"This is my favorite hotel in Montreal," said the travel writer who was quickly rebutted by his finicky companion, " It's too worn and tired." After four nights in four hotels, Hotel St. Paul was the last visit of the trip located on a pedestrian-friendly edge of Old Town inside a fabulous beaux-arts building. A glassy doorway missing its doorman opens to spacious lobby of shiny ebonized black floors and dominant onyx cube illuminated in a rectangular fireplace with long blue flame of gas.
 
The lobby is home to two hotposts, the upscale Vauvert serving lunch and dinnertime menu of fine Quebec cuisine as well as beloved Cube 2 bar and lounge that's always well-stocked with some sort of eye candy and fashion cutie to carry one through a pint of bottle. The in-house gym is purely adequate but a better option is getting a day-pass to join the locals, ditto on the spa even though the hotel offers a random massage on demand service from outside providers. In a city that seems to give birth to some sort of mom-and-pop design hotel every year, St. Paul was one of the first and remains one of the best. 

The Room:

A very cantankerous elevator shimmies guests to one of eight floors that’s home to a total of 120 rooms. Entry-level rooms are humble design spaces in a creamy color palette with beds draped in dramatic swages of fabric and windows adorned with wooden shutters that offer blackout till noon and beyond. The chic ebonized floors from the lobby continue with sparse décor that gets splashed with the occasional cowhide or zebra-skin chair. Some in-room hardware like the CD player and lamps and tubed TVs that feel dated, worn or just cheap. Junior suites are two room spaces divided by concealed sliding panels that feel like a private Parisian apartment in the 8th, with even larger Penthouse-level Black Suite offering charcoal-colored walls and better views of the Montréal skyline.