If you love to travel then there here are a few websites to check out so you can make the most of your money, time and your journey, or just ward off some nasty jet lag. These are travel resources I personally use and can recommend, so enjoy my humble little travel compendium – hopefully these will be useful.
Helpful Travel Sites
Jet Lag Calculator: A very useful site which helps you manage the dreaded jet lag from international travel.
The Man In Seat Sixty-One: I love this site. It is dedicated to train travel in the UK, Europe, and worldwide. The site is independently created and maintained by a man who simply loves to travel via train. Great train travel advice and recommendations are found here.
Tripadvisor: Ah, good old Tripadvisor… over the years it has never let me down when planning trips and booking hotels, and I’ve come to really depend on it when travelling to a city where I’ve never been. If you’re interested in reading my TripAdvisor reviews, click here.
Airlines and Transportation
Air Canada
My airline of choice. I can’t remember ever having a bad experience with them, and in my opinion, they’re incredibly reliable. AC offers several routes that the other Canadian airlines won’t touch.
WestJet
Westjet is a great airline with friendly service and a focus on the customer. They are great when I’m looking for an afforable flight option from Toronto to Calgary. I just wish their routes were further-reaching.
Toronto Airport Limousine (TAL)
These guys are awesome and extremely reliable. They’re not cheap, but the experience/service to and from Toronto Pearson is well worth the cost.
Currency Exchange
College Currency Investments: At 437 Yonge Street just south of Carlton Street. They give the best money exchange at the best rate.
XE Currency site: The best and most accurate currency exchange site on the Internet. XE also has an app for your mobile phone.
Specialty Tour Companies
Select Holidays is Canada’s leading tour operator offering exceptional agriculture tours, Select Discoveries, Unique Journeys both within Canada and around the globe.
This is a unique and wonderful tour company with a bit of a niche market. Based in the U.K., Light and Land offer packaged holiday tours to exotic (and local) destinations for photographers. They take you to the best vantage spots whichever tour you choose, and all you have to concern yourself with is your photography. I have travelled with them in the past and they are incredible. Highly recommended.
Ah, the romance of train travel, Rocky Mountaineer style. Why not do it in style and see the beauty of our great country. It’s a train journey through the Rockies which will never be forgotten.
Travel Loyalty Reward Programs
If you bank with RBC this is a wonderful rewards program. We’ve had this program for years and it really does pay off over time. The accumulated points can be redeemed on any airline, at any time, for any destination – very flexible and highly recommened!
Good old Air Canada Aeroplan. It’s great, but the only thing I don’t like is that their rewards miles are a case of “use it or lose it”, at least that used to be the case pre-COVID anyway.
I really like Porter Airlines. They are smaller and friendlier that the big boy airlines, and it’s a huge plus to have their terminal, the Billy Bishop Airport on the Toronto Islands, so near to the downtown core of Toronto.