Montreal

Montréal is Canada's most European city — a bilingual (French-English) island city in the St. Lawrence River with a culinary scene that consistently places it among the best in North America, an underground city (RÉSO) connecting 33 kilometres of underground shopping, restaurants and transit, and a festival calendar so dense (Jazz Festival, Just for Laughs, Osheaga, Francofolies) that the city seemingly celebrates non-stop from June to August. Old Montréal (Vieux-Montréal), the original fortified settlement, has excellent cobblestone streets, the magnificent Notre-Dame Basilica (whose interior is a Gothic Revival masterpiece of deep blues and golds, and is the site of Céline Dion's wedding), Place Jacques-Cartier and the waterfront Clock Tower Pier. The Plateau-Mont-Royal neighbourhood — with its exterior staircases, colourful duplexes and exceptional restaurant density along Boulevard Saint-Laurent and Avenue du Mont-Royal — is the city's most charming area. Montréal's food is genuinely exceptional and reflects the city's unique cultural position: smoked meat sandwiches from Schwartz's Deli, bagels from St-Viateur (boiled in honey water, wood-fired — quite different from New York bagels), poutine (fries, cheese curds, gravy), exceptional French cuisine and a growing roster of excellent restaurants covering global cuisines. The Museum of Fine Arts, the Canadian Centre for Architecture and the Musée d'Art Contemporain are all excellent. Mont Royal Park (Frederick Law Olmsted design, 1876) is the city's great green lung.