A Long Weekend in Montreal

[Karl-G]

Why Go?

 

If you live in a city where gay life is not very open, or you don't often get a chance to watch dozens of good looking guys dance totally naked on a stage three feet from you, or you find nice escorts difficult to find, a long weekend in Montreal will be an incredible delight. The city is very European but closer to home and cheaper, the gay life is open and friendly and delightful, a hundred naked guys dance on stage at four different bars every night, and there are lots and lots of escorts of every age and size and variety who will provide great pleasure. The best nights for the bars are Thursday, Friday, and Saturday, so if you can arrange a long weekend and arrive on Thursday some time, you will have the best of the best. Find which air lines serve your city and Montreal, then use kayak.com and check the fares each day for a week to see the usual price and fluctuations. Then watch for drops and sales; they happen all the time. Your best fare will be if you take one stop on the way, to one of the hubs. Delta, U.S. Airways, and Northwest often have fairly low prices.

 

The Montreal Airport Trudeau/Dorval is a nice, recently enlarged and modernized medium sized airport. It is easy to handle. Customs are a breeze and fast. When you come out the door, walk straight ahead out to the street. Immediately on your left is a booth selling tickets for the airport-downtown shuttle for $22 CD roundtrip. They leave every 20 minutes and drop you off at the Station Central (main bus station) across the street from the Berri-Uqam Metro and Place Dupuis. Depending on time of day, the ride is 20-45 minutes. A cab costs $35-40 CD each direction or nearly $80 CD round-trip.

 

Hotel Gouverneur

 

http://i181.photobucket.com/albums/x167/edith_piaf/Montreal%202/m1-gouverneur.jpg

 

Hotels in Montreal

 

Montreal is a world class city with hundreds of hotels in all price ranges and in all locations. I have two suggestions. You can almost always get a room in a 3* or 4* hotel for $55-60 US through priceline.com. All these hotels (Hyatt, Delta, Holiday Inn, Novotel, etc) are nice and in good locations. Not perfect, but good. You will save money. Breakfast is not included, nor are local telephone calls. And you will need to take the subway or a cab to get to the gay village along Ste Catherine Street. If you have not yet used priceline.com, it is very easy and can be a great savings. Go first to biddingfortravel.com to see how the system works and which hotels are currently participating and what the going rates are. Then go to priceline.com and make your bid. You will not know the name of the hotel until after you have placed your bid, but they will always be good and in a good location.

 

There is another option, which I prefer. The Hotel Gouverneur is a very nice 4* Canadian/3* American hotel at the edge of the village. It costs a bit more. It is 30 stories high, has nice large rooms, breakfast is included, local telephone calls are included, and it is easy walking distance to all gay venues (5-12 minutes maximum). The breakfast room is pleasant, with large windows, and there are always a number of gay men staying at the hotel and having breakfast. Free wireless internet access is now available in all rooms. The first floor has a great patisserie, a nice grocery store, a good drugstore, and many other shops. You can walk indoors down to the subway station. The hotel is right across the street from the bus station, so you are at your hotel in less than a minute after getting off the airport shuttle. It is very convenient. There is another nice hotel nearby, which opened recently, the Suites La Belle. It was formerly a residence of some kind which has been completely renovated into suites. It is 1/2 block SW of the Gouverneur, so the location is perfect for access to the Gay Village. The manager told me he would give a discount any time the hotel was not filled, if you ask. Single rooms would then go for $89 or $99 dollars. It is 3* and the phone is 1-866-602-1151.

