The possibly best summer in my life that I had been very much looking forward to has finally come! I’m happy to admit that I had been very fortunate to have come and lived in Canada this year, for this year the country is celebrating its 150th birthday meaning amazing once-in-a-lifetime deals of tourism are lining up. What everyone had foreseen since last year was that the entrance to all national parks are becoming free for this entire year, but one thing that came as a great surprise was that: Via Rail offered a 150$ Canada 150 Youth Pass which means with 150$ you could basically travel to anywhere across Canada using Via Rail train service, for the entire July 2017. How cool was that?!
It was absolutely beyond cool of course. But it wasn’t without pains to try to get the pass, as I basically had to keep refreshing the website that went totally down due to traffic for solid eight hours (at least—can’t really recall now) and tried tens of phone calls to the Via Rail customer service. But it was all more than worth it at the end of the day!
And of course I’m more than happy to share my stories and itineraries, should any of you readers (do I even have readers? LOL) plan to have a train trip across the southern part of Canada–where basically where all the living human beings exist.
So to begin with, here’s the summarized version of my itineraries:
Day 1: departing from Edmonton, AB with The Canadian train
Day 4: arriving in Toronto, ON
Day 5: departing from Toronto, ON to Montreal, QC then Montreal, QC to Halifax, NS with the Ocean train
Day 6: arriving in Halifax, NS
Day 7: departing to Baddeck, Cape Breton Island, NS
Day 8: departing to Cheticamp, Cape Breton Island, NS
Day 13: departing to Truro, NS then Truro, NS to Montreal, QC with the Ocean train
Day 14: arriving in Montreal, QC
Day 17: departing from Montreal, QC to Ottawa, ON
Day 19: departing from Ottawa, ON to Toronto, ON then Toronto, ON back to Edmonton, AB
Day 22: departing from Edmonton, AB to Vancouver, BC
Day 23: arriving in Vancouver, BC
Day 27: departing from Vancouver, BC
Day 28: back in Edmonton, AB
Of course, out of those 28 days I had to spend more or less 5 days and 5 hours on the train, not including hours spent on the shuttles and buses that transfer me between areas without trains. But we’ll get into details soon on each post of each city.
In the meantime, why don’t I give you some snapshots of some of my favorite pictures I took during the trip:
Cheers!