Montreal in late March

Hi
I recommend visiting Montreal Notre Dame, the botanical gardens are beautiful but not in March, however you can visit the greenhouse.

I visited during a road trip which I posted on another forum, scroll the post to see the photos.
https://www.fodors.com/community/canada/road-trip-ontario-to-prince-edward-island-canada-1708132/

Happy travels

Thank you. Looks interesting. Why not botanic gardens in March? (Other than the obvious:).

Hi
In March there's still snow and the ground is frozen.
If you're into skiing you can do that at Mont Tremblant, you'll have to drive there.

Happy travels

Schwartz's Deli! Like Katz's in NYC but w/o the line!

KTM, what follows is lengthy.
Celine Dion owns Schwartz's. Its OK, but we would def not make a detour. Trades off its name.
We were just in la Belle province, a return to my wife's home city Montreal, plus a return to that same city where I worked throughout the 70s. The trip was our first time back in 42 years. We also rented up near Mt Tremblant (La Conception).

Just off the top of my head: move heaven and earth to eat at Beautys (see Bourdain on YouTube). Excellent food, probably the best remaining diner in all of Canada. Cardinal Tea Room was also a fun restaurant. Premier Moisson is a bakery/deli chain and they are excellent! Guillame is another imaginative bakery. Figaros cafe makes the best croissants, nice place. L'Amour des Thes offers a great variety of tea. William Gray hotel has a superb upper terrace restaurant with peerless views and VG wine list.

We deliberately chose to rent in Mile End, so we could walk to and from Outrement, Le Plateau and 'The Main'.
If you're into bodywork, we can recommend one particular masseuse who both my wife and I agreed, was the BEST massage ever.
Seriously.
*Botanical Jardin** is maybe at its best during special fall Fest of Lights season.

Mont Royal is a sympa place for a relaxed walk. The best city views are up there. Duluth Avenue is a funky boho quasi-pedestrian street. Square St. Louis is a more local-feeling corner.
Both of the key markets are worth a visit: Atwater plus Jean Talon. The latter could be a 2-fer with nearby Little Italy. But our fave Italian cafe was elsewhere: Novanta.
Montreal is a world-class place to eat.

Palais de Congress has uniquely colorful glass windows everywhere (and current global warming demos as we speak, during the Intl. Conference)

The downtown and Vieux Port neighbourhoods are touristy (to a fault).

The Mt Tremblant area is very attractive and works as a superb foil for the urban charms of Montreal. Its a skiing area bien sur, but the several towns and villages that dot the route up from Montreal all offer good reasons to base there instead of the rather touristy Mt Tremblant Village itself. By design, we instead rented at a unique resort outside Mt Tremblant called Bel Air. It featured some very rare rentals in the beautiful Laurentian (aka Laurentide) mountain area. Fantastic outdoors activities such as cycling and hiking.

Recommended reading: The Apprenticeship of Duddy Kravitz; Like a Closed Fist.
Suggested Viewing----The Kings of Coke. Great doc on the city's modern history as the center of bank robberies and coke importation.

KTM, note that we'll soon be posting our extensive TR/Photo essay about this trip over on Fodors. It'll be similar to our earlier efforts, a few of which include 'Deep in the Desert' (Jordan), 'Passage to China' and 'En Pays Villefranchois' (France). For a sample, one could conceivably just Google my handle 'zebec' with any of those titles. Bah oui, c'est pas plat au bout.
Cheers
I am done. the end.

Wow super helpful thank you SO much. Will look into all of your suggestions. Thanks for your generosity with your time to write this. Katie

De rien Katie, avec plaisir. But don't blame me if none of your clothes fit after your trip---its a fantastic place to eat.

Added aside. One odd side-task that I'd set myself during our recent trip was to locate and ID the sleazy motel 'The Arc' (as in Noah and his animals) where our rock band had once performed in the 70s. That was my career during the 70s, drumming for a bar band from Toronto. At that infamous gig, we'd been broadcast live and also interviewed by the local uni radio show. That was in addition to a wide range of other adventures and misadventures that crazy week--you have no idea.

After a lot of serious inquiry (Montreal library archives, local music buffs and more), I was finally able to find the club. It was shocking though. Now renamed 'The Colibri' (butterfly), it is a brothel that features a special 4 hour 'siesta rate'. A trio of elderly Ottawa sisters posted the following after their recent stay there: 'We hadn't realized that maids work at 11 pm!"

Our naïve young band had not been aware back in the day, that the sleazy strip where The Arc had been located happened also to be ground zero for Montreal's notorious West End (Irish) gang. Their once-powerful leader had actually been assassinated in the neighbouring sleazebag motel a few years prior.

(gregglamarsh, what does all this have to do with travel?----editor)

I am done. the end

Btw ktm, I was that above 'editor'.
I am done. the wink.

One thought about dining: Many, although certainly not all, restaurants do not open for supper on Monday. Still lots of places to eat but it may take more than the usual search.

Thank you! Good to remember.