Welcome To The Pleasure Dome

Montreal is the finest of cities. Named after the triple peaked Mt. Royal that sits at its heart, it's a truly cosmopolitan and vibrant place that exhibits the best of Canadian ingredients. Great restaurants, architecture, subterranean walkways, shops, bars and clubs.   

In fact come to Montreal at pretty much any time of the year and you won't be disappointed.  It's easy to get to and fun to stay.

But as we've long believed, a city truly comes alive during its key yearly festival and of the many we've discovered it's hard to rival the fun that is Nuites Blanches - The Festival of White Nights.

For 2 days and one (very cold) night at the end of February the city comes alive to host one of the great open air and free art festivals.  This year we travelled to experiment and experience the main event on February 2016 and it did not disappoint.

But what struck us as the most fun was not the main square. Don't get me wrong, it was fun to walk through and see and hear the yelps of happy revellers flying down the ice luge. Or to soak up the smells of good street food or sounds of enthusiastic French Prog Rock bands on stage.

But the real fun. The #taketheworld kind of fun was in somewhere very different.  Somewhere much more organic, which was the area of St. Denis Street.  And if you want to know why this was the best part you only have to consider that here was a place where a giant human Pacman game was being played.  People dressed as ghosts chasing an hysterically laughing yellow game character. It was also the street you could take a 3-ski and attempt to jump across a ramp, a place where anime characters danced to booming music or secret speakeasy burlesque bars offered visual delights washed down with epic cocktails.

But what really made this the place to be was the simple haphazard joy of being silly. Of homemade costumes and installations made with duct tape and good humor.