Some hotels are meant to be sanctuaries from the world outside. The Hotel Nelligan takes a different approach. After spending one busy Saturday night in August with my ten year old son, I have concluded that the Hotel Nelligan serves as the front porch to the incredibly vibrant neighborhood of Vieux Montreal (Old Montreal). The hotel takes the best of the area’s shopping, dining, art and social scene and welcomes it inside.

It’s hard to talk about the Hotel Nelligan without talking about Vieux Montreal. We arrived at 8:30 pm on Saturday night which turned out to be the most impossibly chaotic time to be driving a car down the cobblestone streets of Rue Saint-Paul. There were people everywhere. The gridlock reached a climax at the Place Jacques-Cartier where two major pedestrian thoroughfares intersect in a hubbub of street performers, perhaps the continent’s most concentrated contingent of caricature artists, and tourists and locals alike. I hail from Los Angeles and I equate it to having two Third Street Promenades crashing into each other. The resulting social melting pot was positively exhilarating.

The Hotel Nelligan was a microcosm of this. The hotel takes over several abandoned warehouse buildings and connects them with dramatic spaces, preserving the soaring atriums and a lot of the brickwork that give the place its contemporary yet comfortable character. The entrance along the Rue St. Paul is full of storefronts, with the hotel’s Verses Restaurant on one side of the front door and a trendy retail store on the other. Both contribute to the hotel’s liveliness. It’s also a plus that the hotel has a two-block buffer between it and the Place Jacques-Cartier, so even though there’s a lot of traffic and people around, it’s not stifling. Activity inside the hotel was bustling throughout our stay, not in a W-esque, clubby, bump-bump-bumping kind of way. The Hotel Nelligan drew a more sophisticated eclectic crowd. Instead of conceiving the public space as a bar, the Hotel Nelligan conceived it as a living room and parlor.

As a hotel guest, the proof is in the pudding of the rooms. For the most part, the rooms at the Hotel Nelligan delivered. There were a lot of things that I liked:
• The rooms are equipped with an excellent flat screen TV, a souped-up clock radio with I-pod docking station, and a separate stereo system with fairly decent speakers. To cap it off, they even had a list of audio CD’s which I could check out. While the TV should’ve been mounted on the wall so that it could give me a little more precious space on the built-in long desk, all in all the place is wired to the max.
• The pièce de résistance is the bathroom, and specifically the shower. I’m a sucker for rain shower heads with separate hand washers. The shower experience here is awe inspiring. One of the few misses in the room, however, are some of the bathroom finishes. The wall tile is a poor vinyl selection which looks cheap and is installed poorly. I also had trouble finding wall hooks for my towels but did manage to discover several cleverly placed rods.
• Under the category of “I’ve never seen this in a hotel room before”, the bathrooms came stocked with an Oxia personal oxygen dispenser which looked a lot like a wide-body shaving cream can. For $16.95 (or a lot more if you take the entire canister) I could get an unblemished oxygen whiff. I’ll admit I was tempted but didn’t inhale.
• There was attractive, original, geometric, painted artwork above the headboard, or at least artwork which worked hard to avoid looking mass-produced. In addition, a very comfortable fuzzy throw blanket hangs diagonally over the corner of the bed - a gracious extra which was cleverly presented.
• An ATM machine in a corridor off the lobby is particularly convenient for American travelers since there aren’t a lot of banks immediately nearby.

What didn’t work for me? For one, my first impression when walking into my standard king room was “Oh, this is a little small. Cool, but small. New York or London small.” An extra foot or two would really make the room a lot more livable, since as it was, there was less than a meter to get around in places. The high ceilings were a saving grace, though, opening up the room quite a bit. Also, I found the rooms way too dark. The poor lighting was exacerbated by one small window and the dark furniture and slate gray/blue/black color scheme – I really had to work hard when I checked out to make sure I didn’t leave something on the floor. Having a dimmer switch would’ve been welcomed (I admit that I might’ve come away with an entirely different reaction to the mood lighting if I was taking my wife on a romantic urban getaway instead of taking my son to tour Montreal). The lighting problem was even more compounded in the bathroom where the light above the sink just didn’t get bright enough (my wife, had she been there, would’ve run to the store and installed her own bulbs). The disconnect was particularly confusing for me since the lobby areas were generally lighter with warmer and a little less ruthlessly modern with organic colors, softer leather finishes and a more eclectic décor. My only other comment would be that I found the mattress to be rather hard like a futon – maybe it’s personal preference, though the pillows and comforter were delightful.

I thought the hotel’s service level was outstanding. When I couldn’t find a parking space in front of the hotel to check in, the valet offered to retrieve my car a few blocks away and repark it. When we checked out and wanted to walk around, they put our bags directly into our car. The free glass of wine for each guest when they check in is a nice touch and it certainly helps to get people into to bar area. Oh, and the complimentary breakfast was also well done, though beneath the elegant presentation, it was a fairly conventional continental breakfast, but the omelet bar for $6 was indeed an added bonus. Having a ten-year old boy with me, I didn’t test out the fine dining restaurant, spa, roof deck or other hotel services (my son did regret not having a pool, but he loved being close to the waterfront). The front desk staff was charming, friendly and helpful.

All in all, I really appreciated the hotel’s concerted effort to reevaluate everything I typically see when I spend the night away from home. There were clever hits and a few misses, but when I go out, I’m looking for a transformative experience. For one glorious night in Vieux Montreal, I got that experience and more from the Hotel Nelligan.