What is a good itinerary for two weeks in Canada?

If you are flying in for the wedding, and then will take your extended vacation afterwards, I would suggest a flight into Calgary, and a shuttlebus (or car rental) to a hotel in Banff. Definitely a nice place to see, with beautiful mountains surrounding the tourist village, and you could spend several days just exploring the area around Banff (Hiking and biking trails, Sulphur Mountain caverns, natural hot springs, gondola to the top of Suplhur Mountain for the scenic lookout, great food at the restaurants in Banff).

If you choose to fly in a few days BEFORE the wedding, I would do the following:

- Fly into Vancouver and spend a day or two exploring the city, nearby parks, take a ride on the ferry to Victoria or Nanaimo.

- Catch the VIA Train from Vancouver to Edmonton. This takes you on a wonderful trip through the mountains.

- Spend a day in Edmonton exploring the city, especially the West Edmonton Mall. This mall used to be considered the largest mall in the world. Not sure if it still holds that title.

- Finally, take the train down to Calgary, and rent a car. Explore the city, go to Banff and spend at least one full day there. This should coincide with the weekend of the wedding.

Once the wedding is over, you now have a choice...

Either:

- Fly from Calgary all the way to Toronto, skipping the prairie towns. Sadly for the region, most people do this. While the region is beautiful, it is flat and not much to see between the towns, and so not many people find justification in stopping.

Or:

- Many people tell me that there are some very lovely cities and towns along the way, so a true explorer of Canada would not skip places like Saskatoon, Regina, or Winnipeg. Buy the special pass from Via that lets you get on and off the train as often as you like for the month, and then explore whatever towns might interest you along the route. NOTE: I believe that Via's main train corridor are now from Edmonton to Toronto, not from Calgary, so you may be faced with a 3hr train ride back to Edmonton if that's where you came from.

Finally, now that you are out east:

- Be sure to check out Toronto, as it has a lot of attractions and great cultural diversity. CN Tower, Hockey Hall of Fame, Canada's Walk of Fame, dinner cruise on Lake Ontario, etc.

- Take the GO train to Niagara Falls (or car rental).

- Take the train (or fly) from Toronto to Montreal.

- Explore Montreal's Old Port, the Biodome, Olympic Stadium lookout tower, perhaps try to catch a Montreal Canadiens hockey game.

- Take a river cruise ship from Montreal to Quebec City. Spend the day in the old walled city exploring its history and its culture. At the end of the day take the cruise ship back to Montreal.

- Fly out (or train) to Halifax, in Nova Scotia. If you've done all the other regions, there is no excuse for skipping the Atlantic provinces other than a lack of time. I'd chech out the Citadel, the port of Halifax, any ships or museums. Perhaps a side trip is possible to Prince Edward Island and a visit to the Anne of Green Gables house.

Finally, you should be able to fly out from Halifax back to your home. If that is not an option and you must fly out from Toronto or Vancouver, you may want to adjust your timelines and/or directions accordingly. I had you going west to east, but no harm doing it other way around, other than the wedding would then happen at the end of your trip.

Good luck and have fun. If you do make plans for a visit to Montreal, drop me a line and I can give you some suggestions on restaurants, hotels, and things to do here.

If you're only coming for two weeks, it doesn't give you a lot of time to see much of the country. Fly into Vancouver and spend two or three days there. Take the ferry across to Vancouver Island, rent a car and spend a day in Victoria and few days touring the Island including going to Tofino, which is beautiful. Rent a cozy cottage in Tofino steps from the ocean. Take the ferry back to the mainland and then rent a car to drive to Banff. Take the scenic Crowsnest route and stop in the Okanagan and also in Kootenay Park. Attend the wedding in Banff and also drive up through Lake Louise to Jasper. You can then arrange to drop the car off in Calgary or Edmonton and if you still have time take a flight to Montreal and spend a few days exploring Montreal and hopefully also Quebec City (there is good train service between these two cities). This is a pretty ambitious two week itinerary. You may be better off just to stick to the Western region.

From Vancouver to Toronto it's about three and half days on the train and it doesn't stop it any one location for long. The only places worthwhile seeing along the route are Jasper and Winnipeg is interesting for a day if it's late spring, summer or early fall. I would do the Eastern part of the country on another trip when you have more time.

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Having been in England (born there!) I have some idea of what your expectations might be. Living in Canada, I know that you won't find things similar here!

For example, Canada is HUGE!!! To fly into Vancouver, and then train to Montreal takes a long time - many, many days (nearly a week), and is extremely expensive. Canadians simply don't take trains. They are slow, and expensive, and the service is just not anything like what you might expect in the UK. You have to think differently here.

