According to cheeroutdoor, Montreal is Canada’s second largest city, sprawled across a series of river islands in the province of Quebec. It is a city of old mansions and cobbled streets, modern skyscrapers and picturesque parks.
The Mont Royal mountain is a symbol of the city; on its top there is an extraordinarily beautiful park of the same name and the famous 70-meter Catholic cross. A beautiful panorama of the city and its surroundings opens from the mountain.
How to get there
Montreal is served by two international airports: Montreal Trudeau Airport 21 km from the center and Mirabel Airport 43 km. The city can also be reached by train, bus or ferry – along the St. Lawrence and Ottawa rivers.
Montreal airport
According to commit4fitness, International Airport Montreal’s Pierre Elliott Trudeau Airport is located west of the city center on Highway 20. The airport is served by all major Canadian and American airlines, including Air Canada, Air Transat and WestJet.
The airport has several daily transatlantic flights from London, Amsterdam, Paris, Geneva, Zurich, Athens, Doha, Frankfurt, Rome, Madrid, Lisbon, Munich and Casablanca (among others). The road from the city center to the airport can take more than an hour, depending on the traffic.
Popular hotels in Montreal
Transport: metro in Montreal
Public transport in Montreal is represented by buses and the subway on a tire track (vibration from which is considered less damaging to buildings nearby). To date, the metro includes 68 stations on 4 lines, with a total length of 65 km. The metro serves the northern, eastern and central parts of the island on which the city of Montreal is located. With the continent, in the area of Longueuil, the city is connected by a yellow line (the shortest, only 3 stations), which also has a stop on the island of St. Helena. The orange line (the busiest) goes to the western part of Montreal – Laval Island.
Many metro stations are connected by underground passages, forming a real “underground city”, which houses shops, cafes and even several underground theaters near the Place des Arts station, where the concert and exhibition complex of the same name is located.
Shopping and shops
There are many huge underground shopping complexes in Montreal, where the easiest way to get from the metro stations. The busiest shopping street is Rue Ste-Catherine (“street of 1000 shops”). Fashion boutiques can be found on Rue Saint-Denis, while Sherbrooke and Mont-Royal Streets offer spacious department stores.
Universities of Montreal
Montreal is home to one of Canada’s oldest and most prestigious universities, McGill University, ranked one of the top 20 in the world.
Concordia University, the city’s other English-speaking university, is the largest east of Toronto with over 40,000 students. And although Concordia University lacks a medical school and a law school, it is still considered a world-class business school, and its programs in the arts and sciences are first-class.
The University of Quebec in Montreal (Universite du Quebec a Montreal) and the University of Montreal (Universite de Montreal) are intended mainly for French-speaking students. The University of Montreal is the second largest French-speaking university in the world after the Sorbonne in Paris and one of the largest research institutions in Canada. The University of Montreal has two affiliated schools, the Polytechnique Montrea School of Mechanical Engineering and the HEC Montreal Business School, offering further postgraduate studies.
Laval University (Universite Laval) and the University of Sherbrooke (Universite de Sherbrooke) also have their campuses in Montreal.
Entertainment and attractions in Montreal
It is worth seeing the old town located on the banks of the St. Lawrence River, the Notre-Dame Bonsecours Church (with an observatory), the Notre-Dame-de-Montreal Cathedral, the Windsor Station building (19th century). You can also visit the botanical garden (Jardin Botanique), which contains more than 26 thousand plants from around the world. In the middle of the St. Lawrence River are the picturesque islands of St. Helena and Notre Dame. Many historical monuments are located in the Old Port area.
Museums of the city: Archaeological, Local Lore, Museum of Fine Arts and Museum of Modern Art.
The most popular street of restaurants and bars in the city is Crescent Street.
Weather in Montreal
The climate is moderate. Spring is short, and autumn begins in mid-August. Winters are snowy, but not very cold, summers are usually long and damp – from mid-June to mid-September, the temperature does not fall below +20 ° C.
The best time to travel is autumn, which is mild, dry and long.
