Well it’s pre-trippie time, and I’ve actually broken my usual habit of remembering to write and post it the night before we fly! This time I’m almost 5 months earlier, but there’s a reason for that – I’m hoping lots of lovely Dibbers will contribute to my planning.
It’s just the two of us again as our children prefer to holiday without us now that they are 24. Can't blame them really - they both have partners and we're no longer paying!
Let’s get the introductions over with – I’m Jo and DH is Martin. Here we are on last year’s holiday.
Well this holiday to Canada was actually first considered two years ago, with the aim of visiting in Summer 2017. However, in September 2016 I spotted a post on the Dibb about cheap flights to California, so our plans quickly changed at the mere term 'bargain'. Little did we know how expensive hotels were, so the 'bargain' holiday would turn out not to be quite that.
We're only here once though, so we had no regrets. Instead we postponed our planned trip to Vancouver and the Rockies by a year.
We first visited Canada in May 2015, taking in Toronto and Niagara Falls. We had a fabulous time, but it was only a short break. It really whetted our appetite to see more of the country though.
I was hoping to find similarly cheap Flydrive prices in the BA sale to those we’d found to California, but we weren’t quite as lucky. There will be more on that in a later post…
We researched different airports to fly into and out of and quickly came up with a
very short list comprising of Calgary and Vancouver. This would avoid us having to do a loop, but which to do first?
Last year’s road trip actually helped us decide. We’d visited San Francisco at the end of our trip, immediately following a stay in Yosemite, and although I enjoyed the city, nothing could live up the beauty of Yosemite for me. For that reason I felt that the Rockies would be better to visit at the end of our trip and therefore we should fly into Vancouver and home from Calgary.
With the help of a
post on the Dibb asking for ideas, a very tentative itinerary was formed and we looked at potential dates to travel. We then had an anxious wait while Martin tried to get his holiday dates confirmed and hoping that the BA sale would still be on by the time that happened.
The intial itinerary was formed as follows:
22/07/18 Fly to Vancouver for 4 nights
Vancouver Island - 3 nights
An overnight stay somewhere to break up a long drive
Jasper – 3 nights
Banff - 5 nights to include visiting Lake Louise
Calgary – 2 nights
Part 2 to follow later.