 

A Typical Day in Montreal Might Include

 

There is much to do in Montreal, day and night, in bed and out. It is a 15 minute walk from the Gouverneur to the Old Port/Old City and Place Jacques Cartier. This is a pedestrian zone, traffic free, and runs down the hill from the City Hall/Hotel de Ville and Fountain and Municipal Court Building to the old harbor. It is lined completely on both sides with cafes with outdoor terraces and indoor seating. The food is good. One of the local specialties is "moules et frites" (mussels and French fries). They usually bring you 48 steamed mussels in the shell, not large but tasty, and a large platter of delicious French fries. An ice cold beer is good as a side. There are flower stands, jugglers, trick cyclists, artists, and much more going on in the square all day. Then walk along Rue St. Paul at the bottom and see the art galleries, souvenir shops, antique shops, and finer restaurants. Finally, walk down to the waterside. You can take a boat ride out into the St. Lawrence Seaway. If you are young and fit, you can also rent a bicycle or roller blades or a pedal cart and ride along the harbor to the west, over the pedestrian bridge to the islands, across the islands and through the forest to the next bridge, cross back over, and come back to the start. Thousands of Montrealers do it every weekend, and it is great fun.

 

Hotel de Ville / City Hall

 

http://i181.photobucket.com/albums/x167/edith_piaf/Montreal%202/m6-hoteldeville.jpg

 

A visit to the Musee des Beaux Arts/Museum of Fine Arts is well worth a visit. It is a nice new building up by McGill University, along Sherbrooke Street. It is not too large. My favorite parts are the top floor with 19th and early 20th century art and the basement with large rooms of late 20th century and contemporary art. There are superb examples of Canadian abstract expressionism. They also have an excellent restaurant and a great bookstore. Traveling art exhibits are often exceptionally good.

 

Another day can easily and delightfully be spent at the Montreal Botanic Gardens, which are some of the largest and finest in the world. Very easy to get to - green line subway east to Pie IX Stop. Get out onto Pie IX Street, turn right, and one block away is the entrance. Recommended itinerary: Chinese Garden, then Japanese Garden, then English Garden/Flowing Brook, then Alpine Gardens, then Experimental Gardens, and head back to cafe for a nice lunch and entrance is right there.

 

Montreal Botanic Gardens - Spring Tulips

 

http://i181.photobucket.com/albums/x167/edith_piaf/Montreal%202/m4-botanic.jpg

 

At some time during the day, schedule an escort for your hotel and enjoy an FPE (Fulfilling Personal Encounter). The escorts of Montreal are wonderful and you really should enjoy some good sex while in Montreal. There are various possibilities. Some people like to go see the dancers first and then try to arrange with one of them. It is possible, but rare. Dancers have chosen to be dancers, not escorts. Or you can try one of the late nightclubs, like Unity which is above Stock or Parking, which is half a block up Amherst, around the corner. But this is a very young crowd and quite noisy. My recommendation: arrange ahead of time via e-mail or phone and have everything set up for sure. The anticipation will be delightful, and you will be sure of having a hot young escort in your bed, ready to give you many pleasures and thrills, at the moment you want. Escorts can be found at men4rentnow.com, rentboy.com, from the recommendations on this board or maleescortreview.com, and from the six escort agencies in Montreal. Be sure and be frank and clear about what you are looking for; the escorts are not embarrassed and they want to know what will be going on. The agency I work with is Tender Moments at 514-791-4447 , which is very good and reliable, I think, but there are others claiming to represent 30-40 escorts each. You will find complete lists in any issue of FUGUES , the gay magazine available free in any store on Ste Catherine.

 

Late Afternoon and Evening

 

