George Clooney Slept Here

Tourist destinations are not created equal. Here’s the top five reasons ya’ gotta love Montreal:

1.The majority of the population drives a BMW. Or that’s the joke. In Montreal, BMW stands for bike, metro or walk, all sustainable forms of transportation. The Metro, the underground rail that moves more than a million people on an average weekday, is a regular art museum with more than 100 works of public art from Marcelle Ferron’s magnificent stained glass at Champ-de-Mars to the only authentic Guimard entrance outside of Paris. It’s also one of the world’s most architecturally distinctive subway systems with each of 68 stations designed by a different architect. And since the metro is linked to 10 major hotels, you can conceivably visit Montreal, even in the dead of winter, and take nothing but shorts. Everything you could ever need from malls to fine dining is linked up to the metro. As historian Jean-Claude Germain said, “The metro is for Montreal what the boulevards are for Paris or the canals for Venice.”

2. Equal rights are taken seriously. Peek into the annals of most city histories and you’ll likely find a male, usually memorialized in a big bronze statue, usually riding a horse and carrying a weapon. Just last year, Montreal decided to officially recognize a female co-founder. For most of its 350-year history, Montreal gave the founder nod to Paul Chomedey de Maionneuve who led a group of missionaries to the Ville Marie settlement in 1642. Now Jeanne Mance, a French nurse who started a hospital and saved the colony by securing money from France, has her own statue and her own place in the history books as city co-founder.

3. Artists make grand and important statements. Cirque du Soleil and the National Circus School converted a 475-acre landfill into one of the world’s largest gathering places for circus arts. Called La TOHU (it’s a French term that means fertile confusion and renewal), this non-profit built a LEED-certified performance space (it’s round, made entirely out of recyclables and uses electricity transformed from landfill gas), hosts visitors to the recycling center and gives environmental safaris.

And in an effort to live by their stated social economy principles, La TOHU also refuses to hire anybody who doesn’t live right there in the once-impoverished Saint-Michel environmental complex. This site that was once a limestone quarry and a monstrous landfill is now an inspiring green space with 3 miles of bike paths and free events for guests to gather and ooh and aah such innovations as a micro-power station that converts biogas from the landfill into electricity and an ice bunker cooling system visible through a glass floor.

4. The anthem of the anti-war movement was written here. It was at Montreal’s Queen Elizabeth hotel where John Lennon and Yoko Ono, during their second Bed-In For Peace, wrote “Give Peace a Chance.” When the celebrity couple checked into the hotel at midnight May 26, 1969, they’d already made headlines with a honeymoon Bed-in at Amsterdam’s Hilton two months earlier. But it was at the Montreal Bed-In, also attended by Tommy Smothers, Timothy Leary, Petula Clark and a group of Canadian Radha Krishnas, where the song “Give Peace a Chance” was composed and recorded, eventually reaching No. 14 on the Billboard chart.

5. There’s a cool (23 to 28 degrees) hotel that’s 100 percent sustainable. The Montreal Ice Hotel, with its 24 rooms and suites, is built entirely out of ice and snow, requiring nary a tree to lose its life. Unlike similar snow villages in Finland and Quebec City, this hotel is right in the city, on the very site, in fact, where Expo 67 was staged. It has an ice bar, an ice restaurant (it seats 60 and is helmed by Michelin star chef Eric Gonzalez), a wedding chapel and a convention center.

Getting rejected by Brad Womack on the 15th season of The Bachelor may have been the best thing to ever happen to Ashley Hebert.

Not only did she get her own show (Season 7 of The Bachelorette), but she was able to invite suitors to a 3000-square-foot villa at Fiji’s ever-amazing Namale Resort and Spa. And she’s not the only celeb to have had her name carved into a huge piece of wood at this luxury resort in Vanua Levu, Fiji’s second largest island.

Russell Crowe, Donna Karan, Meg Ryan, Edward Norton and Tom Selleck are just a few stars whose names have been carved and hung from the doorway of a Namale bure, just one of many special touches guests can expect at this remote getaway on the Koro Sea.

Namale is owned by motivational speaker/author Tony Robbins, himself a bit of a household name, and has everything from its own private waterfall to one of the best fitness centers in the South Pacific. It even has a bowling alley where you can bowl barefoot.

