I arrived in Montréal after a better than expected night's sleep on the Megabus but found myself at the hostel at 7.30 before the doors were even open, let alone was I able to wait for the 3pm check in. So I got myself a Croque Martin from the café over the street and in doing so completely wussed out of my first opportunity to speak any French. After an hour and a half of trying in vein to decipher a French newspaper I headed over and checked in.

The first thing you realize about Montréal is that it does have many of the of European style buildings you might expect from such a cultural centre, as a lot of it looks a lot like any other city with its sky scrapers and pricey hotels. Happily I was in the Latin quarter, just off Rue Saint Denis, which had arguably the best bars and restaurants in the entire city and all in a small area too.

I spent my first day doing my usual reconnaissance on foot around the city and wandered into the museum of fine arts for a few hours, which I did because it was free and had A/C. It was a mixture of paintings and some classic future type stuff, but there was also some modern art in the basement - in particular an interesting model of one monkey strangling another, which is one of my pictures. I went back to following day to see the exhibition which was of more interest to me - We Want Miles - about the life and works of Miles Davis the famous Jazz Trumpeter and the influence he had on the evolution of Jazz. If you are any kind of music fan and get a chance you should go to this this, as it was a great exhibition.

Montreal is the city of festivals - this is in part due to the enormous public arts budget in Quebec but also because everyone hibernates during the winter when it gets down to minus 20 or 30 so they make the most of the summer. The first night I got there, Frishta, a local who I'd met in Toronto while she was over there for an interview presented me with a leaflet for the Fantasia International Film festival and while I was there I saw about 4 films in total. I did meet someone there who had moved to M entirely so he could go to this festival and had watched over 40 films in the space of 2 weeks. At the time there was also the Jus pour Rire comedy festival, countries of the world festival and probably plenty of other stuff I hadn't even heard of. There's no shortage of stuff to do.

In my second night in Montreal I had an entertaining evening at the hostel - some guys from the US were on a road trip and had been singing some Johnny Cash songs and insisted we join in with a few other songs. After a few beers I showed them the Travis cover of hit me baby one more time. Although the evening took an unexpected cultural twist when a girl with the voice of an angel from France who was there with her mother sang Gershwin's Summertime in stark contrast to my awful guitar playing in return for us letting her use George's computer.

If you have ever got tickets for a gig that has been cancelled, spare a thought for George, a Tequila distribution manager from Mexico, who booked flights and tickets all around the U.S. to follow U2's 360 tour. Thanks to Bono's back problems he didn't see a single concert and has now spent a fortune on flights and will not get a refund as the dates have been postponed.

Montreal was originally called Ville Marie by the settlors from France but has since been renamed after the city's mountain - Mount Royal. It is more of a big hill really, but I would never say that to the locals as it is rather a touchy subject…. I went up there 3 times in total - I walked up it twice and then once I realized I hadn't actually been to the top I hired a bike and did it a third time. The top gives you a pretty decent view of the downtown part of the city. It's not a long climb but tough if you're not a seasoned athlete like me.

Montreal hosted the Olympics in 1976, which really put it on the world stage at the time. I went around the Olympic village, which is worth a visit, although it is only really the aquatics centre that is in regular use. Although the Olympic stadium is still around its rarely used apart from for monster trucks and dirt biking and doesn't look anything like it used to. Amusingly the Olympic park has an area of flags indicating the nations that won gold medals - Canada didn't win any and remains the only host nation every to fail to win a single gold.

Montreal old town as its name might suggest is the original site of Montreal and is full of old buildings, bars and restaurants etc. and is next to the Harbour. I went down to the Museum of Archaelogy and History on the front, which houses the remains of the Customs house, which was used to register people coming into the country. It also had a pretty cool interactive video on the history of Montreal.

One day I hired a bike and headed across the bridge to the Island and Parc Jean Drapaux. They have a great system for hiring bikes called Bixie where there are loads of points all around the city that you can pick up and drop off bikes from that are entirely self service - all you do is pay as you go by credit card. I went to the all worlds festival and was pleased to find out that the Colubians seemed to be having the most fun as they had a band and stage and were merrily dancing around in the mud all day. Although the Turkish one was pretty fun too as they had something like a cross between Riverdance and Morris dancing. I was also pleased when I got a sort of Turkish kebab with lots of hot source on and the woman serving me commented that Mexican People love their hot source. 'Yes we do!' I agreed - obviously the tan was looking good now...

TBC...