From the Hotel Gouverneur, it is a 5 minute walk to Campus , where the fun starts. Or you can take a subway from your hotel to the Beaudry Station and walk back a couple of blocks. By 3:30 every day, things are happening. A growing number of dancers will be performing on the stage in continuous sets of three; first each dancer will perform a fast dance with some clothes on and then a slow dance with no clothes on, totally nude. There are seats at tables, at the bar, and banquettes on both sides. There is no admission or cover charge and drinks are moderate in price. The servers, Dennis and Antwan, are cute and delightful, English speaking and helpful. Dancers vary from slender young twinks 18 or 19 yo to swimmers build to buff gym bunnies to body builders. When they have finished dancing they walk around the room in their briefs and greet customers and provide lap dances in the booths at the back of the room. These are not complete sexual encounters, obviously, but a chance to have a guy completely naked dancing on a little platform six inches from your face and allowing you to pet most of his beautiful body and chat with him. Discuss with the dancer before you go back what you want; say you want the $10 dance. It is not necessary to pay $20. Also, be careful. Say before you start that you want two dances. If you are having a lot of fun, you can always add another one or two. But if you are not clear, it is possible for time to slip by and disputes about how many songs have gone by. I have never had a problem, but some people report that they have. There will eventually be more than 20 dancers appearing. Raise a finger or hand to attract a dancer's attention if you would like them to sit with you and chat for a while before going to the back. They want to make money; they are looking for interested customers.

 

Campus Stripper Bar along Rue Ste Catherine

 

http://i181.photobucket.com/albums/x167/edith_piaf/Montreal%202/amo36.jpg

 

Then for supper, there are dozens of various good restaurants all along Ste Catherine: French, Italian, Japanese, Chinese, Vietnamese, vegetarian, New Age, Thai, etc. All cater particularly to a gay clientele, although there are always mixed couples also present. When the weather is nice, all open their front windows to the street so you see people walk by, you catch glimpses of your faovrite dancer going to or from work, etc. Or this is a good time to go back to the Gouverneur for an FPE with a cute escort.

 

Then late evening, after 9:00 can be spent at either Taboo or Stock, depending on your preference, to watch naked guys dancing until 2:00 or 3:00 a.m. and have as many lap dances as you can afford. Taboo is the greatest twink bar in the world with 25+ young and smooth bodied dancers each night performing on stage, chatting with you at your table, or giving you a very satisfactory lap dance in back. Stock offers dancers who are buffer and bigger, definitely men, who also dance, chat, and give lap dances. It is all great fun. Stock is a 7 minute walk east from the Gouverneur (or Metro Beaudry); and Taboo is another 6 minutes walk east or Papineau Metro. Dancers will also be performing at night at Campus , where they will be bigger guys than during the day, and Adonis which is just a block before you get to Taboo on Ste Catherine. Adonis generally presents twinks and maybe punks.

 

Walk along Rue Ste Catherine

 

Whether you stay at the Gouverneur or come to the Village by metro, be sure and walk along Rue Ste. Catherine, the heart of the Gay Village, during the day and again at night. It is very special, filled with gay men walking, and surrounded by bars, shops, restaurants, saunas, and coffee shops. It is a continual fair. There are also book shops, record shops, clothing stores - all aimed primarily at gay men. If you like varied underwear, Priape must have one of the largest collections in the world. Don't be afraid to say "hello" to people; it is easy to make new friends.

 

Montreal on a long weekend in nice weather is one of the most delightful places on earth for gay men. Bon voyage et bonne chance!

[+ Gar1eth]

All I can say is "WOW"--thank you Karl-g for this stunning description of Montreal.

 

Any opinions on the Queen Elizabeth Hotel--I stayed there once about 10 years ago.

 

Gman

[Epigonos]

Hey Karl-G thanks so very much for your great succinct travel guide to gay Montreal. I actually printed it out and intend to keep it for future reference.

[MTLover]

Thanks for the terrific tips for this great city! Sounds

like we have much in common when it comes to a Montreal itinerary :9

 

I would add that along with Unity, Parking and Sky (for nighttime dancing,) there's also the latest reincarnation of La Track which is now

called TOOLS. Hubby and I spend our weekend nights there because of the

DJ(s) and the great music (70's & 80's on Saturday night) before and after the strip clubs. The club recently added a 'playroom' located directly off the dance floor. Last trip, we noticed lots of curiosity seekers wandering in and out the entrance and when we checked it out ourselves,there didn't appear to be much 'playing' going on at the time.

