Montreal is the passport to the province of Quebec. It has a sparkling clean subway like Washington D.C, underground, weatherproof shopping like Minneapolis and skiing just outside of town like Denver. Its annual jazz festival and burgeoning film industry are making it better known each year. These few paragraphs will give you a beginner's reference for visiting the old part of town, Viex-Montreal, which is bounded on the south by the river, on the north by St-Jacques and extends roughly east/west between McGill and Berri Streets. While not as dramatic as the ancient walled capital of the province of Quebec, the 17th-century buildings, French restaurants and cobbled streets of Old Montreal will beg the question: why don't you go and visit Montreal for the full effect?

Monreal is 362 years old. It is the second-largest French-speaking city in the world. It is a place of old-world characteristics, elegant restaurants and great popular festivals. The long, somewhat exhausting streets of downtown can be summarized with reasonable ease by taxi cab. The downtown section around rue Crescent is good for bars and restuarants. The Latin Quarter is good for a stroll and the Frederick Law Olmsted designed park, Mont-Royal is a must see. For bars and restaurants there is a Ritz-Carlton in the downtown along with a top-rated Loews and Omni. The standard bearer Beaver Club in the Queen Elizabeth Hotel is good for a fancy meal (the Queen Elizabeth is notable for being directly over the Montreal Train Station, plus its suite 1742 hosted the May 1969 John Lennon/Yoko Ono "Bed in for Peace.") The downtown restaurant Caprices de Nicholas is another high flier.

But here you have only a thumbnail of Montreal. For the purposes of a short, introductory visit consider stayng in Old Montreal so you can drink in the essence of this riverside city. Rue St-Paul Ouest is the main thoroughfare of Old Montreal, with the more elegant aspects existing west of rue St-Sulpice and the progressively more commercial aspects to the east. The old river port is 1,000 miles distant from the sea and has been too small for monster modern ships for decades now, but it still offers the views that give the old city its feel. Basilique Notre-Dame-de-Montreal (pictured left) is in the center of the old town, with walnut carved pews, a sky-blue domed ceiling and thousands of 24-karat gold stars.

There are two large hotels at the northwest edge of Old Montreal, the stable but aging Intercontinental (360 rue St-Antoine Ouest), plus the adjacent, pricey Le St. James. (There is also a bread-and-butter Marriott in Old Montreal that I prefer to ignore, but maybe you've got miles or something.)

On the opposite end of the accomodation specturm are smaller guesthouses that often suffer from eccentric proprietors who can impose on your sense of travel independence. In the comfortable middle range are some boutique hotels that can incorporate the best of both extremes. Of these you might explore three in particular, each of which are treated loftily in the ratings of Tripadvisor's list of top Montreal hotels. These are: Auberge Bonaparte (447 rue St-Froancois-Zavier), Auberge du Vieux-Port (97 rue de la Commmune Est) and Auberge les Passants du Sans Soucy (171 rue St-Paul Ouest).

Bonaparte, with 31 rooms, is half a block off the main drag. It is a crisp, romantic guesthouse in a 19th-century building that is over the top of a really fine local restaurant. Some of the rooms have balconies. The Vieux-Port, with 27 rooms, is also over a restaurant and boasts some unobstructed views of the old port. The exponsed walls of this 1880s sturcture are stone or brick and lend the feel of a provencial French pensione. Sans Soucy is a nine-room guesthouse that is a former warehouse from the early 1800s. It is right on the main drag and has impecably friendly proprietors, but I don't truck with the lavish review Fodor's shovels them (Fodors was silly full of hyperbole about the Sans Soucy in their 2001 Canada but have backed off since). Though well worth considering with the other hotels recommended here, on close inspection you may find Sans Soucy a little chintzy with their fixtures, sheets and other crucial-but-oft-overlooked incidentals (best not to book the un-cozy ground floor room - stick with the upper floors). Take a look at each hotel website, price them out and make an informed choice.