 Back in July, Apple opened a flagship store in Montreal of which yours truly has already had an opportunity to be a customer.
The store is ninth in the list of Apple's flagship stores world-wide (the others are in San Francisco, Chicago, Boston, London, Tokyo, Osaka and New York) and the first of the kind in Canada...
Read the rest of: "Apple Opens Montreal Flagship Store"»  Montreal will soon get its own city-wide bike-rental system clearly modeled after Paris' Velib. It will work almost exactly the same way as Vélib: you pick up your bike from any of the stations, pay at the station or simply swipe a card, use your bike and return it to any station you deem convenient.
The only (minor) problem is, the system is still to be named. So, the city is asking everyone's opinion. Here are the options: BIXI, Bycik, MontVélo, VélO2 and VillaVélo...
Read the rest of: "Montreal Bike Rental System Looking For Name"»
 The Montreal Jazz Festival 2008 has just finished
and the city is already fevereshly preparing for the 2009 edition. You might think this is an overstatement - after all, there's almost a year left! But in fact, in this short year, one of the most important concert spaces, the plaza between Place des Arts and Rue de Bleury will have to be completely redone.
The models and renderings for the new Place des Festivals were
made public a few days ago and the city's mayor took the opportunity to
assure everybody the project is "on schedule, on budget"...
Read the rest of: "Montreal to Get New Plaza in 2009"»  As many press outlets have reported, the Waldorf=Astoria
hotel will open a Montreal outpost some time in 2011.
A 250-room, 76-residence monster (officially named
The Waldorf=Astoria Hotel & Residences Montreal) will rise
a few blocks west of the Montreal Museum of Fine Art...
Read the rest of: "Waldorf=Astoria Hotel to Open in Montreal"»  Many tourists (not to mention the residents) find the lack of direct
transport links between Downtown and
Old Montreal inconvenient. Sure,
the métro is there, but because of the U-shaped configuration of its
lines, a traveler who wants to go from centrally located Peel Street to
no less central Old Montreal would have to travel a few stops west (or east) on the green line, switch to the orange
line, then essentially come back to the geographic center of the city
albeit 10-15 blocks south. Annoying.
Fortunately, the city is aware of that - in fact, many recent proposals
for building a tramway line cited this very inconvenience as the major
reason for building it. Well, the tramway, if it's ever built, is still years
away, but something much more feasible is already coming, the Gazette
reported: Old Montreal and
Downtown Montreal are to be
linked by a new bus route...
Read the rest of: "Downtown, Old Port To Be Linked By New Bus Route"»  With few exceptions, I never order anything that I can cook well myself. Thai is one cuisine that I would love to wow guests with. Its distinguishing feature is the use of coconut milk, lemon grass, peanuts and chilli peppers in harmonious constellations for consumption. But sadly, I've never actually done anything about studying it, maybe because I am a regular at Restaurant Thaïlande. Let's face it, we're a lazy species, and if others can do it better, why not go to them?
Read the rest of: "High on Thai at Restaurant Thaïlande"»  There are many restaurants in this town proving their worth by hiring the right chef, PR agency or interior designer, attracting the "in" crowd or serving the most "creative" (sometimes absurdly creative) nouvelle cuisine dishes.
And then there are restaurants that don't need to prove anything: as long as they stay true to their mission and character, they will be deservedly popular.
L'Express at 3927 rue St-Denis belongs to the second category. In the 20-odd years that the place existed, it slowly transformed its status from that of a "cool new thing" to that of a Montreal institution...
Read the rest of: "L'Express Way"»  I am not exactly a frequent visitor at tea salons
- a fact pretty much ensured by the very presence
of the Y chromosome in my DNA.
Yet, since about a year ago, I regularly find
myself at a place that ranks suspiciously well on
the tea connoisseurs' list of Montreal cafés and
restaurants.
And what do I order there? Tea. And cookies...
Read the rest of: "Tea and Cookies at Nocochi"»
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