Canada Vacation Ideas

It also offers opportunities for bicycling, running, tennis, and other sports. It is also home to an aquarium. The famous Lion’s Gate Bridge connects the tip of Stanley Park to North Vancouver. In close proximity to downtown Vancouver is the imposing summit of Grouse Mountain, which offers skiing just 20 minutes from downtown.

For those wishing to see concerts, B.C. Place offers opportunities to see worldwide headline performers throughout the year. Vancouver offers a cosmopolitan city in a beautiful natural setting unlike anywhere else in Canada.

We stayed in a hotel right off of Peel St, an area teeming with great restaurants, bars and interesting people. Our favorite location was the Peel Pub, which offered delicious Canadian beer and karaoke. The staff was incredibly welcoming and our waiter even put curling on the television for us, a sport we hadn't heard of prior to our trip!

Public transportation is easy in Montreal and we used the underground constantly. We visited many of the historical sites, including a beautiful church in the middle of the city. Our most fun was had at the Biodome, where you can visit all sorts of different plants and animals from around the world.

They offered a student discount at the time, which was helpful. All in all, our trip to Montreal was amazing. There are so many things to see and do. Our accommodations were clean and spacious and not particularly expensive. The people were very friendly and offered many suggestions on what we should see and do. I would go again in a heartbeat!

This included our tent, two sleeping bags (ours were kind of large, next time we will invest in smaller ones as ours took up a lot of space in our packs), a one-burner stove and fuel, snacks such as trail mix and protein bars, dehydrated food, a small saw, etc.

We had never done this before but were felt we were prepared. The first day we canoed and portaged for about 4-5 hours across a few lakes and rivers until we reached our first campsite on Burnt Island Lake. We were exhausted! We set up camp and had some dinner and discovered that the dehydrated food wasn't half bad. By the time the sun set we were more than ready to go to bed.

The second day we just spent time canoeing around the lake (it was quite large) investigating and fishing. I didn't catch anything but the hubby caught a couple small mouth bass.

It started to rain our second evening just as we were finishing up cooking supper, so we ended out spending the rest of that evening hanging out in the tent. We woke to sunny skies the third day and were thinking that this could be the best Canada vacation ideas ever. We had to pack up as we were off to another lake that day.

It was about a three-hour trip (including a one kilometer portage that we had to make two trips on to take all our gear) and except for briefly getting lost (who knew we were supposed to go OVER the beaver dam?) it was a relatively easy day.

Our site for that night was perfect! It was large and beautiful. We were facing west and really enjoyed watching the sun set that night. On our last morning we could see rain coming again so decided to hurry up and get going. Of course it started to pour while we were going which really sucked!

We were drenched, our packs were drenched and the canoe was filling up with more water than I would've preferred. Fortunately we had a pail for bailing out the water. The only good thing about the rain was when passing a small bay we came across a large bull moose feeding in the water. That was quite the experience. It was HUGE!

We finally got back to the original lake we had started from and met up with a huge wind. What should've been a one-hour trip across the lake took more like two with large waves occasionally crashing over the front of the canoe (where I was of course).

We finally made it back to shore and learned that the park officials had had to rescue five canoes that day, and we weren't one of them. That made us feel really good. We sort of felt like we needed a vacation after that vacation, but really, it was an incredible time. Despite the trials, it was still the best of Canada vacation ideas and we are going back again this summer.

Access too much of the area is by personal car only; and even that is seasonal. A friend of mine made a trip there a few years ago, and I was struck by his descriptions of virgin wilderness, and still largely native Canadian populations. The idea of spending a few weeks in an area where the land and the people are still cold and tough for some reason appeals to me. It's probably less leisurely than Hawaii (though just as expensive), but something about being more at the mercy of the earth draws me to take this trip.

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