Can't tell if these backrooms will remain (or expand into other clubs) but I've never been one for such extreme 'dark' conditions (like Backroom) so they could certainly disappear and not be missed by me. (The saunas are plenty dark enough.)

 

I'm glad to hear the transit strike was settled. I am heading there the end of June and was hoping the metro would be back on its regular schedule.

[+ newatthis]

RE: Montreal

 

Let me add a couple of notes to Karl's stunning Montreal promotion (the tourist board should hire you!).

 

1. For comprehensive information on the strip clubs, what they look like, and how they operate, read [a href=http://m4m.m4m-forum.org/dcboard.php?az=show_topic&forum=19&topic_id=49&mesg_id=49]YFSC's descriptions[/a] in the Male Strip Club FAQs -- a little dated, but still mostly correct. They're especially helpful for the first-timer who's shy about the experience and what to expect -- they certainly were for me. If you have time, they can be supplemented by reading updates in the same forum.

 

2. I'm a dissenter from "the best nights for the bars are Thursday, Friday, and Saturday”. Having experienced both, I prefer weeknights. You see the same selection of dancers spread out over several days. The clubs are less crowded, which makes the dancers more willing to chat, get to know you (important if you want to invite them back to the hotel), and grope a little out front, and there’s never a wait for the lap dance booths.

 

3. Successful priceline bids vary a lot by season. You can still get 3* hotels for $45-$50 in the winter, but summer prices are another story, especially during one of the many festivals. I’ve had to go as high as $85 for a 3* in late August.

[Luv2play]

RE: Montreal

 

This is probably the best overall summary of the gay experience that awaits travellers to Montreal that I have read on this or any other site on the Internet. It reflects very faithfully what one can expect to find and the varied experiences available if one wishes to strike out from the Gay Village for the odd excursions.

 

I agree with newatthis that a stay during the week rather than the weekend can be just as rewarding if you are looking for a somewhat slower pace where there are fewer crowds but still lots of action. The benefits are that there is less waiting and better service. It really depends on your preferences. Some like big crowds and bodies pressing in from all directions! Others like the undivided attention from a dancer who knows you are the best prospect that evening!

 

It has been some time since I was in one of the gay saunas and for some, this experience should not be missed. I think younger gay guys will get more out of the experience but older guys may want to see what's going on. Three of the saunas have undergone management changes in the last 6 months and I noticed yesterday that the Oasis Sauna is advertising new promotions, including a new emphasis on going nude. In the past, it was not allowed to take off one's towel in the hallways and public spaces. Perhaps this is an effort to compete with the new sex clubs like Backroom where nudity is permitted.

 

One last note I would make is that on nice days the rooftop terrace on Skyclub is a pleasant place to have a drink and enjoy the outdoor ambience above the noise of the city. Some of the other clubs also have rooftop terraces but these have not been as popular at least whenever I visited them.

[Luv2play]

RE: Montreal

 

I did forget one thing that might be added to round out the picture and that is some might prefer the option of staying at a gay bed and breakfast in and around the Village rather than stay at a hotel. There are now dozens of B&B's to choose from ranging from economy to luxury. At the higher end you get your own bathroom which is important to some guys. B&B's can be rewarding especially if you are travelling alone as you might meet other travellers in a relaxed intimate setting and exchange experiences. I believe most have websites now so you can book your stay over the Internet. As an example there is one up the street from where I live called the SirMontcalm which is a very pleasant place on the higher end of options and right in the heart of the Village, one block from Campus and practically next door to Stock.

[Karl-G]

Montreal B&Bs

 

Thanks for the suggestion about Montreal B&Bs. I looked in Fugues, and there are more than a dozen, as you say. I looked at the websites for http://www.turquoisebb.com, http://www.sirmontcalm.com, http://www.maison-desjardins.ca, and http://www.aubergecosy.com, all of which are in the village. All looked good and inviting. Has anyone on this board stayed in any of them? I would like to read a first-hand report. Are there any problems bringing an escort for an hour or two?

