New York City - NYC

June 29, 2006

Shortly after my arrival in Montreal, right around 1 pm, I met Carole, a licensed professional tour guide from Guidatour in the lobby of the Holiday Inn and she was going to be my local expert on a driving tour through the centre of Montreal. I had only been in Montreal once before 10 years ago, so I really needed a quick overview of the city to familiarize myself with its layout. And although Montreal’s downtown area is very compact and walkable, a driving tour would give me a great introduction to this metropolis.

From my hotel we drove south on St. Urbain Street and our first big sight was one of Montreal’s key tourist destinations: the Place d’Armes and the exquisite Basicilica of Notre Dame, Montreal’s largest and most beautiful cathedral. From there we passed by Montreal City Hall and then made our way up the Boulevard St. Laurent, also referred to as “The Main”, for generations the traditional path of successive waves of immigrants as they made their way north the port area to settle permanently in other neighbhourhoods of the city. We passed by the Hotel Godin, a former garment factory that has recently been converted into a boutique hotel, one of many revitalized historic buildings that has been turned into a modern hotel.

Prince Arthur Street further north is a pedestrian street featuring a variety of reasonably priced restaurants with outdoor patios. This area was a hotbed of hippie culture in the 1960s and today provides a great selection of family restaurants. A little further west we decided to have lunch at Chez Gautier, one of Montreal’s most well-known bistros, established in 1978. Chez Gautier’s Parisian-style décor features beautiful woodwork and a magnificent handcrafted glass dome ceiling in the bar area.

Right next to Chez Gautier and under the same ownership is la Patisserie Belge, a pastry shop offering a wide selection of beautifully designed cakes and baked goods. Carole and I sat down on the beautiful terrace where I satisfied my cravings for an authentic French onion soup as well as a salad with warm goat cheese and toast. It was a delicious light lunch that reenergized me to continue with my explorations.

Our driving tour continued with a trip further north, passing by the Parc des Ameriques, a park that celebrates the city’s Latin American immigrants, until we reached the Mont Royal neighbourhood, just to the east of famous Mont Royal. This whole area is referred to as the “Plateau”, a reasonably flat area just east of St-Denis that is subdivided into several smaller neighbourhoods. This is one of Montreal’s trendiest neighbourhoods.

West of the Plateau is Outremont neighbourhood which covers the area adjacent to the mountain. The mix of ethnic groups was evidenced by the coexistence side-by-side of a synagogue and a Chinese church. Carole pointed out that some of the best bagels can be had on Fairmont Street. Cote St. Catherine is the main boulevard of Outremont and surrounded by a variety of parks and stately homes. Outremont is one of the most desirable areas in Montreal and used to be a Francophone stronghold, while Westmount, the neighbourhood on the southwest slopes of Mont Royal, historically used to the bastion of English speakers.

We passed by the University of Montreal, one of Montreal’s four universities, two of which are geared to Anglophones and two towards Francophones. The UOM is primarily French speaking and its campus was designed by famous architect Ernest Cormier who was one of the first to introduce Montreal to the Art Deco Style. We continued on Cote des Neiges, a multi-ethnic neighbourhood of recent immigrants.

The big attraction on the northwest side of Mont Royal is Saint-Joseph’s Oratory, topped by the second largest dome in the world after St. Peter’s in Rome. The oratory was built as a result of the efforts of Brother André (1845 to 1937), a man of very humble beginnings, who used to be the doorkeeper at the Collège Notre Dame across the street. Many miracles are attributed to Brother André and he was beatified by Pope John Paul II in 1982. In 1904 Brother André started construction on a small chapel on the mountain side, facing the college. This chapel became too small, so in 1917 a church with 1000 seats was built. In 1924 finally the construction of the basilica started and was finally completed more than 40 years later in 1967. St. Joseph’s Oratory is a magnificent building and one of Montreal’s major landmarks. Driving into the city from the west you can see this glorious structure for miles.

Right around the corner is the …cole Polytechnique where a deranged Marc Lepine killed 14 women in December of 1989 in what has become known the “Montreal massacre”. A permanent memorial has been erected to commemorate this infamous incident and to keep the memory of all female victims of violence alive. The Notre-Dame-des-Neiges Cemetery, begun in 1855, is Montreal’s largest cemetery and holds many of the city’s most prominent citizens. More than 800,000 people are buried here and many exquisitely carved gravestones bear testimony to many prominent residents. While Notre-Dame-des-Neiges is the city’s largest French catholic cemetery, the Mount Royal Protestant Cemetery right next to it is the last resting place for many of Montreal’s most prominent Anglo residents.

