Montreal Travel Guide

Tourism authorities for the Québec province produce detailed and highly useful publications, and they're easy to obtain by mail, by phone, or in person. To contact Tourisme Québec, write C.P. 979, Montréal, Québec H3C 2W3; e-mail info@bonjourquebec.com; call tel. 877/266-5687 or 514/873-2015; or visit www.bonjourquebec.com.

The Québec provincial government maintains offices in the United States and abroad, which provide specific tourism information about the region. In the U.S., there are offices in New York; Boston; Chicago; Los Angeles; Washington, D.C.; and Atlanta. To contact the main office, write Québec Government Office in New York, One Rockefeller Plaza, 26th Floor, New York, NY 10020-2102; call tel. 212/397-0200; or visit www.quebecusa.org. To contact the main Québec office in the U.K., write Québec Government Office in London, 59 Pall Mall, London SW1Y 5JH, England; call tel. (44) 207/766-5900; or visit www.quebec.org.uk.

For more informal perceptions of the cities, the websites www.realtravel.com, www.travelblog.com, and www.travelblog.org feature a wide variety of real-people-real-advice travel blogs.

Good city maps are available for free from the tourist offices. The best detailed street guide of Montréal is the pocket-size atlas by JDM Géo. It's published by MapArt (www.mapart.com), which also makes good maps for all the regions outside Montréal and Québec City that are mentioned in this guide. They're for sale online and in shops and gas stations in Canada.

Telephones

The Canadian telephone system, operated by Bell Canada, closely resembles the U.S. model. All operators (dial tel. 00 from Canada to get one) speak English as well as French, and respond in the appropriate language as soon as callers speak to them.

Pay phones in Québec province require C25¢ (US20¢/11p) for a 3-minute local call. Directory information calls (dial tel. 411) are free of charge. Both local and long-distance calls usually cost more from hotels -- sometimes a lot more, so check. As in the U.S., paper directories (annuaires des téléphones) come in White Pages (residential) and Yellow Pages (commercial).

When making a local call within Québec province, you must also dial the area code before the seven-digit number.

To call Québec province from the U.S.: Calls between Canada and the U.S. do not require the use of country codes. Simply dial the 3-digital area code and seven-digit number. Example: To call the Infotouriste Centre in Montréal, dial 514/873-2015.

To call Québec province from the U.K.: First dial the international access code 00 (from Australia, dial 0011). Follow that with the Canadian country code 1, then the area code, and the seven-digit number. Example: To call the Infotouriste Centre in Montréal, dial 00-1-514/873-2015.

To call U.S. from Québec province: Simply dial the three-digit area code and seven-digit number.

To call the U.K./Ireland/Australia/New Zealand from Québec province: First dial 011, then the country code (U.K. 44, Ireland 353, Australia 61, New Zealand 64), then the number.

Directory assistance: Dial tel. 411.

Toll-free numbers: Phone numbers that begin with 800, 888, 877, and 866 are toll-free. That means they're free to call within Canada and from the U.S. You need to dial 1 first. Remember that some hotels will charge you for all phone calls you make, including toll-free ones.