The Festival of our cheeses at Complexe Desjardins: The Festival of Quebec Cheeses is held every year during Montréal en lumière. This year was the 7th edition of the festival and it brought together several Quebec producers with a selection of over 60 cheeses! Being a big cheese lover, I couldn’t miss the opportunity to meet some of the best cheese artisans in the province and taste some of their award-winning products. It was also a great opportunity to make new discoveries and to stock up on quite a big heap of cheeses.

Dinner at La Fabrique: La Fabrique didn’t have a guest chef this year. Instead, resident chef Jean-Baptiste Marchand created a 4-course “gaucho” menu inspired by the Argentinian theme of Montréal en lumière and highlighting the local flavours of this year’s guest city of Buenos Aires. I enjoyed every dish that night but the traditional Andean potato and corn locro soup with chorizo and porc was one of the happiest discoveries I made and one I look forward to tasting again in the future.

Lunch at La Khaïma: “Khaïma” means tent in Arabic and entering this small North African restaurant feels like entering a Bedouin tent. This Fairmount street spot was one of the 6 restaurants taking part in the “Lunching around the world” portion of Montréal en lumière.  It was fun to let the spicy Mauritanian lentil soup and preserved lemon and chicken tajine transport me to the warmth of the Western Sahara desert on a slushy and cold Thursday in Montreal.

Convivial dinner at Marché Bonsecours: There’s no better way to discover a country’s culinary culture than through its popular cuisine. This event was the perfect opportunity to do just that with chef Dario Gualtieri and his 3-course menu of traditional dishes. The dinner was accompanied by a few dancing couples sashaying up and down the aisles of the huge room to the rhythm of tango music.

Hot chocolate at Montreal Museum of Fine Arts: How could I miss out on the opportunity to close the festival on such a deliciously artful note? Wandering the halls of a world-class museum in the middle of the night is absolutely wonderful. Even more wonderful is stopping by the Cacao Barry lounge to enjoy a rich cup of hot chocolate cooked up by Marius & Fanny and made with Single Plantation Chocolate Alto el Sol from Peru, in keeping with the Peruvian theme of the night. One of the most fun events for me this year was definitely taking part of this Nuit Blanche event at the Montreal Museum of Fine Arts and meeting some great culinary, pastry, visual arts and musical artists.

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The Montréal en Lumière free outdoor site is open from Wednesday to Saturday, right in the heart of downtown’s Quartier des Spectacles, in a car-free area between Bleury and Saint-Urbain and De Maisonneuve and Sainte-Catherine streets. See the city from a different angle while riding the ferris wheel or from the top of the fun, fast and icy Urban Slide, and get moving with all kinds of kid-friendly activities, parlour games, a hockey shoot-out area, laser drawing, photo booths and more.

Entertainment is around every corner at Montréal en Lumière. Look up at Place des Festivals to see a new creative project from Montreal multimedia company Geodezik, known for its image-mapped outdoor projections that fit perfectly on city buildings: they’ll be projecting Abécédaire au carré, a bright and colourful animated story on the facade of Maison du Festival Rio Tinto Alcan at 6:30, 7:30 and 9 p.m. each night; find yourself surrounded by short film BLOOP, about water in all its states, in the RBC Dome, from 5:30 p.m. every evening and from 12:30 p.m. on the weekend; see tango demonstrations and learn a few moves at workshops hosted by dance school Las Piernas Tango; and groove to live music and DJs every night on the RBC Stage. And while the food and drink isn’t quite free it’s plentiful, varied and will keep your energy up throughout the fest.

On March 2, head out in the early evening and stay out late for Montreal’s Nuit Blanche when the city’s museums and galleries – including the Montreal Fine Arts Museum, the Musée d’art contemporain, the Canadian Centre for Architecture (where Pop Montreal sets up a stage) – are all free to peruse, with all kinds of activities and artists on hand, from the Quartier des Spectacles to the Old Port to the Plateau and out at the Olympic Park. Even Montreal’s “underground city” is open all night for Art Souterrain – explore the labyrinthine underground passageways, see awesome and inspiring art, say hi to friendly strangers, and stay warm!

