Hey guys,

First of all I think that it's great that everyone in this forum and website are so helpful. It has been a great resource in planning my trip.

I'm heading to Montreal July 7th - 14th with 7 of my good friends. We're all between 17-19 yrs old. We rented a 1200 sq ft 2 br condo for the week for a great price. I know it will be packed but we don't plan on spending a lot of time in the apartment anyway.

My first question is about our location. We are staying on Coloniale. The person we are renting from claims its a 5 minute walk from the Sherbrooke metro and a 10 minute walk from the St. Laurent metro. We rented a place near St. Laurent and St. Denis because from reading posts I thought we'd prefer a funky/cool atmosphere of St Laurent as opposed to a preppy frat atmosphere of Crescent St. I looked on the Montreal EGuide website and it seems like we are kinda close to things, Cafe Campus looks very close and sounds like a fun place. My main question is: is there a lot of fun stuff to do around the surrounding area of Coloniale St. or do you think we'll end up using the Metro a lot to go to other areas? We like to hang around at cafes and hang out and maybe see some music as opposed to going to a gaudy dance club with nasty bouncers. I know Montreal is very bilingual but St. Laurent is apparently more french, should we still be able to get by in restaurants and shops with just English in this area?

We'll be up for 4 nights of the jazz festival. From what I've read it seems like a huge party with street performers, etc. But, is the whole festival centered around the Places-des-Arts metro or will there be stuff in walking distance of our condo?

My last questions if anyone has a website address or has any more info on "El Salon". A band I like is playing there while we're up but I've only been able to find an address of the place, no website or other information. Anybody know anything about it?

Thanks in advance for your responses, I look foward to hearing them