Mount Royal is Montreal’s highest point at 223 m and presents a huge green space for the city dwellers. The park dates back to 1870 when local Westmount residents were concerned about deforestation on the mountain due to the cutting down of firewood. Famous landscape designer Frederick Law Olmstead, the creator of New York City’s Central Park and many other American public green spaces, was commissioned to design the Parc du Mont-Royal.

Our first stop in Parc Mont-Royal was at Castor Lake, an artificial lake created in 1958 in what was formerly a swamp. The lake is surrounded by meadows and trees and used as a skating rink in the winter. We then parked our car just a bit further up the mountain, right next to the Maison Smith, the last remaining former farm house on Mont Royal which today offers various exhibits and activities. The basement of this building houses a very large gabbro rock which is an example of the igneous rock that makes up Mont Royal and several of the mountains in the Monteregie region of Quebec. Contrary to popular belief, Mont Royal is not an extinct volcano but the result of magma intrusions.

After a brief hike through a forested pathway system we arrived at Montreal’s famous lookout, the Belvédère Kondiaronk (named after a Huron chief) overlooking the downtown skyscrapers. Incidentally, Montreal’s skyscrapers are not as high as those in some other cities, since according to local stipulations, none of the buildings is allowed to be higher than the mountain. The view from this lookout is astounding and I wish every city had a lookout point like that. Just beside the lookout is the Chalet du Mont Royal, a large structure built in 1932 that houses concerts and special events.

Our brief tour of Mont Royal concluded with a tour of the Westmount residential area, an independent city of about 20,000 residents fully enclosed by the City of Montreal. Westmount has long been the traditional residential area of Montreal’s Anglo-Saxon elite and many Neo-Tudor or Neo-Georgian residences attest to the wealth of this area. Greene Avenue is one of the commercial streets in the area and features many of Westmount’s trendiest shops.

Further east along Sherbrooke Street, one of Montreal’s thoroughfares, is the Golden Square Mile, once the enclave of the Canadian upper class between about the 1850s and 1930s. Most of the residents were of Scottish descent and acquired their wealth in the furtrading business. During that era about 70% of Canada’s wealth was concentrated among the residents of the Golden Square Mile. Today only a few of the Victorian houses remain and many of the buildings house retail stores. Part of the Golden Square Mile is McGill University, Montreal’s oldest university, founded in 1821 as a result of a generous donation by Scottish-born fur trader John McGill. On our way back to my hotel we also passed UQAM, the Université de Quebec à Montreal, the city’s youngest university, founded in 1979 and a thoroughly modern addition to the city.

No doubt this was a whirlwind tour, but at the same time these 3 hours were a great introduction to this fascinating city. Something I would be able to mull over during my dinner at Modavie, accompanied by a little jazz….

For the entire article including photos please visit
http://www.travelandtransitions.com/stories_photos/montreal_driving_tour.htm

Susanne Pacher
http://www.articlesbase.com/travel-articles/hello-from-montreal-part-3-a-driving-tour-as-a-great-introduction-to-a-fascinating-city-92825.html

Marketing is what we do that puts us in a position to make a sale. Good marketing makes selling easier. Bad marketing may make selling impossible.

We market to strangers so some of them will raise their hand with at least potential interest in what we have on offer.

We market to our clients and customers in order to move them up to the next level of products or services.

Most of us put a lot of time, money, and effort into marketing. For must of us it is the key activity we use to differentiate ourselves from our competitors.

But when we don’t deliver on the promises we make in our marketing we unleash the deadly 3/33 viruses on ourselves.

The 3/33 virus will destroy the marketing we have done in the past and it will make it very difficult to successfully market - at least to some prospects - in the future. And for the most part the 3/33 virus is a do-it-to-yourself process.

The 3/33 virus is word of mouth marketing on steroids - in reverse. Here’s how it works.

When you fulfill a promise, deliver excellent service, come in under budget, and save your customer more money than you said you would - they might tell 3 people. And that usually is because you asked them for referrals.

