Best ofBanff
Canada is five trips wearing one name. Book the one you are actually taking.
Which Niagara boat gets you behind the water. What the Banff gondola costs before the queue starts. Whether the Moraine Lake road is open the week you land. Reviews of every tour you can book in Canada.
Best ofNiagara Falls
The four Canadian days everything else gets planned around.
A gondola, a boat, a walled old town and a whale. What each one costs, and what the people who took it say.
01The mountain morningBanff Gondola Admission TicketEight minutes up Sulphur Mountain, then a boardwalk along the ridge at the top. Take the first cabins; the queue at the base station is the whole problem.- 02The wet onePremium Tour, Boat & Journey Behind the FallsThe catamaran into the spray at the foot of the Horseshoe, then the tunnels that open out directly behind the sheet. You will be soaked. That is the point.
03The old-town hourQuebec City Walking TourUpper town, lower town and the stairs in between, inside the only walled city north of Mexico. Two hours on foot beats any bus here.
04The Pacific afternoonVancouver Half-Day Whale Watching Adventure with Free PhotosOut through the Salish Sea for orcas and humpbacks. The boats run spring to autumn, the crossing is open water, and the photos come free.
Canadian cities are walking cities. Choose your pace.
Three ways to take a Canadian city: two hours with a guide who lives there, a full day that covers the ground, or a loop bus you get on and off all day. What it costs to start each one.
Six Canadian bases, and the day out each one is worth flying for.
A Pacific city with mountains behind it, a national park town on a gondola line, a lake city two hours from the falls, two French old towns and the waterfall everybody books first.
The Icefields Parkway is the best three hours of driving in Canada.
Banff to Jasper past Bow Lake, Peyto and a glacier you can walk on. The high lakes stay frozen into June, the Moraine Lake road is closed to private cars, and the Parkway itself costs nothing.
Vancouver: mountains at the end of the street, the Pacific at the other end.
Everything in Vancouver →
Nothing here is more than an hour from something enormous. A suspension bridge in the rainforest, a gondola up Grouse, the Sea to Sky road to Whistler, and orcas in the strait between the city and the island.
Capilano, Grouse, or both in a day
The bridge is 140 metres of swaying cedar plank over a canyon, with a cliff walk bolted to the granite beside it. Grouse adds the gondola and the view back over the city. The free shuttle from downtown is what makes doing both in one day workable.
Orcas, humpbacks and a long crossing
Boats run out of Vancouver and Victoria into the Salish Sea, where resident and transient orcas, humpbacks and sea lions all turn up. Covered vessels suit families; the open zodiacs are faster, colder and much closer to the water.
Victoria and Butchart in one crossing
A ferry through the Gulf Islands, a quarry garden planted in a worked-out limestone pit, and an afternoon in a harbour town that still runs on tea and double-decker buses. It is a long day and the ferry timetable owns it.
In Canada the good day usually finishes on a boat.
Whale boats out of Victoria and Tadoussac, the catamaran under the Horseshoe, a river cruise past the Toronto skyline, rafts on the Kicking Horse. More of this country is properly seen from a hull than from a viewpoint.
Canada’s most popular days out.
Every Canadian tour we have reviewed →The tours more travellers take than anything else in the country, and what earns each of them the slot.
1
Vancouver Half-Day Whale Watching Adventure with Free Photos
Leave Granville Island aboard a 95-passenger catamaran with heated cabins, open-air decks, hot drinks, and free wildlife photos. Naturalists such as Petra, Ashley, Wilma, and Megan may explain whale behavior, local geology, and coastal ecology while you search for orcas, humpbacks, seals, sea lions, and eagles.
From · $193
Read our review →
2
Quebec City Walking Tour
from $30
3
Premium Tour, Boat & Journey Behind the Falls
from $152
4
Banff Gondola Admission Ticket
from $53
5
Niagara Falls Day Tour with Optional Boat Cruise
from $53
6
Best of Niagara Falls Canada Premium Tour: Behind Falls and Boat
from $147
7
Guided Bus Tour
from $26
8
Guided Tour of Fairmont Le Château Frontenac
from $19
Niagara is a wet ticket, not a viewpoint.
The railing on Niagara Parkway is free and forgettable. The boat into the spray, the tunnels cut behind the sheet and the helicopter over the top are what people actually describe afterwards, and the wine road starts ten minutes inland at Niagara-on-the-Lake.
Every Niagara day out →
What a day out in Canada actually costs.
