View of Old Montréal’s Marché Bonsecours

DAY ONE: BIENVENUE À MONTRÉAL, MONTRÉAL ORIENTATION & DINNER

Welcome to Montréal, the second largest French-speaking city in the world. Arrive at Gare Centrale in the late afternoon, meet your VISIT CANADA guide, then transfer or take the Metro to your hotel at the edge of Montréal’s colorful Latin Quarter.

Begin your Montréal visit with a walking orientation tour of Vieux Montreal ending with dinner in a colorful French-Canadian sports restaurant with an under-standable bias toward the Montréal Canadiens. After dinner, time permitting, you will return to the Latin Quarter by Metro, where your guide will lead you on a short walking tour of rue St-Denis and the University of Québec at Montréal (UQAM) before escorting you back to your hotel.

DAY TWO: NÔTRE DAME BASILICA, CHASSE AU TRESOR, iSci, ICE SKATING

Walk or take the Metro to breakfast a popular and trendy breakfast restaurant in the heart of Old Montréal.

Walk to Place Jacques Cartier to begin a cultural and linguistic “Chasse au Trésor” that will wind through the narrow streets of Old Montréal, ending with a tour of Nôtre Dame Basilica (pictured at right) the most beautiful church in all the Americas.

After your tour, you can walk back to Place Jacques Cartier for lunch on your own in one of its sidewalk cafés, or at the food court on the nearby King Edward Pier, then you’ll be free for the early afternoon to explore the centuries-old cobblestoned streets and greystone buildings and the open-air artists stalls (once frequented by Charles Dickens and Benjamin Franklin both who lived nearby).

Your afternoon can end with an (optional) visit to the new Montreal Interactive Science Center (iSci) on the King Edward Pier where you can, among other things, program a robot, look at an electronic chip, design a bicycle helmet, manage a forest, diagnose a disease or produce a web page in the iSci Centre's multiple interactive exhibits.

You’ll transfer to dinner this evening in historic Gare Windsor (the oldest of North America’s metropolitan railway stations).

After dinner, walk next door to an architecturally acclaimed office building in the heart of downtown Montréal (pictured at left) and spend the evening ice skating at l'Amphithéâtre de Glace, a 10,000 square foot ice-skating pavilion “without equal in North America”.

Return to your hotel on the Métro. Overnight security services begin at 10:00pm.

DAY THREE: BIODÔME, MONTRÉAL UNDERGROUND, ANIMATION WORKSHOP

Breakfast in the hotel, then take the Métro to the Biodôme de Montréal, where you can see 4000 animals from 200 species as you walk, in a matter of minutes, from a hot and moist tropical rain forest to the Antarctic.

Next, you will ascend on the funiculaire to the top of the world's tallest inclined tower (pictured at right) for a panoramic, 50-mile view of Montréal, the St. Lawrence Seaway and the surrounding countryside. On a clear day you can see all the way to the Green Mountains of Vermont and the Adirondack Mountains of New York.

Return to sea level, then take the Métro to Place Montréal Trust where, after lunch on your own, you will descend into the heart of Montréal’s vast Underground City.

Upon arrival in la ville souterraine, you can spend the late afternoon practicing your French while exploring and souvenir-shopping in the Montréal Underground, a 40-kilometer network of restaurants, under-ground shops and passageways.

This evening, you will take the Métro to colorful Crescent Street for dinner at the Hard Rock Café Montréal then return by Métro to the Latin Quarter.

There, you will participate in a two-hour Secrets of Animation workshop (pictured above left) during which you and your group will create and shoot a short film that you will watch on a large screen before you leave.

The film will be converted to a Windows Media File and emailed to your group leader, who can forward it to you when you get home. This workshop can be scheduled in English or in French, or in a French as a second language format.

After the workshop, walk a block back to the hotel. Overnight security begins at 10:30pm.

DAY FOUR: BREAKFAST, VIA RAIL OR AMTRAK, AU REVOIR

Full Canadian breakfast in the hotel, then bring your bags to the lobby and depart for Gare Centrale by Métro. Check in with VIA RAIL or AMTRAK and begin your train ride home.

Au revoir, Montréal. À bientôt.