But if you screw up, don’t do what you said you would do, or fail to deliver in any way - in your customer’s mind - they will tell at least 33 people. This can be disaster.

You know I am speaking the truth. Remember the last time you got poor service in a restaurant and how many people you went out of your way to tell about it?

Here are three ways to guarantee that all the marketing you’ve done will backfire on you.

Don’t Do What You Said You’d Do
In 2006 I met the author of a marketing book at the Search Engine Strategies event in New York City. I had been receiving his email newsletter and had heard a few things about the book. A table where he could autograph books had been set up for him at the Search Engine Strategies meeting. When there was no one around I approached him and found him to be a very insightful person, someone whose book would probably be of value to our readers.

He offered to send me a review copy and I thanked him. After the event I emailed him a note with my mailing address. I never received the book. I received several emails to the address I had given him, but they were solicitations sent to everyone he’d come across at the search engine event.

I don’t know if he never intended to follow up with his promise, or if he turner it over to someone else, or what. The bottom line is that I will never have anything positive to say about him, his organization, or his book. That can’t be what this marketer had in mind when he went to the time, trouble, and energy to come to New York.

Disappear With Your Customer’s Money
The Internet makes it possible to hire people you will never see to do something you can not do and really have no way of knowing it will work until it’s too late, and pay them via your PayPal account before they’ve even begun to do the work.

I have done this several times without incident. Recently however I hired someone, on the strength of another person’s recommendation, who kept my money and disappeared. He had promised to do the work within 48 hours of receiving my payment. But instead I heard nothing from him for six weeks, at which point he contacted me to see if there was some way to make up for his failure to follow through.

I was astounded, but since I’d already paid him I asked him to do something that was worth less than half of what he’d already been paid. Hey, we all deserve a second chance. What happened? Nothing, I never heard from him again.

It’s hard to say if I would have ever needed his services in the future anyway - so it was just a tedious time consuming event for me, getting someone else to do the job and so forth. But what did it do to the relationship I had had with the person who recommended him?

This was someone I trusted. Now I have to think twice about anything he has to sell me. And I am not going to tell my friends to do business with him in the future. Why would I take the chance he will recommend something or someone whose lack of performance comes back to bite me?

Embarrass Your Boss
Everybody’s got to serve somebody was a line in one of Bob Dylan’s songs. So no matter who you are or the position you have in your outfit - you do have a boss, maybe many of them.

Prior to events where I am registered as part of the media horde, I receive a stream of emails from companies that are making presentations or have exhibits there. A week before the 2007 Search Engine Strategies meeting in New York I received an interview request from the PR firm representing an organization I wanted to learn more about.

Actually I received three emails from them, each with open time slots, so I could chose one of the remaining times for the interview.

This is the way it’s always done. By the time I get to the site I have several one on one interviews set up with people whose message, I think, will be of value to our readers. So I emailed my choice of day and time, from one of the remaining time slots.

In this case however, the PR person never go back to me. How was that possible, that was his job?

I was curious about the lack of follow up, from a PR person no less, so I printed out the email I’d sent and took it along with me to the meeting.

On the second day of the search engine conference I scoured the exhibit halls and eventually found the person I had wanted to interview. I still wanted to talk with him if we could work out the time.

You can imagine his response to my story and the copy of my email when I presented it to him.

You can also guess the fate of the PR firm who had mishandled their account. It seems I was not the only person affected by this - one of whom was an industry leader the boss really wanted to meet.

So, who’s your boss? Whose opinions are important to you? Who do you serve? Are you doing everything you can and more to make sure you aren’t disappointing or embarrassing them?

How can you be sure to avoid the three worst marketing mistakes? Only make promises you can keep, and keep the ones you make. It’s as simple as that.

Wayne Messick
http://www.articlesbase.com/marketing-articles/the-three-worst-marketing-mistakes-you-can-make-133002.html

The bathhouse was finished and ready for a most important visitor. The Legion was prepared with armour polished. Flags fluttered in the breeze bearing the symbols of a mighty power. Into the city rode Constantius Emperor of Rome. Alongside rides his son Constantine.

The journey is ill fated and Constantinus dies. Constantine is declared new Emperor of Imperial Rome and crowned. The year is 306 and the place is Eboracum, the great city known today as York.