_________________

 

( Since writing the above paragraph, I checked out tripadvisor.com. There are good reviews for Des Jardin and Montcalm, although just a couple, and no reviews (yet) for the others.)

[Luv2play]

RE: Montreal B&Bs

 

Before I bought a condo in the Village, I used to stay at the B&B's and found that the more modest establishments were casual enough to permit bringing escorts back to your room. I suspect the more up-scale places might have policies against that but one could always ask in advance of making a booking. Although I haven't stayed at the SirMontcalm I toured it after it was opened and saw the insides of all the rooms and other areas. It is very nice with a great ambience and beautifully decorated. Also an inside garden courtyard in the summer and deck.

[+ Gar1eth]

>Hey Karl-G thanks so very much for your great succinct travel

>guide to gay Montreal. I actually printed it out and intend

>to keep it for future reference.

 

 

I e-mailed the travelogue to myself and saved it too.

 

Thanks again Karl-G

 

Gman

[+ Gar1eth]

RE: Montreal B&Bs

 

>Thanks for the suggestion about Montreal B&Bs. I

>looked in Fugues, and there are more than a dozen, as

>you say. I looked at the websites for http://www.turquoisebb.com,

>http://www.sirmontcalm.com, http://www.maison-desjardins.ca, and

>http://www.aubergecosy.com, all of which are in the village. All

>looked good and inviting. Has anyone on this board stayed in

>any of them? I would like to read a first-hand report. Are

>there any problems bringing an escort for an hour or two?

>_________________

>

>( Since writing the above paragraph, I checked out

>tripadvisor.com. There are good reviews for Des Jardin

>and Montcalm, although just a couple, and no reviews (yet) for

>the others.)

>

 

 

 

While there aren't any reviews--this site has listings of gay friendly Bed and Breakfasts. There are multiple B & B's listed in Montreal--does anyone have experiences with the places listed? Some of the B & B's give discounts if you tell them you were referred by Purple Roofs.

 

http://www.purpleroofs.com/

 

 

Gman

 

Gman

[+ newatthis]

RE: Montreal B&Bs

 

MTLover has comments on one or more of the B&Bs, I know. Perhaps he'll chime in. (I'm too lazy too search, but I'm pretty sure he's posted some comments here in the past.)

[RockHard]

An impressive contribution to the MC. Nice work! :-)

[Luv2play]

RE: Montreal

 

Yesterday was one of those delightful spring days when the weather was just perfect for outdoor activities-not too hot nor too cool, lots of sunshine and a light breeze. So I went along with an escort friend to the rooftop of the Skyclub around 5 o'clock for drinks before heading off to dinner. I had mentioned this bar in a previous post but wanted to update the info since this was my first visit this year.

 

They have made changes to the layout which are even better than last year's setup, including a second open-air bar at the top of the stairs, a small food stand (looked pretty restricted to hot dogs but maybe there was more), and a new hottub that accomodates 5 or 6 people.

 

Yesterday there were three gorgeous hunks in the hottub in skimpy speedos whom my escort friend told me were also escorts and he knew one personally. While having our drinks not too far away I noticed one of the guys was picked up by a customer and went to his table and had drinks with him. The quality of these guys was very high, I would say A&F looks with a French twist, about 25 to 30, very nice tanned bods (one had a very nice six-pack) but the other two were no slouches either.

 

So, when the weather beckons, the rooftop terrace offers another possibility for places where commercial guys can be picked up and you see 99% of the package (the wet bathing suits showed very nice outlines in the crotch area). :P

[Guest ncm2169]

K-G, let me chime in on the congrats to you for providing this excellent summary of MTL attractions and advice on how best to enjoy them. Well Done!! :o

 

In the past, I've always enjoyed (former poster) Marc Anthony's descriptions of his endless "MTL Smorgasbords" :9 , and this is an excellent supplement. ;-)