tour de montréal, june 4-7, 2010
Join us for four days of active exploration in Montréal with an insider at your side!
At the heart of our itinerary was the Tour de l’Ile, the greatest cycling event in Canada. We joined riders of all ages and fitness levels, as we rode 50 k (about 30 miles) and discovered many areas of the city in this day long event.
We also rode Un Tour la Nuit - a 12 mile evening ride under the city lights. What fun!
When we weren’t riding, we delved into the city’s rich history, sampled international cuisine, viewed Canadian art , and enjoyed scenic vistas and streetside cafés.
Travelers’ comments:
Thanks so much for the great trip, Karen!
Perfection: redefined.
We did a week’s worth of activities in only 3 1/2 days. Yet the visit felt leisurely.
I’m so glad I rode!
The trip was such a great success, that we’re going to do it again next year: June 3-6, 2011!
What’s special about this trip
• Experience Montréal life with an insider at your side. Karen Kane regularly leads tours to Montreal and writes about the city’s food and culture. She’ll introduce you to hidden corners and neighborhood haunts - making it easy to actively engage with Montrealers and their culture.
• Participate in two events of the Montréal Bike Fest, a citywide celebration of the bicycle. Tour la Nuit is a fun, car-free bike ride along some of the city’s loveliest streets under the lights. The Tour de l’Ile is a noncompetitive all day ride through the streets of Montreal.
• Walking, we’ll explore several areas of the city in depth - examining Montréal’s Old World roots and its modern joie de vivre as we go.
• Our small group - 2-4 people, each with a single room - gives you your own space, while allowing opportunities for meaningful connections and stimulating conversations.
• Bike Fest registration, bicycle rentals, and meals are included in the price of the trip. All you need to do is arrive and enjoy!
A sample day
9:00-12:00. Arrive Montréal. Check into your cozy room and unpack. Our base is a lovely B&B in the vibrant Plateau quartier. Then we’ll make sure our bikes are ready for the weekend.
12:00 - 1:30. We’ll take the Métro to Old Montréal - the French quarter - for a delicious lunch at a bustling café, and some wonderful views.
1:30 - 5:00. We’ll wander the cobblestoned streets of Old Montréal. This area of Montréal is the city’s oldest - and we’ll learn about its past at Musée Point-à-Caillère. We’ll also take in 17th century architecture, modern galleries, and explore the walking path that borders the city’s vibrant waterfront.
5:00 - 8:00. Fortified by a light dinner (and with a few snacks for the road), we’ll get ready to see the city by bike.
8:00 - 10:00. We’ll join thousands of Montrealers for the Tour la Nuit, a car-free bike ride along some of the city’s loveliest streets under the lights. The event is about 12 miles long, and is a great family affair. It starts a short distance from our lodging.
Trip leader
Karen Kane owns Montréal by Design, a travel consulting service that specializes in fantastic trips to Montréal. Her work has been recognized by the NY Times, LA Times, Boston Globe, Montréal Gazette, Houston Chronicle, Delta Sky Magazine, and National Public Radio.
What’s included
• 4 days and 3 nights in Montréal
• Your own room in a delightful three-star B&B
• Daily breakfast, four inspirational lunches, and three fantastic group dinners
• Bike rentals
• Guided walks that get you off the beaten path
• A personalized notebook that puts the city in context historically and culturally
• Montréal museum and métro tickets
• Recommendations for and help arranging optional activities, including jazz clubs, a cooking class, spa appointment and the like
Not included
• Transportation to Montréal, airport transfers
• Personal expenses
• Passports and travel insurance
Cost and registration
Cost is $1560 per person, single occupancy, if registered before May 1, 2010. Cost is $1,690 after May 1.
Registration is on a first come, first served basis, and maximum group size is 4. A deposit of $500 is required to reserve your place in The Tour de Montréal.
Are you interested?