Constantine goes on to become the most influential Roman Emperor in history. He converted to Christianity and presided over the writing of the Nicean Creed, which formed the basic religious dogma of the Christian world.

York Minster
The spot where Constantine was crowned can be found beneath York Minster. Walking into this colossal space takes your breath away. As you strain your neck to see the high vaulted ceilings, you wonder at the people who built such awesome gothic structures.

Those who began work on it would not live to see it completed 250 years later. You can spend hours here looking at the stain glass windows and reading burial inscriptions or sitting in quiet reflection at the dedication of the people who built such monuments to God.

The Shambles
A visit to the Shambles takes you to the oldest and most famous street in York. It is extremely narrow and the houses are tightly packed together seeming to touch at the top. They seem to have been built for tiny people so watch your head when entering. Look down for the original hooks used for cleaning boots.

The word ‘Shambles’ originally means ‘butcher’ and in medieval times the street was full of butchers’ shops. One of the wives of these butcher’s was St Margaret Clitherow who was martyred in 1586. You need to look out or you might miss a tiny shrine dedicated to her memory.

Jorvik Viking Centre
It is well worth visiting the Jorvik Viking Centre where you can experience the sights, sounds and smells of Viking York.

A superb series of reconstructions bring the world of the Vikings to life. Experience archaeology in action with the simulated dig. Great fun for kids of all ages!

Castle Museum
The Castle Museum was originally a female and debtors prison. Since 1935 it has been home to the collections of Dr. J. T. Kirk who donated them to the city of York. Here you can walk down a Victorian cobbled street complete with hansom cab or visit authentic shop fronts displaying wares from the period.

For those interested in all things military, there is an impressive collection of firearms, uniforms and medals. Children will be fascinated by the collection of children’s toys.

Kings Manor
Dating back to the sixteenth century, Henry V111 and Catherine Howard are likely to have stayed here. It was the residence of the King’s Council. Remains from the Tudor period still remain including an impressive fireplace. Today the building is part of the University of York.

The walled city of York has so much to offer with historical landmarks at every turn. It is popular amongst tourists and gets very busy during the summer months. If you plan to stay overnight, do book somewhere to stay in advance. When I went, I ended up staying in a motorway hotel as literally everywhere was booked up!

Ann Coveney
http://www.articlesbase.com/travel-articles/walking-through-york-and-two-thousand-years-of-history-70492.html

One of the most frequented questions on my blog is if you need a passport to visit Hawaii. If you are a U.S. citizen the answer is no. Hawaii is the 50th U.S. state so there is no need for a passport. It is no different than from going from say, Nevada to California except the long flight of course.

Flying to Hawaii can be a very long trip if you haven’t planned right for it, especially if you have kids along. Flight times vary from around 6 hours from Los Angeles or San Francisco, 8 hours from Salt Lake City and around 12 hours from New York and as long as 17.5 hours from the UK.

To keep your kids busy bring along some books or a portable DVD player and a couple DVD’s to help keep them occupied. Make sure the DVD player is fully charged or has new batteries so it will last long enough for the flight. Don’t forget the headphones! People in the neighboring seats don’t want to hear the Barney song all through the flight. Most flights should have an in-flight movie to watch as well.

If you are bringing an infant be sure your car seat has the FAA approval sticker on it somewhere or you won’t be able to use it. Have an ample supply of diapers, wipes and powdered formula as well. A few dry snacks are also a good idea especially if your kids are picky eaters, they might not like the food served on the plane so bring something you know they will eat. You can bring fruits and vegetables on the plane and eat them there, but you cannot take them off the plane in Hawaii. Also be prepared to fill out the Agricultural form in flight so keep a pen handy.

I usually fly the red eye out of Las Vegas at 2 am so it is dark and much easier to sleep through the six to seven hour flight. The flights can get a little chilly since you are sitting in an air conditioned place for so long so bring a light jacket, you are likely to need one sometime during your Hawaii trip anyway, keep it handy in your carry-on.

The flight is a good time to reread any Activity brochures you may have picked up or to go over your itinerary to make sure you time is wisely spent, or just sit back and relax and prepare yourself for the slower lifestyle of Hawaii, after all you are going to Hawaii!

Ronnie Wayne
http://www.articlesbase.com/travel-tips-articles/travel-tips-your-flight-to-hawaii-705774.html