef (called Smoked Meat) go to 'Schwartz's', which is half a block south of Moishe's or to Abie's, in the west island - DO NOT GO TO DUNN'S. DO NOT ORDER SMOKED MEAT IN ANY OTHER RESTAURANT. Tourist traps abound and bad Smoked Meat will put you off the stuff forever - the great stuff is addictive.
Our Chinatown has some EXCELLENT restaurants. If you have never had them, 'Dim Sum' in a traditional environment is a treat.
There's more, so much more. We're 3 million people, most of whom are middle of the road, but we do have our fringe sections, so there's something for everyone.
Then again, what do I know? I get out of town on my bike whenever the weather co-operates and I'm not travellnig on business.
Enjoy your visit.