To register, or for a detailed itinerary, contact Karen Kane, at 800 430 5436, or email karen@montrealbydesign.com.
jamais assez - oh, really?
A confirmed minimalist, I am not a big consumer - and the name on the window of the design-friendly Plateau boutique, Jamais Assez (Never Enough) got my dander up.
Pausing in front of the St Laurent shop on my way to Aux Vivres (I do consume more than my fair share of good food), I began an internal rant to the effect of “Never enough?? Our economy is in shambles because of that philosophy.”
Yet I couldn’t resist entering. Spending philosophies aside, it’s the kind of place that makes me smile.
I consider well-designed retail spaces as mini-museums. Fun, imaginative products inspire me. I hang around just to revel in originality. To be charmed by color, composition and humor.
Fanciful, full of good design, well lit, and spacious in its arrangement of furniture, tableware, accessories for the home and body - Jamais Assez is very appealing.
A rocker that substitutes a polar bear for a horse; a wooden book case shaped like a ladder; a way cool high chair are all examples of well made Canadian made crafts.
At least shopping here stimulates the local economy.
Still, I resist their subliminal plea to buy. Isn’t it enough just to enjoy?
One of my favorite Paris shops, with similar designer eye appeal, is Pylones. The gift shop has spread world wide, thanks so its affordable, brightly colored tea pots, cheese graters, eye glass cases and more - all highly endowed with personality.
Another is The Cornershop - a home design store that carries the work of several European designers. My favorites are the larger items: a glass and chrome coffee table, club chairs in leather and velour. But I’ve also found tableware that had me mentally throwing out clothes to make room in my suitcase. And a side table that I wanted to build a room around. Unfortunately, they don’t ship.
Jamais Assez strikes me as somewhere in the middle. A place to dream, take inspiration, maybe even shop for a gift.
Sometimes, when I think about the grim state of the world, just remembering these places is enough for me.
If you go: 5155 Blvd St Laurent, at Fairmont.
point g macarons
I rarely use the word “macaroon” in English (I had to look up the correct spelling). But the French “macaron” is a different story - and seeing it on a sign in the Plateau the other day stopped me in my tracks.
The sign was affixed to the bottom half of the vitrine at the year-old Point G, on Mont-Royal Est. The shop colors are raspberry and pistachio, and the vitrine reveals an Eiffel Tower, covered in bright, round cookies.
The combination of form, color and language did just what it was meant to do. Standing on the street, I was transported to the Paris Ladurée macaron counter, smelling almond paste and pondering the magic of sugar and egg whites.
Macarons are not just French, but Parisian - as Dorie Greenspan so beautifully describes in her Paris blog. Lusciously perfumed and subtly decadent, macarons are equal parts cookie, candy, sandwich, and style.
The shop was sparely furnished, with two tall counters at the front; a cooler holding bagged waffles, jars of chocolate spread and other produits maison at the midpoint; and a cheerful young woman at the register at the back - or what seemed to be the back until she indicated the kitchen, half hidden behind her.
In front of her, two display cases beckoned. I concentrated on the macarons first, and chose dark chocolate, raspberry and pistachio (only afterward did I realize the subliminal power of the color scheme. I wonder if the latter are the most popular flavors).
Then I turned my attention to the 25 flavors of ice cream, settling on a scoop of red grapefruit sorbet - a counterpoint to the sweet macarons. La Glace (the first of three Gs) was served in an oversized waffle cone, with a tiny plastic spoon perched on top. It was tart, smooth, slightly astringent, and immensely refreshing.
The cone was slightly chewy, more waffle than cone - and a brilliant marketing move. Once my tongue touched the cone’s square ridges, I was back in Paris, this time at the edge of the Tuilerie gardens, ordering street food: thick, warm, crusty waffles, served on a square of white paper, topped with chantilly and melted chocolate.
