Come down from the mountain for the high life

There is something irrationally self-deprecating about Montrealers. A typical native may describe the city's humming Plateau Mont-Royal district with crazy precision as the "fourth hippest neighbourhood in North America". In fact, the Plateau, lying in the shadow of the eponymous green hill, universally known as "the mountain" to Montrealers, has been home to a diverse immigrant population since the late-19th century, and is not the fourth anything. It is a uniquely laid-back mix of houses with wrought-iron outside staircases and flower- bedecked balconies, populated by students, yuppies and old Francophone working-class families with cafés, theatres and a wealth of restaurants, ranging from Greek and Afghan to classic French, clustered round its central spine, the rue St-Denis. Late on a hot summer night, the streets throng with people dining, drinking or just taking a stroll.

Montrealers are a modest bunch, says Donald MacIntyre, yet they live in Canada's most stylish city

There is something irrationally self-deprecating about Montrealers. A typical native may describe the city's humming Plateau Mont-Royal district with crazy precision as the "fourth hippest neighbourhood in North America". In fact, the Plateau, lying in the shadow of the eponymous green hill, universally known as "the mountain" to Montrealers, has been home to a diverse immigrant population since the late-19th century, and is not the fourth anything. It is a uniquely laid-back mix of houses with wrought-iron outside staircases and flower- bedecked balconies, populated by students, yuppies and old Francophone working-class families with cafés, theatres and a wealth of restaurants, ranging from Greek and Afghan to classic French, clustered round its central spine, the rue St-Denis. Late on a hot summer night, the streets throng with people dining, drinking or just taking a stroll.

I'm a sucker for Montreal – not least the mountain itself. My father, born and raised in the city until he went to Europe as a Canadian army volunteer in the Second World War, as his father before him had been in the First World War, graduated from McGill, whose campus nestles in the foothills of Mont-Royal.

My aunt, who as a child regularly skied the mountain, and some of my favourite cousins live in and around the city. My grandparents, Scottish immigrants at the turn of the century, are buried in the Protestant cemetery on the mountain's slopes, surely one of the most peaceful and beautifully landscaped resting places in the Western world. When I go to the McCord Museum of Canadian History on rue Sherbrooke and look at the huge, grainy, early 1900s photographs William Notman took to chart the rapid growth of the city – rickety slums as well as the bustling business life around the rue St Jacques – I am seeing the Montreal my grandparents found when they arrived from Glasgow a hundred years ago. But I am confident that I would still love Montreal even without the emotional pull. It does not matter whether you are taking a wooded walk to the top of Mont Royal with its stunning views of the city's unique skyline or threading the 18th and 19th-century narrow streets of Vieux Montreal, the city's equivalent of the Marais in Paris, and at least as lovingly restored. Montreal is full of surprises, big and small.

Take a stroll or an early evening bike ride around the parc Jean-Drapeau, dominated by the extraordinary geodesic dome Buckminster Fuller designed to house the US pavilion at the 1967 Expo. It is now the Biosphere, an ingenious interactive museum with emphasis on the eco-systems of the St Lawrence River and the Great Lakes; but it is the gigantic structure itself that takes your breath away: a sphere of tubular aluminium, visible from many parts of the city.

When you visit the botanical gardens – the biggest outside Kew – be sure not to miss the wonderfully tranquil herb garden where you can play an interactive guessing game, matching name to smell.

The nearby Stade Olympique cost C$1.4m (£600,000), was not ready in time for the 1976 Olympics, and the city is still paying for it. But it is somehow made worth it by the Tour de Montreal, the world's tallest inclining tower, the architect Roger Lallibert's extraordinary monument to 1970s Futurism, which soars above the Stade with the extraterrestrial quality you associate with the Mayan ruins of Mexico. Take a funicular to the top and, on a clear day, see the Laurentian Mountains 50 miles away.

Montreal boasts some of the best restaurants in North America, starting with classic French. But don't miss out on an exquisite smoked-meat sandwich and fries costing just a couple of dollars at Ben's, a downtown deli started by a Lithuanian immigrant at the turn of the century. Its old tables hark back to Montreal's heyday as a swinging city during US prohibition in the 1920s. Today the bars of the boulevard St-Laurent and the rue Crescent are still hectic until closing time at 3am.

Seductive as Montreal is, take a trip to Quebec City if you have time. The most relaxing way to go is by train (three hours). Once there the Haute Ville is easily walkable from the place d'Armes, dominated on one side by the Chateau Frontenac, a gigantic, extravagant, pseudo-mediaeval pile built for the Canadian Pacific Railway in 1893 and still by far the city's most splendid hotel. If you cannot afford to stay there, you can still take the 50-minute guided tour. You can visit the room where Churchill stayed for his crucial conferences at the Frontenac with Roosevelt in August 1943 and September 1944. He took time – at the height of the war – for a five-day fishing trip 4,000 feet up in the Laurentians, a place he loved. And note the brass letter-boxes on each floor, attached to a chute by the liftshaft. The guests the Frontenac aimed to attract were not the sort to traipse down to the lobby just to post a letter.

But Quebec City's other attractions are much older than the Frontenac. This is the most historic city in the country, the ancient fortress capital of Catholic French Canada. Burnt down in 1922 but rebuilt exactly to the original plans of 1647, the Basilique Notre Dame de Quebec presides over the oldest parish in the Americas north of Mexico. Elsewhere the cobbled streets of Vieux Quebec feature many 17th- and 18th-century buildings, several touched with the bloodstained history of conflicts between the French and the British.

Returning to Montreal's Gare Central, I mentally converted Marlene Dietrich's famous comparison of Rio de Janeiro with Sao Paolo: "Quebec City is a beauty, but Montreal – Montreal is a city."

The Facts

Getting there

Donald MacIntyre's trip to Montreal and Quebec was organised by Travelscene (020 8424 9648; www.travelscene.co.uk) and Destination Quebec (020 7233 8011; www.quebec4u.co.uk ). He flew with Air Canada from Heathrow to Montreal and stayed in the four-star Hotel Queen Elizabeth near Old Montreal and in the five-star Chateau Frontenac overlooking the St Lawrence River in Quebec City.

In Montreal, Travelscene offers three-night weekend breaks from £436 per person, based on two sharing, staying in a three-star hotel, or from £478 in the four-star Queen Elizabeth Hotel. Prices include return scheduled flights from Heathrow and UK taxes. Day trips to Quebec City are available from Montreal for £29.

Travelscene also offers three-night breaks to Quebec City from £541 per person, based on two sharing, staying in a three-star hotel, or from £597 staying at the famous five-star Chateau Frontenac. Prices include return scheduled flights from Heathrow via Montreal to Quebec and UK taxes.

Travelscene also offers two-centre city breaks to many Canadian and US destinations. A five-night break, with three nights in Montreal in the Queen Elizabeth and two nights in Quebec City in the Chateau Frontenac, costs from £618 per person, based on two sharing, including return scheduled flights with Air Canada from Heathrow to Montreal, flights between Montreal and Quebec City and UK taxes and five nights' hotel accommodation.

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