Anyone in Montreal

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pegdragger

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Dozenroses13 and I are considering a quick trip to Montreal later this week. Maybe Thursday night or Friday morning we would head up. Montreal is about 3 hours and change from us. Anyone have any info on the following?

- Places to stay with a safe place to park the bike.

- Somewhere within walking distance to St Catherine St

- Reasonably priced

- Recommendations on good food

- Things to watch out for in Canada

- Border crossing tips

Any other pointers will be greatly appreciated. We aren't 100% sure we are going, but I have late Thursday afternoon, Friday and Saturday off. So, Dozenroses13 suggested Montreal. I have never been and it has been a few years since she has been. TIA for any help....

Michael

 
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.

 
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WOW Bramfrank! Thank you so much! Rose totally forgot about Chinatown and wants to go back. Do you know cross streets for the Chinatown area? That was a hell of a write up. We really appreciate the effort and thought you put into that.

Now, since we didnt get the Zumo 550 yet, we are trying to figure out how to take the StreetPilot with us and not wreck it! We just can't find the Zumo around her for less than 799....

 
Chinatown is most easily found by going to the intersections of Boulevard Saint-Laurent and Avenue Viger (west, I suppose, because Saint-Laurent is the 'central' street where the east-marked streets and west-marked streets start their numbering).

The restaurants themselves are actually located on Saint-Laurent, as well as La Gauchetiere and Clark, to the west and north of the referenced intersection. GPS co-ordinates are 45.50756 N / 73.55862 W if you bring the navi, as sometimes it isn't obvious how to enter street names into the darn things.

Ask a local (Asian person) in Chinatown for specific restaurant references when you get there because I tend to get MY fixes of Dim Sum uptown at Maison Kam Fung. Kam Fung used to have a huge traditional location (carts and all) on Clark, but I seem to recall hearing that they closed it.

Since Pierre recommended it, if you are into touristy things, you can head to Old Montreal and the port. Corners of Place Jaqcues-Cartier and Rue St-Paul East as the central marker (45.50766 N / 73.55243 W)- you can easily walk there from Chinatown. For a pleasant time-out you can spend a quiet hour or three in the huge park in the middle of town on Mount-Royal. A caleche (horse drawn carriage) ride is always romantic if you're into such things - they go from Old Montreal - me? I'm much more pragmatic.

As to your navigator; I used to hang an SP3 on the left bar of my C10 Concours. It was followed by my personal favorite, the 276c. I have a Zumo mounted on the steering stem nut using "someone's" RAM adapter. Very thrifty when compared to the hugely overpriced StemStand.

Your mapping may be out of date, but that only impacts significantly on POIs - nothing new in the way of streets have been built - and POIs are always out of date anyway.

Link to my webshots albums. You'll find part numbers for the various bits I used in the appropriate captions. The same bits as I used for those would work for your FJR (and, for that matter the steering nut mount I use on the FJR for my Zumo).

One last point - If you are used to swigging American suds, watch out for our beer. It actually has alcohol in it.

 
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Again, thank you very much!!! We will bring this with us and have a great start as to what to do up there. It looks like we may be heading up on Friday and heading back Saturday afternoon. I have to get moving on the hotel reservations and figuring out how in the hell I cn pack Rose's stuff in those two tiny saddlebags and have room for my underpants and jeans!!! LMAO! Her Yamaha trunk is here, but the trunk mount isnt quite here yet! So, we will have to pack very very light.

 
Again, thank you very much!!! We will bring this with us and have a great start as to what to do up there. It looks like we may be heading up on Friday and heading back Saturday afternoon. I have to get moving on the hotel reservations and figuring out how in the hell I cn pack Rose's stuff in those two tiny saddlebags and have room for my underpants and jeans!!! LMAO! Her Yamaha trunk is here, but the trunk mount isnt quite here yet! So, we will have to pack very very light.
That'll be a quick trip!! Sounds like you're coming up on two machines.

I just got back from 10 days of touring with a friend (5,000 km).

To increase my cargo capacity I took a vinyl sport bag and some cinch straps. A heavy garbage bag was used as a liner for the sport bag to waterproof the interior and I loaded that up. I strapped it to the back seat and protected the paint by duct taping a couple of microfiber rags to the underside of the sport bag. You can see the bag in the Deal's Gap shot of my ride;

Had lots of room for everything in the side cases and sport bag , including laptop, chargers, rain suit, 10 sets of underwear, 10 pairs of socks, 3 pairs of jeans, 10 shirts, toiletries, cool weather gear (absolutely unnecessary, as it turned out) and lots, lots more.

I suppose it could just as easily be cinched to the tail piece if you're riding two-up - or she could wear a backpack if she is riding pilion . . . . .



 
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