Namale’s slogan, “Separate Yourself from the Rest of the World” is no exaggeration. It has 325 acres, 200 of which are protected rainforest, and only 19 bures and villas. That means you pretty much have the place to yourself. Each bure (Fijian cottage) has a thatched roof, Fijian hardwood floors, floor-to-ceiling windows, infinity pools and hanging beds.

As remote as it is, there’s plenty to do at this five-star resort from horseback riding and picnics at the waterfall to couples massage and yoga classes at the 10,000-square foot spa.

But perhaps my favorite feature, besides the fact that Tony provides scholarships for the kids of all employees, are the stones each guest receive. When a guests checks out, he or she is invited to carve a note into the stone, a memory will stay on this property in paradise forever.

If you’re one of the 114 million (a new record) that caught Madonna’s Super Bowl half-time show, it may interest you to know that the all those Vogue covers, flashing lights, booming loudspeakers and interactive stage effects were designed by a Montreal multimedia studio named Moment Factory.

Since 2001, this hip studio and its team of 12 designers has created installations for more than 300 events from Latin America to the Middle East. Madonna found them through her association with fellow Montreal company, Cirque du Soleil.

Whenever she’s in Montreal, either to talk flash or just enjoy a little Canadian je ne sais quoi, Madonna stays at the Hotel Le-St James, a 60-room boutique hotel in Old Montreal. A former 19th century bank, this five star hotel was chosen by PBS as the most romantic hotel in North America. With exquisite marble, inlaid wood floors, Ming urns, Victorian paintings and hundreds of valuable antiques from owner Lucien Remillard’s eclectic art collection, this swanky hotel exudes European refinement. Oh, and Madonna’s not the only celeb that likes the 3500-square-foot penthouse, the private hidden table at XO Restaurant and the discreet spa located in the old bank vault. Arnold Schwarznegger and the Rolling Stones are just a couple names you might recognize.

Here are a couple other great Montreal spots for star gazing:

Built in 1967 for Expo 67, Montreal’s World Fair, the Chateau Champlain offers by far the most stunning view in Montreal. From the arched windows of its 611 rooms, guests get a panoramic view of most everything worth looking at in this gorgeous city.

Fidel Castro most certainly uttered a few “que lindos” and “muy magnificos” when he stayed here the first week of October 2000 while attending the state funeral of his good friend, Pierre Trudeau who was, if you believe a former associate of mobster Meyer Lansky, nearly the target of a mafia hit for associating with the Cuban dictator. Enforcer Mike Craft told the Toronto Star that in the summer of 1974 he was ordered to off the former prime minister for trading with Cuba despite an American boycott. Although the hit was called off before “mission accomplished,” Craft reported that the mobsters were hoping to get back at Castro for closing down their Cuban gambling operations in 1959.

But by 2000 when the cigar-smoking dictator made the trip to Montreal for the funeral in Notre-Dame Basilica, all was forgiven. In fact, the tour buses that stop out front of the hotel are not carrying concealed weapons. They’re simply listening to their guides explain the hotel’s nickname: the cheese grater, so named for those arched windows that provide the breathtaking view of Place du Canada. George Clooney and Rihanna have also looked out those windows.

It’s undergoing a major overhaul at the moment, but you can expect significant tongue-wagging this spring when Montreal’s Ritz-Carlton reopens. This historic landmark was the site for the first of Liz Taylor and Richard Burton’s many weddings. On March 15, 1964, just a year after meeting on the set of Cleopatra, the famous couple checked into this iconic Montreal hotel for Nuptials Number one. The bride wore yellow chiffon and an $180,000 diamond and emerald necklace while a Unitarian minister did the honors. Located smack dab on Montreal’s Golden Square Mile, this hotel, that has also hosted Douglas Fairbanks and Mary Pickford, is within walking distance of many of this historic city’s high end boutiques, galleries and museums.

Another historic event that would have been covered by People magazine had People magazine existed back then was John Lennon and Yoko Ono’s famous “Bed-In for Peace” at Montreal’s Queen Elizabeth. When the celebrity couple checked into the hotel at midnight May 26, 1969, they’d already made headlines with a honeymoon Bed-in at Amsterdam’s Hilton two months earlier. But it was at the Montreal Bed-In, also attended by Tommy Smothers, Timothy Leary, Petula Clark and a group of Canadian Radha Krishnas, where the song “Give Peace a Chance” was composed and recorded, eventually reaching No. 14 on the Billboard chart.

Today, it’s a one-bedroom suite with framed gold records, pictures and other memorabilia.

