Our last day! As mentioned yesterday, we booked ourselves onto a whistle-stop tour to Niagara Falls for today. I visited a long time ago but Andy had never been and it seemed wrong to be in Toronto and not do it. We opted for BG Tours, who not only had good reviews but also offered … Continue reading
It feels slightly incongruous to be writing this from home, but I’m not one to leave a job unfinished so here’s what happened on the last couple of days of our trip… We arrived in Toronto bright and early on Tuesday but unlike our early arrival in Vancouver, this time we were fairy well rested … Continue reading
There’s not a vast amount to say about four days on a train, even if it is a train as glorious as The Canadian. The scenery was, obviously, beautiful – although the vast Canadian plains between Winnipeg and Saskatoon got a bit repetitive after a while, compared to the drama of the Rockies and striking … Continue reading
We’ve spent the last few days exploring Jasper National Park, which is the largest park in the Rockies; a vast wilderness of snow-capped peaks, foreboding black glaciers, dense forests and opal-coloured lakes… Most of which we managed to explore. We’ve also seen our fair share of Canadian wildlife including elk, caribou, loads of deer, chipmunks, ground squirrels, … Continue reading
Just a quick one while we’re abusing the WiFi at the excellent Jasper Brewing Company bar… We survived our first night in the teepee and actually woke up to glorious sunshine and blue skies – let’s hope it stays like this. As we’re in the walking centre of the Rockies we made the most of it, … Continue reading
We boarded the train at 8:30 last night for the first leg of our cross-Canada journey on board The Canadian. After being assigned our seats we headed straight up to the Skyline car for a beer – the bar closes at nine, which we supposed was due to the eight-hour gaps between stations… Might be … Continue reading
The next stage in our adventure is a train journey across the country on The Canadian. It’s a five-day journey in a sleeper, with panoramic glass ceilings and dining cars and all that good stuff, passing through some breathtaking country from Vancouver to Toronto. It’s routinely voted as one of the best train journeys in … Continue reading
We had a day to kill in Vancouver today before boarding the train (more on which to come), so we headed up Grouse Mountain for a practice look at some snowy mountains and bears ahead of our wilderness adventures. We didn’t take the Grouse Grind option of running up the 2km of stairs to the … Continue reading
Today was a day of errands ahead of our epic train journey into the wilderness tomorrow. The campsite provides the tent and sleeping stuff but we still had a few bits to pick up for life in the great outdoors, and as Vancouver is home to the gargantuan Mountain Equipment Cooperative, we made that our … Continue reading
We stumbled up to the HI hostel in Vancouver at 8am, hoping that they might take pity on us and let us check in early. No such luck – we dropped our bags then had six hours to kill before we could get into our room. Not ideal after an all-night flight but we aimed … Continue reading
Black Sabbatical 