Page 1 of Canadian Holidays

Hi

Any travel agents out there? ;)

The girlfriend and I are thinking of moving to Canada in the next few years.

Before we do, we`d like a holiday over there. We were looking at touring / fly-drive holidays but they are well minty.

I was thinking of a holiday based in Vancouver for a couple of weeks where we can then maybe hire a car or go on trips ourselves to save a bit of money.

The idea is to get a feel of the `real` Canada before we make any hard and fast decisons to move out there.

Any help, as ever, greatly appreciated.

Thanks

Nick

Fly with Canadian Affair - Good cheap prices (single fares + tax) & can pre-book car hire at same time & then use www.Worldweb.com to book hotels en-route.

Flights & car hire came to about £800 in total & £300 in hotels over 9 nights (4 nights at a friends in Michigan) for 2 adults.

Cheapest room we had last year was £27 a night (Knights Inn) & that had 2 doubles beds in it.

Most expensive was about £60 & that was a massive suite (with hot tub) at Days Inn Scarborough East (Toronto), Humas & her staff were absolutely brilliant, even letting us into the room before 1pm.

I am just in the process of getting our paperwork submitted by lawyers into the London Visa office (Abrams & Krochak, Canadian Immigration Lawyers www.akcanada.com). Their fees are about £2000 & the govt fees are about £1600 (for the family).

They usually pop their heads into the immigration fair at Sandown (March last year), I didn`t get to go though I was planning to, but I heard this week of someone who did & got a fast track job & visa (HGV licence) & is out there now.

If your going to go plot a route beforehand, GPS is handy for navigating unfamilier towns & cuts down arguments after 5+ hours of driving between towns. Allow at least 1 full day per town to see the area.

Also you should try going there in winter, so you get to experience the cold (first visit was Dec 1999, 1 week before Christmas for me).

Anything else you want to ask that I might be able to advise on, post here or msg me.



If you feed a starving man a fish, he will eat for a day.
If you teach a starving man to fish, he will buy an ugly hat.
If you talk about fish to a starving man, You`re a consultant.

This item was edited on Saturday, 5th February 2005, 21:36

The reason we`re going later on in the year is so that we can save up. We reailse that at some point we need a winter trip out there.

We did the points test thing online and passed so that we could get into Canada without a sponsor (if that makes sense?). Carrie`s a nurse and midwife and I have a computing degree so that helped.

We`re going to have another look online tonight.

Thanks for your help.

Nick

No problem & you have mail.

Hope to see some good pics from your trip, I am considering Vancouver to try & get a job on the company helpdesk out there (its not what I want, I would rather a break-fix\lab support role at the companies site in Missauga). The standard of call notes are quite appaling despite the minor cultural differences in spelling. :o

Thats another reason for choosing Ca, they spell the same way as us so it won`t confuse the kids too much or get them marked down at school.



If you feed a starving man a fish, he will eat for a day.
If you teach a starving man to fish, he will buy an ugly hat.
If you talk about fish to a starving man, You`re a consultant.

This item was edited on Sunday, 6th February 2005, 13:05

she would have to do her nursing exams again as nurses and midwives out there do much much more than they do here eg they site iv lines take bloods etc. they basically work as junior doctors.

as far as the hotels go, i would use www.priceline.co.uk. you basically tell them how much you want to pay per night per room, which area of the city you wanna be in and then they search around and see if anybody will take you up on the price. i got a four star hotel and three star hotel in montreal and toronto for £18/19 respectively. and these were right smack bang in the middle of the cities.

hope this helps - i plan to move out to toronto soon - i just have to redo my medical exams cos apparantly the human body out there is different to here. get this - they made me do an english exam to check if i could speak english! i speak english better than them but hey it`s an easy way for them to generate £500 eh?

for migration etc, try https://www.immigrationexpert.com/ - pretty cheap from what i can tell and everything is done online (i think).

as far as the winters go - i love them. bloody cold but clear bright days, not the carp you get here with just wet and wetter (and that`s just our summers!). and nothing stops when it snows - NOTHING. plus your kids will learn to ski when they are mere fetuses ;).

incidentally - medical terms are spelled as american ones - eg pediatrics, hypovolemia, anemia and the like (no extra `a`s).

hope this helps. i actually just got back from there like 1 month ago - have some nice snow pics if you like.

This item was edited on Sunday, 6th February 2005, 15:19

Many thanks!

Any help / advice / info / pics greatly appreciated.

My Hotmail is my Reviewer name with uk on the end.

Cheers

Nick

Try GLOBESPAN (www.globespan.com) they are experts at Canadian holidays/travel... I use them every time I go over there

Quote:
hope this helps - i plan to move out to toronto soon

Whereabouts?

Scarborough East struck us as quite nice, especially with the views out over the lake across to the USA. On the way out of Toronto.

Further afield we stayed in a place called Barrie (about 1 hour out of Toronto), small town surounded by countryside, I could have convinced myself I was in UK at times. ;)


If you feed a starving man a fish, he will eat for a day.
If you teach a starving man to fish, he will buy an ugly hat.
If you talk about fish to a starving man, You`re a consultant.

I only wish I could move to Canada.

I have been married to my Canadian husband for 2 and a half years (we met in an internet chat room in December 2000) and often find myself looking at Canadian Real Estate pages for the area he comes from on the Web (Moncton, New Brunswick) and I wish I could sell my terraced house and move to a 4 bed detached with basement and land and have change in my purse!

My problem is 2 fold... The Heat in summer (I`m a pale skinned red head) and the mosquitoes and horseflies (I must be VERY tasty).

I far enjoyed the holiday I had in the winter with all the snow than the times I have been there in the summer (year 2002 for our wedding and 2004 for his mum`s wedding). We were only a 10 hour drive from my sister in Connecticut too so two holidays in one!

My husband loves it here in UK, so I guess we`re here for a while.

Anyone any solutions for sunburn and mozzy bites???

Jill

Okay, we have booked our flights with Canadian Affair. We are flying from Manchester to Vancouver on Thursday 14 July and coming back two weeks later. We paid extra to book our seats and went with their insurance as there wasn`t that much difference from other companies on the net. All in that part has cost us £1,133.00 (which is a massive saving on other prices we have seen).

Just need a car and hotels now, I am thinking of getting a compact (Focus / 307 type car) but my mate at work says if we are doing a lot of driving it may be worth going for summat a bit bigger.

As for hotels we are not sure. Will probably get one in Vancouver for first couple of nights and then move on from there. Also need to look at trips / routes, etc.

I would definitely like sat nav / GPRS so any advice on that would be nice.

Thanks

Nick