Planning for Canada: It's not Tajikistan, but I'm sure it'll be cool
Surprise! My next trip is Canada.
Why Canada?
Unfortunately, I don't get to check off a new country from the list, since I've been to Canada before. I've been to Vancouver to visit an Australian friend whom I met in Estonia, and I went to Niagara Falls and Toronto with my family back in 2014 or so.
After a botched plan to go to Canada with Bill during his January 2022 visit to North America, I still had the itch to go to Montreal and Quebec City.
But why now? Of all the places in all the world that I can now freely travel to, why Canada (again) and why now?
I usually plan my trips around convenience: what's the cheapest flight, do I have friends who live in that country that I can visit, what's the cheapest flight...usually it's "what's the cheapest flight," to be honest. Can't tell you how many trips I've planned using the Google Flights tool and seeing what is cheap...like the time I went to the Baltics and Eastern Europe for $580 round trip.
I recently became a member of Soho Friends, a social club that gears towards creative types. I have been using the membership extensively in the last few months, getting $900 of value in activities, gift bags, entertainment and more for the mere $70 I paid for my annual membership. They host a weekend trip every year, and this year it takes place just north of Toronto. I can go to Montreal and Quebec City any time, but I can't camp alone (I mean, I could, I just...wouldn't). So, I figured I'll jump on that camping trip, and utilize that round-trip flight to stay in Canada and bop around to the places I want to explore solo, before returning home to Chicago.
Oh, and I recently got loads of bonus miles so my flights only cost $60 round trip, so that answers the, "what's the cheapest flight" question.
A trip of firsts
Also, exciting times, this trip has a couple firsts. It will be my first international trip with a smart phone (I first acquired what could be considered a smart phone in April 2018, but it was useless abroad)! I have an Android, babyyy and I don't need to bring a laptop to blog! Look at me, ushering in (late) 2022!
Another first: the first ever stamp in my brand new (3 yr old) passport! My first ever personal passport expired back in 2018, and I had to get a new one in 2019. Back in 2019, I was so young, so naïve to what 2020 (and onward) would bring. I paid for extra pages in my passport, to be sure I didn't run out of room on my around-the-world adventure that I planned to have post-Peace Corps. Well, as you may have guessed, that trip never happened. And I used my Peace Corps passport while traveling to/from Vanuatu, so I never got to break in my "new" one...that already has 3 years of collecting dust. But it's ready now!
When I renewed my passport in 2019, I was home in the USA for a month from Peace Corps service, and it was the time of all the "everyone needs a REAL ID" hullabaloo (which keeps getting postponed again and again). I also had to renew my drivers license, so I thought a RealID would be as easy as pie. Well, it is not, because you have to show all these documents proving residency and home ownership and things I did not have as I'd just been living in Vanuatu for 2+ years. Those of you with passports may know that you can always use a passport in lieu of a RealID. Well, another option is when you renew your passport, you can pay an extra $30 and also get a passport card, which can be used as a RealID but doesn't require bringing a file cabinet of personal documents to the DMV to acquire. A passport card is used for entry to Canada and Mexico from the USA...but as I just discovered 30 seconds ago, cannot be used for air travel! So good thing I looked that up. It's okay, I was gonna bring my passport, anyways. I wanna collect those stamps.
My Travel Style
While Canada isn't a new place for me, I am excited about the possibilities that Montreal and Quebec City will hold. I have been doing my usual digging to ensure the most of my trip. I am a spontaneous traveler, as you would know from my previous travels, but I do like to get an outline of what's happening before I go. After all, wouldn't it be depressing to find out about the massive Canadian Carnival/Fair that is happening the day after you left Toronto? After the giddy glee of Luna Park and Tivoli Park, I would be EXTREMELY depressed.
If you've just recently gotten to know me during my international travel dry spell, you aren't familiar with my travel style, which is to explore the atypical. I enjoy going to places no one I know has been before, seeing new sights. For context, if I were a tourist in Chicago, I wouldn't be going to Navy Pier or Millennium Park. Heck, my favorite travel experience of all time is going to a health sanitorium in Tajikistan.
My travel style is this: carry-on only, super budget-conscious, hostel accommodations (unless there's something cheaper), multi-transit options (like the plane/train/ferry adventures of Scandanavia), and solo. It's rare I travel with friends, unless that friend is Calvin (whom I met while traveling). I go it alone, which allows me to make friends along the way, and experience everything I want to.
Fun Canadian Times
Some stuff I'm excited about exploring during my trip that may or may not happen in actuality:
- That Canadian Expo! Carnival rides! Augmented reality! Ghost tours!
- International cuisine that I can't find in Chicago, like Indigenous food or Egyptian food
- Camping with the very posh Soho House, which will be interesting to experience a combo of canoeing and chakra cleansing
- A light show celebrating the Wendat Nation
- Trains! Canadian Trains!!!
- Free tango?
- An electronic music festival
- A food festival celebrating Martinique
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