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2023 Tour code: TC-CCCE-23
About the tour
Let the rails guide your adventure on this 17-day coast-to-coast Canadian tour. The journey begins in coastal Vancouver, where you board the famed Rocky Mountaineer for a scenic ride to Kamloops. We reboard the train the next morning for a trip through the Rockies to Banff. It is in Banff that you have the opportunity to soak in all the natural majesty this region has to offer, with guided and independent touring through some of the area's most iconic sites. Spend the night at Lake Louise before visiting Banff and Jasper National Parks, Columbia Icefield and Athabasca Glacier en route to Jasper.
It is in Jasper that the true rail adventure begins, as you board VIA Rail's Canadian for a 3-day train ride to Toronto. Upon arrival, you will have ample time to tour the city and Niagara Falls before moving on to Montreal using VIA Rail's Business Class train. Use the day to enjoy the sights and sounds of the city before reboarding VIA Rail for the final leg of your tour. Though the scenic landscapes of Nova Scotia and New Brunswick lies Halifax, the place where this 4,000-mile tour comes to a close.
This itinerary is also available from Halifax to Vancouver based on your travel preference.
Highlights
What’s included
Itinerary
Arrive in Vancouver and spend time exploring this scenic city on your own. Overnight Vancouver.
Additional information
Trains
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Reviews
4.7 / 5 · 16 reviews
Dan S.
Submitted 21 May 2023
Rocky mountaineer experience was fantastic, did not get to experience the jasper to toronto prestige cabin canadian train from Jasper to toronto due to wildfires in Alberta. Some confusion with reservation numbers for various activities.
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MARYANN KINGMAN ROULIER
Submitted 22 Oct 2022
Rail across Canada was a fabulous trip! The only issue was the way in which our reservation was forgotten. However, disaster was pulled from the flames and, though accommodations were not always as we hoped, the trip was wonderful.
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Peter
Submitted 20 Oct 2022
This was a well planned and luxurious trip which I cannot recommend highly enough!
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BLAIR AUGUSTINE WELSH
Submitted 30 Aug 2022
The trip itself was beautiful, Canada was lovely and the train trips were wonderful. But Vacations by Rail was ultimately more trouble than it was worth. Their responsivness was patchy (very good responses to emails initially and then no responses from our Vacations by Rail contact person for two months before the trip). Vacations by Rail's flexibility re room arrangements was not good. We were a family of four and they wouldn't let us book any larger shared room eg two bedroom place. They would only let us book two separate rooms. We would rather have been in a larger, nicer room all together (which would have been cheaper too) and we could have done that ourselves if we'd been organising the trip independently. Our trip documents were not sent to us until a few days before the trip and only because I called and asked for them (when I called they said there had been a mix up at the Vacations by Rail end). This lateness made it stressful to get our documents printed before travel. When I reveiwed the documents, we had been booked in the wrong train class on the train. Vacations by Rail had booked us in a class lower than what we had paid for and had to change it at the last minute (thankfully there were still spots in our original sleeper cabin class). When we got on the train, Via Rail had no record of our having requested adjoining/connecting cabins on the train (which Vacations by Rail said they would add to our booking). Also, a lot of the day tours Vacations by Rail booked required phone confirmation 24 hours beforehand which was very difficult to do when travelling as we did not have working mobile phones in Canada and were relying on internet and printed documents. Despite the problems, I wanted to note that each individual we dealt with at Vacations by Rail was lovely and helpful. But, overall, we decided the route/itinerary was good but that we would have had an easier time with less stress/mistakes if we had booked the accommodation, train trips and day tours all separately and just arranged it directly ourselves.
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DEBORAH ADAMS
Submitted 27 Aug 2022
We enjoyed the Rocky Mountaineer part the best. Via Rail part not so much.
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Annette D, Denver, CO
Submitted 17 Dec 2018
Everything was perfect. We felt so taken care of throughout the trip. All the staff were so amazingly professional and kind- (such a contrast from the airlines we had to deal with!) The scenery was exquisite- every detail was wonderful. Thanks for all your expert assistance!
Collected by Vacations By Rail
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