NDG is the west-end Montreal that families move to and don't leave: low, leafy, built around a single avenue that behaves like a village high street. Three and a half kilometres through the green streets and down into Monkland Village, where the whole neighbourhood seems to be having a coffee.
Start at Villa-Maria, on the edge by the old convent grounds, and walk into the grid. The traffic drops off fast. Cut through Girouard Park, a green block of mature trees that sets the tone, then into the residential heart — Marcil, Melrose, Old Orchard, the streets of duplexes and triplexes with their outdoor staircases and deep gardens, the summer canopy closing overhead. Drift south through any of them.
They deliver you to Monkland Avenue, the village: the cafés, the bookshop, the restaurants, the terraces that fill in the afternoon. Walk it slowly, coffee in hand — the pace is the whole appeal. The avenue runs west to the Décarie bridge, but turn back when the shops thin; the village has a clear edge. Then north-east to Vendôme and one stop home.
