Back in February Leandra had a pile of points on a credit card that needed to be used so that we could close the card. These weren’t airline miles but points that could be used to purchase a ticket within a certain cost range. In other words, a bit complicated. After looking through several options she discovered that we had enough for two tickets to Montreal in the spring. Now, our calendar was already somewhat full with trips to Budapest and Edinburgh, but we couldn’t resist squeezing Montreal in between, and we are glad we did. We had a great time exploring, trying new craft beers and photographing street art over a weekend in mid-May, and left with the thought that Montreal is definitely on our list of cities to return to in the future.
The Hyatt Regency Montreal was our home base for the weekend with a convenient location along the Place-des-Arts that includes museums, theaters, and a metro (including an underground walkway through a mall). When we were booking hotels I noticed that booking.com offered a lower rate than the hotel itself. This lead to extra savings since Hyatt guarantees a ‘best price,’ so after a quick phone call I had us in a room that was 10% off the internet rate. In addition, we had a suite certificate that needed to be used, so we upgraded our room to a suite.
Leandra edit: that suite upgrade proved to have some interesting complications when we got locked out of one side. Apparently, this hotel swaps out furniture in the adjoining room to make a suite-like situation. Two internal doors connect the rooms and as we discovered late on our first night, if you close the far door, you can’t open it again from the room you are in. You have to go to the hallway and use your key card to enter the other room. This would normally be fine IF the key card hadn’t stopped working for the adjoining room AND you hadn’t dead-bolted the hall door. Thankfully, the security guard was able to use bolt-cutters to sever the latch and let us back into our room. Also thankful that one of us had clothes in the room we were in! Eric was not allowed to close any more doors after that. :)
Check-in was pretty easy but the lobby is on the 6th floor, so you had to take an elevator from street level to enter the hotel. The front desk staff did a nice job explaining what we had included and where things were. Later on we did ask for dinner recommendations but they didn’t prove too adept at helping us.
The room itself was comfortable, though a little odd with the double doors. One side had a large bed, the other a couch and chairs, but were otherwise identical. Each side had its own bathroom which was a plus.
We did have a nice view to the plaza below.
The lobby was stylishly appointed, with modern furniture and a fireplace.
With our suite we were supposed to have access to the club lounge for snacks and breakfast, but the lounge was closed both mornings so they comped our breakfast in the main restaurant. Breakfast was just OK from a quality standpoint, but given the food choices in Montreal it left us plenty of room to try places for lunch and dinner.