What do the Smurfs, Vin Diesel and Stephen Spielberg have in common?

They’re all planning to film in Montreal this year.

Diesel, in fact, is here now, reviving the third installment of his Riddick Chronicles. This one, called Dead Man Stalking, is filming mostly indoors at Mel’s Cite du Cinema in Montreal’s industrial district between the Champlain and Victoria bridges.

Probably a good thing, because it has been snowing non-stop here in Montreal for the past 24 hours. I’m here, staying at Marriott’s Chateau Champlain, to attend Montreal En Lumiere, a 11-day winter festival with arts exhibitions, live performances, international chefs, light shows and tonight’s big event—-Nuit Blanche, an all-night party than runs until 6 tomorrow morning.

I’m told there will be dancing, a giant Ferris wheel, an ice lounge, life-sized Snakes and Ladders, a 330-foot slide, drummers from South Africa, classes in bottle juggling, gourmet Belgium chocolate makers, comedians, costumed street performers, tours of Egyptian mummies and more.

I knew I was going to like this place on my first day here when, walking down Sainte-Catherine Street, I was invited to participate in a student protest. More than 10,000 students (someone estimated 43,000) were carrying signs, wearing red stripes of paint across their faces and vehemently showing their opposition to the government’s plan to double tuition from $2200 to $3800 over the next five years.

As much as I love a good demonstration, it was hard to feel too much sympathy as my daughter, who is going to college next year, will face annual tuition in the neighborhood of $50,000.

Still, you gotta love the passion of the Quebecois–be it student protestors blocking Jacques Cartier Bridge, one of the island’s main thoroughfares, right before rush hour to their love of gastronomy to their arts.

Look for stories over the next week about this passionate city. For now, though, I’ve got to run. Nuit Blanche is about to begin.

Soweto is overcrowded, dirty and noisy. It has high unemployment, a rickety infrastructure and a tangle of narrow streets lined with shanties fashioned from corrugated iron sheets. It’s also one of the most fascinating, joyful, high-spirited places I’ve ever visited.

We’re sitting on a patio at Sakhumzi, a restaurant just down Vilakazi Street from the small home where Nelson Mandela lived with Winnie before his 1962 arrest and 27-year imprisonment.

We’re drinking Castle Lager, a pale lager introduced in Johannesburg in 1895, and discussing how the smiley, a popular street dish in Soweto, got its name. A smiley, for those who haven’t had the pleasure, is a sheep’s head, charred on a braai, or grill, that, along with eyeballs and brain, can easily feed the second row of rugby scrum. The name, we’re told by our waiter, comes from the toothy grin that remains after the lips of the sheep’s noggin have been scorched off.

Also on our conversational docket is the unlikelihood of two Nobel Prize winners living within blocks of each other on the very same street. Mandela’s home, now a museum with pictures, quotes and such memorabilia as the boots he wore on Robben Island and the championship belt given him by Sugar Ray Leonard, is on one side of Vilakazi Street and, a few blocks down on the other side, is Bishop Desmond Tutu’s home, still his main residence.

It’s a Sunday, and all over this township of 3 million, we see (and hear) church congregations, decked out in matching iridescent robes, singing and praying together under scrub trees, next to dry riverbeds and in the street beside the mechanics who are lined up to assist anyone needing a tire changed or an axle greased or an oil pan bolted back to its engine.

Like every day, Soweto’s genius is on display. With unemployment soaring at around 50 percent, entrepreneurs are as common as pill bottles in a retirement home. Across the street from the Sakhumzi patio, one such impresario, a juggler built like an offensive tackle, tosses beanbags, balls, knives, fire torches and zinging repartee, all of which he deftly fields before passing a hat to the fun-loving crowd.

Outside tourist museums such as the Hector Pieterson Memorial, a moving tribute to the Soweto student uprisings that led to the ending of apartheid, crafty businessmen sell frames made from discarded Coke cans, zebras carved from table legs and statues made from bottle caps. Street musicians sing, old friends tap-dance in unison, all hoping their near-professional efforts will coax a five-rand note from passers-by.

Soweto, an acronym for South Western Townships, is actually a cluster of sprawling townships southwest of Johannesburg. Like many things in South Africa, Soweto sprang up to accommodate segregation. It was established in the 1950s as a dormitory for black mineworkers, far from the “white” eyes of the inner city.