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THE DETAILS

Montréal en Lumière, February 21 to March 3, 2013

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City of Lights, City That Never Sleeps… what are you when you’re both? You’re Montreal during the annual Nuit Blanche and Art Souterrain, that’s what – the arty party night to end all party nights in the city that parties all the time…

Don’t expect to get any rest if you’re in Montreal on March 2, because the night will come alive as the city revels all the way to the next day. As the grand finale of the 10-day long Montreal En Lumière festival, Nuit Blanche Montreal lights the city on fire through the night with, among other things, more art than you can shake a stick at. In addition to the museums and galleries in the Quartier des Spectacles that stay open all night and generally put on a fiesta (drinks and snacks, performances and spontaneous dance parties are all regular occurrences), there are events happening all over town, from Old Montreal to the Plateau to Mile End and the Olympic Park.

How about you start your night out with a tour on the giant Ferris Wheel in the heart of the main site downtown? If you want to stay in that area, may we suggest the cooking class at the MMFA, followed by the philosophical dance party at the Grande Bibliothèque (‘cause we all know no one could cut a rug like Goethe) and a few more hours shaking your moneymaker at Karnival, a huge fiesta hosted by Poirier at Club Soda.

If you’re wandering down to Old Montreal, get your sing on at PHI Centre or your swim on at the Hilton Montreal Bonaventure before taking in a gumboot show at City Hall. Plateau/Mile End bound? Make sure you stop in at Nouveau Palais for a flick or two, Monastiraki for the famous collage party and Mainline Theatre to witness a theatrical extravaganza. If the Olympic Park calls to you, you’ll get a sneak peek at the brand new, as-yet-unopened Rio Tinto Alcan Planetarium, plus you can skate on a superhero-themed ice rink.

Nuit Blanche also marks the launch of an art trail through the underground city: Art Souterrain, which runs from March 2 to 17. During one of the coldest months in the city, culture vultures can take refuge in the toasty underground network of malls and metro stations and be thoroughly entertained all the while, thanks to 7 kilometers of in situ exhibitions, installations and performances by over 120 artists. The word “smorgasbord” comes to mind! Here are five must-sees on the trail.

1) Start at the centre of it all, at the Place des Arts, in Zone 1, with the kid-friendly work of Montreal artist TAVA, who harkens back to an old school comic aesthetic to create an imaginary world with his installation La Voie Lactée (the Milky Way). Kids can use it as a maze!

2) Get brainy thanks to Le Pendule (the Pendulum), a performance/video/installation work by Barcelona artist Julia Mariscal, at Complexe Desjardins, in Zone 2. Barcelona is this year’s guest city, and there are many works by compadres throughout this zone. This one represents a whole environment, with sound accompanying a projection onto sleek metallic spheres that recall planets.

3) Get a taste of home with Mémoire en cours (Memories in the making), an installation by Yu-hang Huang composed of dozens and dozens of little white houses suspended at head-height. Dive neck deep into these symbols of memory-making at Palais des Congrès, in Zone 4.

4) Montreal artists Paul Litherland looks into the contrast of work and home with his photographic project Postes de travail familial (Family work stations), exhibited at the Tour de la Bourse, in Zone 6. Featuring portraits of particular homes, the project will continue to develop over the years to track our growing computerization.

5) Pazzazz, by renowned Montreal artist Dominique Pétrin who was in the last Quebec Art Triennial, is an eye-catching fresque whose style the artist describes as “Greco-Roman mixed with a 1970s dance hall vibe.” See what that means at the CDP Capital Centre, in Zone 7.

Prepare for your Art Souterrain tour by using the free iPhone app and downloading the audio guide here and make sure to check out this great deal on festival tickets from La Vitrine!

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THE DETAILS

Nuit Blanche, March 2, 2013

Art Souterrain, March 2 to 17, 2013

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