Divine they may be, but Notre Dame's delights can only go so far, and once you're ready to exchange Hail Marys for male hairies, you can take the fast, efficient metro over to Montreal's gay village in search of a different kind of heavenly body.

For a quarter of a century, the stretch of Rue St Catherine between the Berri and Papineau metro stations has been the focal point of Montreal's gay scene. In this compact neighbourhood you'll find more gay-oriented bars, clubs, saunas, shops, restaurants and hotels than in the entire city of Paris. Every taste is catered for, from fetish fanatics to dancing queens.

At Le Stud bar, near Papineau, the smell of leather is surpassed only by the essence of testosterone. Here you'll find bears, cubs, wolves and other forms of wildlife chatting over a beer or enjoying a game of pool. At the other end of the Village, there's Le Parking, a massive two-level nightclub offering house music from the best DJs on
Montreal's gay scene. Downstairs, amid a landscape of dismembered cars and industrial hardware, Le Parking's dimly-lit Garage club creates the perfect ambience for boozing and cruising.

The Village also has its share of karaoke bars, drag shows, and cabaret. A strip club called Campus is the place for close encounters of the muscular kind, while a reconstituted post office building is now home to Montreal's first gay sex club, intriguingly called the Backroom.

Montreal has over a dozen gay saunas, most of which are in the Village. Among the most popular are Sauna Centre Ville and Oasis, both on Rue St Catherine. During Montreal's brutal winters, the saunas offer a welcome blast of warmth. The climate here is one of extremes – blistering summers and Baltic winters. One response to this has been the construction of a 21-mile underground city beneath downtown Montreal. With shops, restaurants, hotels, cinemas and even an ice hockey arena, you could easily spend weeks in this subterranean, climate-controlled environment without venturing out to brave the elements.

With so much to do in Montreal, you'll need constant refueling. Fortunately, the city has over 5000 restaurants offering a world of choice, from Italian to Indian, haute cuisine to fast food. Conoisseurs of oriental cuisine will love Montreal's Chinatown, with its dizzying range of Cantonese, Korean and Vietnamesse restaurants. But if you're looking for a more authentic taste of Montreal, look out for restaurants serving poutine — a curious melange of fries, gravy, and melted cheese curds that's a lot tastier than it sounds.