Gaufres are the second in the shop’s trio of Gs - Gourmandises, i.e. macarons, being the final Guilty pleasure (Point G translates to G-Spot). After finishing my cone, I opened my white paper bag of macarons, and inhaled the aroma - thinking of the scene in Sophia Coppola’s film Marie Antoinette, where the sweets are piled high on three-tiered silver platters.
Biting into the round treats, I found delicate shells giving way to an ambrosial, chewy inner layer, then a sweet creamy center. The chocolate was the least sweet of the three flavors, indicating a good dark chocolate at the base.
As I sat at the counter sampling and indulging my memories of macarons past, passersby wandered in. Everyone admired the La Tour Eiffel.
The young cashier filled gift boxes with assorted flavors of macarons. She answered questions about flavors with unwavering enthusiasm, and seemed to take vicarious pleasure in each treat she handed over, each sample of sorbet requested.
Two pastry chefs, dressed in pink uniforms, emerged from the back. One had a thick pink highlight in his upswept bangs. Whether he was the owner, Thierry Andrieux, former chef at the Montreal Casino, I don’t know. They sat at the counter next to me, drinking water, talking rapidly, stopping every now and then to smile at the steady stream of pleasure-seekers.
sidewalk sales, street fairs, and more
Yesterday was a glorious day to be out and about in Montreal. After four days of rain, the sky was blue, and the city sparkled. I wandered with friends in The Main, the Plateau, the Botanical Gardens, and Vieux Montréal…aahh, what a treat.
The Main - closed to traffic between Sherbrooke and Mont-Royal for the first of three summer sidewalk sales - was in its glory. Street food included chow mein, hot dogs and espresso (with chocolat chaud as a holdover from the preceding rainy days) - supplemented by café terraces, filled to overflowing.
Friends chatted in groups, couples walked hand in hand, and just about every breed of dog padded through the happy crowds. In sidewalk sale tents, prices plunged - and we got two swingy, Georges Lévesque nylon skirts at Scandale for half off.
Ex-centris had a free viral/visual project going. Apparently, there is still confusion about whether the state-of-the-art complex is still open. To promote the still intact Cinéma Parallèle, a friendly, goateed young man invited passersby to peer through a hole in a painted board, kind of like they do with Mickey Mouse at Disney. A professional photographer recorded the images.
I can’t say I understood the visuals (at first glance, a donut, with a bullet on trajectory toward the participant’s head), but I love the place - a cultural treasure, full of fun and surprises all year long.
In the Plateau, it was all about biking. Folding bikes, hybrids, and faithful old road models rolled along with the cars on Ave Mont-Royal. Bikes (and calmly panting dogs) waited in front of stores and cafés as their owners enjoyed the confluence of free time and good weather, shopping, brunching, and hanging out in puddles of sun.
Every BIXI station in and around Parc la Fontaine was empty - and the bike path between the park and the Botanical Gardens streamed with riders. At the gardens, bike parking was easy to come by; cars, packed with families and poussettes, were not so easily accommodated.
We saw a black tandem bike locked to a post, and imagined the couple who owned it: middle aged, helmeted cyclists wearing slim-fitting Pearl Izumi jackets, who had once toured Ireland, Italy and elsewhere under their own power.
Near the entrance, a pair of twenty-something cyclists leaned duffle-laden steeds against a tree, while he took her picture with a disposable point-and-shoot. Not in front of the joyously spattering fountain, or the ruffled yellow snapdragons - but in front of the Olympic stadium, with her left hand raised to shoulder height, and held flat, as if she held the white stadium tip in her palm.
In Vieux Montréal, a long line waited at Musée Point-à-Caillière, in honor of the city-wide Free Museum Day. On the grass near the science museum, aerobics instructors led warm ups for a walk benefiting Alzheimer’s patients.
We watched a parade of snare drummers wearing tri-cornered black and gold hats, and wandered through a food festival featuring lobsters and sugar on snow.
Finally, we staked out a table at Café Serafim, soaking in the sun, nursing lattes, and admiring Chapel Notre-Dame-de-Bon-Secours.
