Montreal: Plateau, Parc, Musee

ALLÔ, MONTRÉAL! I’m in this hip, sophisticated city for a few days, ensconced with a friend on a leafy block in an Air BnB apartment, below, that’s big enough for six people, taking in some of the major sights and lurching from meal to meal.

A Canadian friend steered us to the charming and convenient Plateau Mont-Royal neighborhood, made up mostly of small late Victorian townhouses, many with balconies and exterior staircases (for reasons, we learned, having to do with taxes, not having to heat stairwells, and saving interior space).

Yesterday I weaved in and out of the area’s narrow alleys en route to my first Montreal coffee and best-ever cheese croissant at Le Moineau Masqué, enjoying the century-old domestic architecture with its quirky paint jobs and front gardens, some tidy, others desperately in need of weeding.

I had to see the modest home of Leonard Cohen, one of my musical heroes, which he owned for many decades and re-visited throughout his life. It’s a three-story gray stone townhouse, below, on the small vest-pocket Parc du Portugal, where we sat and absorbed the atmosphere, looking across at the bagel place he was known to pad over to in his bedroom slippers many mornings.

In 36 hours, we’ve shopped and window-shopped on Rue St.-Denis (Tibetan jewelry, housewares, arty made-in-Canada clothing); drove up to a viewing spot in the city’s green heart, the central mountain (Mont-Royal) that gives Montreal its name; enjoyed the sounds of French heard everywhere, though English is almost universally spoken as well; dined at bustling neighborhood eateries in Plateau (L’Gros Luxe — that’s their tuna tartare, below — and Café le Cherrier) and had an elegant grown-up lunch — grilled sardines for me — at Ferreira, a landmark Portuguese restaurant downtown.

Below, typical of Plateau: corner cafés with mural decoration.

Why have a boring garage door? Two of many, below.

We revisited our youths at “Revolution,” the current exhibition on 1960s culture at the Musée des Beaux-Arts, enjoying the psychedelic art, hippie fashions and vast room given over to multiple enormous video screens showing performances from Woodstock, with cushions on the floor for lying and taking in Hendrix and the Who, towering overhead.

And we’ve proudly mastered the arcane parking rules, which are no more or less complicated than New York’s, except, like everything, in French.