The Romantic Gringo

Saturday, November 14, 2009

Old Montreal, Montreal





R.G. took the train, naturally, to Montreal last week to attend a modernism conference. The conference was at the Delta Centre-Ville, which gave participants a 'deal' of $160 a night for a sanitized business room. Scoffing heartily, R.G immediately located the lovely Hotel Champ-de-Mars in Vieux-Port, aka, Old Montreal. Look at the romantic haze that ensconces the place! (R.G.'s camera lens appears to be smeared in vaseline, which she cannot explain.) A double is about $60/night for a corner room on the third (in American terms) floor, and the first photo is R.G.'s view from one of her two windows. Make sure breakfast is included in your booking, which wasn't the case for R.G. due to her choice of online booking agent.

After full days of rigorous intellectualism, R.G. whiled away the evenings in the charming lobby (see what you can make out of it in picture 3) on her computer with a bottle of wine. That choice reflects R.G.'s poverty, not the state of Montreal's nightlife. Occasionally a fellow guest, an international student or other bohemian sophisticate, would join her. R.G. plans to make her way to Quebec City in the none-too-distant future, where she surely will be fully in her element, and she will revisit the good folks at Hotel-Champ-de-Mars before and after.

http://www.hotelchampdemars.com/rooms.html.