Across the street, wearing period dress, the Musée Marguerite Bourgeoys staff announced the free tour. Eventually we succumbed and climbed the 69 steps to the tower - breathing in the blue sky and the view of the harbor, watching our fellow revelers from above.
spring flowers at 3 femmes et 1 coussin
I’ve been landscaping like crazy at home: taking up sod and digging compost into new perennial beds, piling my bedside table with gardening books, getting all dreamy eyed when I contemplate seeds. I get antsy if I can’t get my hands in dirt at least once a day. I’ve got spring fever, for sure.
And I recently discovered a store where I can assuage my feverishness when it’s too wet or cold to get into the garden - and indulge my love of flowers, color and beauty year round.
3 femmes et 1 coussin began designing (and later importing) collections of porcelain dishes in 2001. Three women had a common vision for high-quality dinnerware in colorful yet simple patterns. They settled on flowers as their motif, and focused on wholesaling to restaurants.
Soon, orders from chic Montreal restaurants turned into interest from patrons who wanted to buy the plates for themselves. When an opportunity to move their showroom to a storefront location arose, they made the leap to retail, opening the Rue Gilford shop (in the Plateau, just off St-Denis) in October, 2004.
They originally carried cushions as well (3 Femmes et 1 Coussin means 3 women and a cushion).
They now focus solely on table arts, supplementing their gorgeous porcelain with accessories from internationally acclaimed companies, such as FACES - a collection of products for the kitchen and table developed by Ferran Adrià, chef of the three star Barcelona restaurant elBulli.
But the fanciful floral designs are theirs. Colors are vivid, and pieces have exquisite, and sometimes surprising, shapes - fuchsia allium petals on a flat sided teapot, for example, or a single leafy green branch splashed across a platter.
They continue to custom-print floral motifs for the hospitality industry and for retail clients. They also sell place settings and serving pieces in basic white.
The shop is a must-see for serious flower-lovers, as the details are lovingly recreated, and for minimalists looking to introduce new shapes (triangle bowls, half circle platters) onto their all-white tables.
783, Rue Gilford, at St-Hubert, M: Laurier. (514) 987-6807. Open M-W 10am-6pm; Th F 10am-7pm; Sat 10am-5pm; closed Sun.
rhodia notebooks at arthur quentin
One of the reasons I love the Plateau kitchen and table ware store, Arthur Quentin, is that so much of what they sell is French. A few of my favorites this year are the Guy Degrenne teapots with a stainless cozy (sizes range from 2-8 cups), and the Upla bags, made from indestructible nylon with leather trim.
And - I know this may seem silly - I was ecstatic when I saw their new supply of Rhodia notebooks.
Why get excited about such a small and simple thing? These orange notebooks from the French Alps are all about order and aplomb. The color is fun, full of energy, and just a little bit eccentric, especially when they were first made, in the 30s.
The notebook’s inner pages, with their light gray grid, speak to my predisposition for order. The tidy squares promise that the small problems of the world will fall (ever so gently) into line: lost dogs will be reunited with their owners; unpaired socks will at long last find their match; too long to-do lists will self-organize into categories, with a timeline to follow.
I remember the first time I opened a Rhodia pad, and the cover folded back - and stayed put. For the first time, I understood good design. It felt good in the hand and in the mind. It solved a small, every day problem, only noticeable by the user.
The scored cover, made of quality paper, didn’t impede my progress. It didn’t flop, rip, curl or spring back. It folded quietly out of the way until I was done sketching, listing, or doodling. Then it folded flat again - flat! Ditto with the pages inside. I pick up an orange Rhodia pad now, and I’m back in France, younger and eager to know the ways of the world, and reasonably sure that I will.
This year marks the company’s 75th birthday, and the Rhodia folks are still helping us organize ourselves colorfully. They’re making plans for an upcoming calendar, and want fans to help choose the images - models wearing clothes and accessories made from, or resembling, Rhodia products. Photo credits.
inspired montreal: 5 days of art, fashion, food and design for women - may 27-31, 2009
Our 5-day guided tour for creative women is the next best thing to living in Montreal!
