We had an early morning wake-up and enjoyed a hearty breakfast in the hotel restaurant. We quickly packed our bags and headed to the railway station.Hotel Victoria, our accommodation for the night, is an ‘old school’ hotel, comfortable and within walking distance to Toronto Union Station.

Under overcast skies we reached Union Station and saw that the tower’s top was engulfed in the clouds.

CN Tower is a Toronto landmark, opened in 1976, built by the railway company Canadian National Railway as a communications tower. It has a revolving restaurant at the top and an “Edge Walk” like the Auckland Tower, but no ability to (safely) jump off, so we didn’t pursue that adventure!

We arrived at the station with plenty of time to check-in for our 4 day/4 night rail excursion all the way to Vancouver, B.C. on “The Canadian”. We boarded the train and settled into our sleeper cabin for the 9:55am departure! The train headed north through Toronto and into the wooded countryside alongside the marshy edges of Lake Huron.

We had a view of the marshes rather than Lake Huron!

By 4pm we were headed into Sudbury, Ontario and crossed the Wanapitae river.

We saw huge smokestacks in the distance, a smelter for nickle ore that is mined in the area. In the mid 1800’s logging was the main industry, giving way to mining of copper and nickle ore in the early 1900’s that continues today. After 4pm we had access to the Premier Lounge, the last car on the train, so we took advantage of that to meet fellow travelers!A wonderful first day of the adventure!

We arrived in Montreal, along the St. Lawrence River, after 9 am today.

Our view of the city as we approached.

We had a short layover in Montreal, not enough time to leave the station, so that was the only view of Montreal we got! We soon boarded our next train, a daylight modern commuter train to Toronto.

The view as we approached Toronto, along the north bank of Lake Ontario.

I have to admit that I have very few pictures of the landscape between Montreal and Toronto because the gentle rocking of the train lulled me to sleep! We arrived after 6pm, with just enough light left to walk the few blocks to our hotel.

The storm clouds grew as we walked along the downtown streets and the rain started just as we arrived at the hotel!

The first leg of the last leg of our journey! We had a train to catch! We chose our B&B because it is walking distance to the Halifax train station. We were catching the overnight train from Halifax to Montreal, an almost 24 hour trip!

Eventually we will arrive in Vancouver, B.C.!

We had a long walk to our sleeper car at the far end of the train!

And we visited the lounge car too!

After one night in the Airport hotel, several miles from Halifax city, we moved into a B&B in town for our second night. We took the city bus into town and explored for several hours until we could get into our apartment.

A serious monument across from the Halifax Town Hall.

A more whimsical monument on restaurant row a few blocks away!

We had a wonderful lunch nearby and then walked down to the ferry dock to catch a ferry across Halifax Harbour to get views of the city. Another bus ride took us to another ferry route and we caught that ferry back downtown.

In the harbor we saw several cruise ships, along with this 3 masted schooner! The old and the new.

After our long day of sightseeing it was nice to get back to our B&B on a quiet residential street in the evening.

We had an afternoon flight out of Heathrow so we had plenty of time to turn in our rental car and catch the bus to the airport. We said goodbye to the UK as we boarded our flight to Iceland.

The Royal Guard bid us farewell too!

A comfortable flight to Iceland where we had a few hours layover.

Leaving the shores of Iceland to fly over Greenland to Halifax, Nova Scotia, Canada!

We watched the sunset somewhere over the North Atlantic.

We approached Halifax well after dark!

And our luggage was apparently the last to be unloaded from the plane. Poor little lonely bags!