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Does anyone else cringe when your friends who make more money than you do toss around an idea, like “Hey, let’s go to Montreal for Tom’s bachelor party?” Montreal sounds great. Great restaurants, great clubs, world famous strip clubs that range from no-contact at Club Wanda’s to full-contact establishments. Pretty much the perfect place for a bachelor party for one of your bros. Unless, like me, you’re a struggling grad student who thinks that boxed mac-n-cheese is a gourmet fare while the rest of your friends are working and spending money like it’s no problem. Then Montreal doesn’t sound awesome, it sounds stressful. Really, really stressful.

If I’d told the guys how stressed it had me, they would have been great about it. All of them would have offered to help me pay for things, but you know how that would have been. So, I sucked it up and said, “Montreal sounds great. I’ll find the hotel,” figuring I’d at least be able to make sure I wasn’t stuck in some place where $500 a night was a minimum. Found the Hotel des Arts in Plateau Mont-Royal. It was a short walk from Quartier des Spectacles, where lots of the city’s clubs and restaurants are located, and only 5 minutes from the metro, which got us anywhere else. Breakfast and Wi-Fi were free, saving even more money. The rooms were $65 a night. Clean, comfortable, decent-looking. They weren’t luxurious, but there was nothing sketchy about them, either. The beds were incredibly comfortable. The staff was really helpful- young, funky, artsy people- they pointed us to some local clubs and suggested we avoid some of the places we’d been told we had to see. At their advice, we had one of the best nights out that we’d ever had.

Check out the Hotels des Arts website for more information.