• We’ll spend much of our time off the beaten path in French-speaking Montreal. We’ll experience the city as the locals do, wandering side streets, meeting people who live and work there.
• We’ll tap the European influences that make Montreal a leading center of fashion and design.
• Our small group - 4-5 women, each with a single room - gives you your own space, while allowing opportunities for meaningful connections and stimulating conversations.
A sample day
8am - 12noon. Take photos or a walk in the park, or attend a yoga class. Then we’ll begin our exploration of Rue St Denis, with its rich selection of specialty food shops, cafés, and clothing boutiques.
12 - 1:30. Lunch today is at Au Festin de Babette, or Babette’s Feast - the tiny tea shop which inspired this trip. We’ll choose from delightful pastries, imported French treats, decadent chocolates, elegant pizzas, exotic teas, and more.
1:30 - 5:00. We’ll meet an up-and-coming clothing designer, a chocolatier, and an artisan shoemaker as we continue to explore The Plateau.
5:00 - 8:00. Wander a bit more on your own - perhaps following one of the city’s numerous bike paths - or rest, before our night out.
8:00 - 10:00. We’ll take in the multi-ethnic, village atmosphere of Duluth St in the Plateau, and dine at a BYOW (bring your own wine) restaurant. Perhaps a jazz club after dinner.
Trip leader
Karen Kane owns Paris by Design, a travel consulting service that specializes in fantastic trips to Paris, and Montreal by Design - providing insider experiences in Montreal. Her work has been recognized by the NY Times, LA Times, Boston Globe, Montréal Gazette, Houston Chronicle, Delta Sky Magazine, and National Public Radio.
On this trip, Karen will take you inside Montreal, the world’s second largest French speaking city. She’ll lead you to her favorite parts of Montreal, introduce you to some of her favorite people, work with you to personalize the independent time in your itinerary, and teach you everything you need to know about Montreal culture.
What’s included
• 5 days and 4 nights in Montreal
• Your own room in a delightful three-star B&B
• Daily breakfast, five inspirational lunches, and four fantastic group dinners
• Guided walks that get you off the beaten path
• A personalized notebook, including additional Montreal addresses of particular interest that will help you discover arts venues, restaurants, shopping, and more
• Montreal museum and métro tickets
• Recommendations for and help arranging optional activities, including jazz clubs, a cooking class, spa appointment and the like
Not included
• Transportation to Montreal, airport transfers
• Personal expenses
• Passports and travel insurance
Cost and registration
Cost is $1970 per person, single occupancy. A $500 deposit holds your place for the trip. Please contact Karen to register at karen@parisbydesign.com, or 800 430 5436.
babette’s feast: a four hour guided walking tour of montreal’s plateau - saturdays
March 5, 2009 by Karen
Filed under guided tours, shopping
Savor the delights of Montreal’s most vibrant quartier with our half-day walking tour!
• We’ll dive deep under the surface of Montreal’s most vibrant quartier, savoring the delights of Plateau culture.
• We’ll connect to the area’s French heritage, and discover a rich selection of specialty food shops, cafés, clothing boutiques, and bookstores.
Babette’s Feast includes
• four hour guided visit for up to 6 people
• métro passes as needed
• recommendations for dining, shopping or strolling before or after your tour
Not included
• transportation to Montreal
• parking (though we’ll recommend parking and meet you there)
• lunch, shopping and other personal expenses
Babette’s Feast takes place Saturdays, by appointment. Starting time and meeting place are flexible, to meet individual needs. Participants must register in advance. Cost is $60 per person, and a group of 4 is required for the tour to take place.
Are you interested?
To reserve a date, or for more information, contact Karen Kane, at 800 430 5436, 802 456 8770, or karen@parisbydesign.com.
