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Rue Sherbrooke
is a major shopping street for international and domestic designers, luxury
items such as furs and jewelry, art galleries, and the Holts department store.
Rue Crescent has a number of
scattered upscale boutiques and numerous cafes for a break from shopping.
Boulevard St-Laurent covers
everything from budget practicalities to off-the-wall handmade fashions. Look
along avenue Laurier between
St-Laurent and de l'Epée for French boutiques, home accessories shops, and young
Québécois designers. Rue St-Paul
in Vieux-Montréal has a growing number of art galleries, a few jewelry shops,
souvenir stands, and a shop that sells kites.
Antiques
can be found along rue Sherbrooke near the Musée des Beaux-Arts and on the
little side streets near the museum. More antiques and collectibles, in more
than 50 tempting shops one after another, can be found along the lengthening
"Antiques Alley" of rue Notre-Dame,
especially concentrated between Guy and Atwater. Artists display and sell their
largely undistinguished but nevertheless often-competent works along compact
rue St-Amable, just off place
Jacques-Cartier. From there, meander into a walkway called
Le Jardin Amable
to find a courtyard filled with kiosks stocked with eye-catching costume jewelry
and items crafted in silver and gold. Rue
St-Denis north of Sherbrooke has strings of shops filled with fun and
funky items.
Some of the best
shops in Montréal are found in city museums. Tops among them are those in
Pointe-è-Callière, the Montréal
Museum of Archaeology and History in Vieux-Montréal, and the
Musée des Beaux-Arts and the
Musée McCord, both on rue Sherbrooke
in the center city.
Rue Ste-Catherine
is home to the city's four top department stores and myriad satellite shops,
while rue Peel is known for its
men's fashions and some crafts. Avenue Greene
in Anglophone Westmount has some decidedly English stores. Most of Montréal's
big department stores were founded when Scottish, Irish, and English families
dominated the city's mercantile class, and most of their names are identifiably
English, albeit shorn of their apostrophes. The principal exception is La
Baie,
French for "The Bay," itself a shortened reference to an earlier name, the
Hudson's Bay Company. Montréal's long history as a center for the fur trade
buttresses the many wholesale and retail furriers, with outlets downtown and in
Plateau Mont-Royal, but nowhere more concentrated than the "fur row" of
rue Mayor, between rue de Bleury and
rue City Councillors.
For those who
delight in the hunt for bargains-and possess a willingness to plunge into barely
managed chaos to find them-won't want to miss
rue Chabanel. It's a long trek north
from downtown (nearest Métro station: Crémazie), a street that runs west of
boulevard St-Laurent and is lined with factory buildings and warehouses. On
Saturday mornings from 8:30am to 1pm-very much more-or-less-the clothing
manufacturers and importers use ground and mezzanine level showrooms and suites
to put out all manner of men's, women's, and children's clothing for sale just
those few hours a week (usually not in Jan or July). Coats, leather goods,
sportswear, suits, sweaters-all are on offer at deeply discounted prices, and
diligence and a willingness to bargain are rewarded. Prowl the 8 blocks numbered
99 to 555; the higher the number, the better the quality, or at least so goes
the commonly held conviction. |
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