As Canada is so big, there is no way you could really see it in 2 weeks. I would highly recommend concentrating in one area. You do have to be in Banff, so that means British Columbia, and Alberta. Remember, BC alone is much larger than the entire UK - about 3 times larger. Alberta is twice as large - so those two provinces alone are 5 times bigger than all of the UK. That puts it in perspective a bit!

If you feel comfortable driving on the other side of the road, I might suggest flying in to Vancouver, and renting a car. You can make a loop - head east along the Crowsnest Highway (#3). This will go through the Coast Mountains to the interior of British Columbia. You can visit the dessert area in the Okanagan (looks like a US cowboy movie - cactus, sagebrush, rattlesnakes, and all), and places like Nelson. I would drive up the Kootenay valley (north from Cranbrook), and head to Radium Hot Springs. From there, head east into the park system, ending at Banff. From there, you can easily get to Calgary (an hour or so away) and Edmonton is a short 3.5-4 hour drive north. You could head back on the 16 to Jasper. You could continue down to Kamloops from there, but I would highly recommend the drive from Jasper to Banff (highway 93) - the most beautiful road I have ever seen. Then, head west on the Trans-Canada (highway 1) to Kamloops, and the Coquahalla (#5 - and another impressive highway in the mountains) to Hope and on to Vancouver.

I did a trip much like that some years ago, in about 2 weeks. A lot of driving - something over 3000km (2000 miles) - a little more than driving from London to Gibraltar, or Kiev Ukraine and back. As I said, Canada is a big place.

That route would give you a variety of beautiful scenery - rain forest, desert, all sorts of mountains, deep valleys, prairie, and, and.... You would see 3 major cities, and loads of little places, and also stretches where you might be the only humans around. Some of the best scenery in the world, on great roads, and enough services to make travel comfortable.

Enjoy!

(For a Google directions map, plug in Vancouver, Osoyoos, Cranbrook, Banff, Calgary, Edmonton, Jasper, Banff, Vancouver, and it will plot the route for you.)

Canada Itinerary

Fly into Vancouver, get a car and drive unless you're from a country that drives on the left and the thought of driving on the right really bothers you. The train is nice, but expensive, and you're obviously limited as to what you can see that way unless you keep getting off and staying a day or two here and there. It takes 5 long days of driving to get from Vancouver to Toronto, 5,000 km or 3,000 miles, so that's as far as I'd want to try for if I wanted a nice relaxed trip. You could actually spend the whole two weeks in and around Vancouver, the rest of BC, and Alberta and still not run out of things to do and see. And those are among the prettiest parts of the country with a large variety of scenery from serious mountains, to ocean, to grasslands. Fly back out of Calgary.

But you didn't say what time of year. If it's any time but May to end of September, there could easily be snow on the roads at some point.

One thing that Europeans don't realize when planning a trip to Canada is the magnitude of the distances between major cities.

For a two week trip, sadly (I'm from Montreal), I would not recommend the train trip. Jasper (the closest train stop from Banff) is more than 4000 km away from Montreal. Looking at the VIA Rail timetable (the only to offer cross country trips), that's a full 36 hours non-stop train ride.

I would recommend flying into Calgary instead of Vancouver. Banff is less than 2 hours away from Calgary, but more than 10 from Vancouver.

My last summer vacation was out West and we ran out of time to see all we wanted to see. Over two weeks, we covered Calgary, Banff, Vancouver and Victoria. While in Calgary, we trekked to Drumheller to see the Royal Tyrell Museum.

If you're going in winter time, plan on taking advantage of all the winter sports like skiing snowshoeing, etc.

Well you are starting off in a nice region of Canada. While I have never been to that part of my country before I have heard it is really something worth while to see.

The train through the Rockies is apparently spectacular. Many of my friends have remarked on the scenery. Now the trip across country by car or train gets mixed reviews. Fist and foremost any of my friends that have had the train experience say to get a sleeper. This is a long trip.

The one thing that clouds the experience is that once into the prairie region it is flat, flat, flat.....at that part lasts a very long time.

Driving across Canada in a rental....be very careful of the mileage fees. We are a huge country!

Ontario and Quebec are very scenic Provinces especially in the north regions. If camping is your thing go to Algonquin Park. A bit of a drive from Toronto but worth it in the long run.

The Maritime regions are a must see with the Ocean and associated fisheries. No better fresh fish then In one of those maritime Provinces.

Canada is a very multicultural country. Vancouver, Toronto, Montreal are the most cosmopolitan.

Cuisine is available in practically any ethnic kitchen your heart desires. Particularly in the above mentioned cities.

I didn't catch what season you were coming.

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