Before 1990, when apartheid was finally overthrown, blacks could neither own businesses or visit white establishments, so underground beer halls known as shebeens sprang up all over Soweto to sell homemade sorghum beer, pap, meaty stews and bread dumplings. Often closed down by apartheid cops, these makeshift bars continued to reappear because of their importance in unifying the community and providing a safe haven for activists and organizers.

We wander into one of these shebeens, run from the family living room, and get peppered with questions.

“Ah, the U.S.,” said one friendly patron, handing over the bet he lost to his drinking buddy. “I was just sure you were from Buenos Aires,” an assumption undoubtedly stemming from the stream of Argentians to the 2010 World Cup.

Perhaps the most well-known shebeen is Wandie’s Place. Opened illegally in 1981, Wandie’s is run by Wandie Ndaba who finally got an official license in 1991 and has since added a small B&B. Richard Branson, Evander Holyfield, Jesse Jackson and Quincy Jones have all shared a mug of umqombothi with Ndaba.

Like the shebeens that keep coming back, like the Nelson Mandela Museum that, when the Mandelas lived there, was burnt down and bombed twice (even the guard dog was poisoned after only one week), like the people themselves, Soweto continues on undaunted, resilient and ever-joyful.

My answer used to be wishy-washy. “Oh well, I’d probably pay off my credit cards or donate it to Greenpeace or maybe take a trip around the world.”

Now, when someone asks what I’d do if I won the lottery, there’s no hesitation. I simply smile and say, “I’d move to Santa Barbara.”

I always knew the city known as America’s Riviera had to be pretty. It’s on a beach, it’s rimmed with mountains and John and Jackie Kennedy chose to honeymoon there, for God’s sake. But even armed with all that knowledge, I was totally unprepared for how smitten I would become on a recent trip to Santa Barbara.

In fact, calling Santa Barbara pretty doesn’t begin to cover it. Perfect might be a better word. As for climate, well, weather forecasters could probably just make a recording—sunny with temperatures in the mid-70’s–and play it every day. The beaches, too, are about as perfect as you can get with southern exposure, swaying palm trees, a bike path, open-air cafes and cute guys in skimpy shorts playing volleyball.

If you follow State Street a few blocks up from Stearns Wharf, you find a perfect historic downtown with cobblestone streets, open air paseos, fountains, cobbled arcades covered in bougainvillea and practically every cool store known to mankind. Keep going for seven miles and you run into the foothills of the almost-purple San Ynez mountains which not only make for good scenery, but provide lots of camping, hiking and birding. More than a third of the county is protected as national forestland.

Following are six other arguments for forsaking Greenpeace and using my lottery money to finance my move to Santa Barbara:

1. Everything in Santa Barbara either has a garden or is a garden. Naturally, there’s a Santa Barbara Botanic Garden, an official 65-acre garden with five miles of trails. But there are also gardens at the zoo (in fact, this seaside home of 500-plus animals is not called a zoo, but Santa Barbara Zoological Gardens), gardens at the Santa Barbara Mission (it’s considered by many to be the prettiest of California’s 21 missions), gardens at the beach, gardens at the dozens of parks and even gardens at the Santa Barbara County Courthouse, the second most photographed public building in the United States. The first most photographed public building is, of course, the White House.

2. I could have a second career as a paparazzi. Oprah, Steve Martin, Michael Douglas, Charlize Theron, Ellen Degeneres, Jeff Bridges, Rob Lowe and Kevin Costner are just a few Hollywood luminaries with homes in Santa Barbara. It’s not unusual to spot local Kenny Loggins and his son at Batty’s Baseball Cages or to attend a wine and cheese gathering at the Wine Cask with transplant John Cleese. Plus, the list of celebs who go there to marry could keep my camera clicking until death do us part. Jim Carey, Sondra Bullock, Clark Gable, Laurence Olivier, Vivien Leigh, Debra Messing, Will Farrell, Heather Locklear, Halle Berry and Rock Hudson are just a few of the stellar somebodies who pronounced, “I do” in Santa Barbara.

3. I’d look forward to paying taxes and going to court. Okay, so this argument leaks a bit of water, but at least going to the courthouse would be a delight. Not only could I enjoy its meticulously landscaped grounds and sunken gardens, but I could climb to the top of the 85-foot clock tower and gloat at the panoramic view of my new home. Tours of the courthouse with it carved doors, wrought-iron chandeliers and historic murals are given several times a week. Bet you can’t say that about your county courthouse?