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| - On our last day in Montreal, a group of friends and I did a bike tour around the city with Fitz & Folwell. We had to reserve a few weeks in advance, and our preferred date (Saturday) was fully booked - so definitely call ahead if you have interest. The tour starts at 10 and is advertised to end at 2 - but be aware that if you do have slow riders in your group (and we had a couple who crashed a few times, which slowed down our tail rider), it will go longer. Our bike tour ended at 3:45 PM, which was substantially later than we anticipated - but the weather was incredibly gorgeous out (70 degrees with nary a cloud in the sky), so I did not mind at all.
If you show up around 15 minutes ahead of time, it's easy enough to get set up - you head out back (which is really just walking through the back of the store to a back road, where it's easy to get people set up on their bikes). After a short introduction (we had Frederic as our guide, and Mimi, a McGill student, as our tail rider), we were on our way. There's much more of a balance at the beginning of talking about the sites are you ride through McGill through downtown, and eventually down through Old Montreal to the water; once you bike past Old Port (which you will stop by later on), you get a decent amount of stretch where you are just biking beside Lachine Canal to Atwater Market. There, you'll eat lunch (which, for us, was pizza...and they even bought me a beer, which was quite awesome) on the old, unused tracks that ran along the canal before heading back. As mentioned previously, you'll stop by Old Port before heading up through the Latin Quarter and Plateau Mont-Royal back to the shop. It's a very informative tour that mixes in the sites of more modern Montreal with its older past. Frederic was very charming and knowledgeable about the sites, and didn't talk for too long - which can be a drawback of informative tours at times. The way the tour is designed, such that it does allow for an extended stretch of pure biking, was a nice way to make it feel more like you're just out for a bike ride and not stopping all the time.
In all, this was a phenomenal experience. If you are looking for a tour that will give you a great overview of the main areas of Montreal, this is a must-do. The shopowners are incredibly friendly, and it's right by Mont-Royal as well - so it's centrally located. Even if you haven't biked for a long time (and this was my first time in nearly 10 years), you won't feel like you're in danger, mainly because Montreal drivers have a sense of courtesy that some (like those in my native New York City) lack.
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