Every tour on the site, grouped by what it costs to start. Plenty of the best Canadian days sit under the price of the mid-range ones, and the free viewpoints are already free.
Old-town walks, museum and tower tickets, the gondolas and the short harbour cruises.
- 1Quebec City Walking Tourfrom $30
- 2Guided Bus Tourfrom $26
- 3Guided Tour of Fairmont Le Château Frontenacfrom $19
The full days out: Niagara from Toronto, Lake Louise and Moraine from Banff, the whale boats, rafting.
Helicopters and seaplanes, the glacier days on the Icefields Parkway, private guides and the long Rockies runs.
The French half: a fortress town and a city that eats.
Quebec City is a walled upper town with a funicular down to the river and a waterfall taller than Niagara half an hour east. Montreal is stone lanes, bagels out of a wood oven and a mountain in the middle of it. Both do their best work on foot.
- 1Quebec City Walking Tourfrom $30
- 2Guided Bus Tourfrom $26
- 3Guided Tour of Fairmont Le Château Frontenacfrom $19
Three things that only happen in Canada.
Waterfalls and mountains are everywhere. A tunnel cut in behind a wall of falling water, a bus built to drive onto a glacier, and a sky that turns green after midnight are not.
Journey Behind the Falls
Lifts drop you thirty-eight metres through the bedrock beside the Horseshoe, and two short tunnels open out directly behind the falling water. You hear it long before you reach it, and then you see almost nothing: a wall of white moving too fast for your eyes to hold. The lower deck puts you at the foot of the drop, ponchos handed out at the top, soaking included.
- 1Premium Tour, Boat & Journey Behind the Falls★★★★★★★★★★ 4.8 · 4,207 reviews
- 2Niagara Falls Day Tour with Optional Boat Cruise★★★★★★★★★★ 4.6 · 3,178 reviews
- 3Best of Niagara Falls Canada Premium Tour: Behind Falls and Boat★★★★★★★★★★ 5.0 · 3,139 reviews
The Athabasca Glacier
The Ice Explorer is a six-wheeled bus built for one stretch of road: a gravel ramp onto the Athabasca Glacier steep enough that it goes down in low gear. It parks out on the ice and you walk on a glacier that has been pulling back since the 1840s. The markers along the approach road show where the toe used to sit, decade by decade.
- 1Columbia Icefield Skywalk and Ice Explorer Ticket★★★★★★★★★★ 4.6 · 2,444 reviews
- 2Columbia Icefield Tour with Glacier Skywalk★★★★★★★★★★ 4.5 · 1,860 reviews
- 3Columbia Icefield Skywalk★★★★★★★★★★ 4.3 · 916 reviews
Yellowknife after midnight
Yellowknife sits directly under the auroral oval, which is why the tours run from heated teepees out in the bush rather than a hotel roof. Late summer through autumn and again in late winter are the seasons, the sky has to be genuinely clear, and the good operators keep you out past one in the morning because that is usually when it starts.
- 1Aurora Hunting Tours★★★★★★★★★★ 5.0 · 374 reviews
- 2Northern Lights Tour Yellowknife★★★★★★★★★★ 5.0 · 370 reviews
- 3Northern Lights Tours★★★★★★★★★★ 4.5 · 326 reviews
Four Canadian bookings that will not wait.
Most of this country can be arranged the night before from a pub table. These four run on shuttle allocations, boat seasons, dark skies and a road that closes with the snow.
- 01Lake Louise, Moraine Lake, Banff Tour from Calgary/Canmore/BanffPrivate cars are barred from the Moraine Lake road. A shuttle seat or a tour seat is the only way in, and the summer allocation goes months ahead.
- 02Columbia Icefield Skywalk and Ice Explorer TicketThe glacier season runs roughly April to October. Outside it the Ice Explorers do not run at all and the Parkway is a drive-through.
- 03Vancouver Half-Day Whale Watching Adventure with Free PhotosWhale season on both coasts runs spring to autumn, and the boats that get closest are the small ones. Weekend sailings go first.
- 04Aurora Hunting ToursAurora tours need darkness, and a northern summer has none. The season is autumn and late winter, with nothing in between.
In May the Rockies are a lake you cannot see and a road you cannot drive.
Moraine Lake stays iced well into June and its road opens later still; Lake Louise thaws only a little sooner. Winter runs its own list instead: snowmobiles above Whistler, sleigh runs, hot springs at the end of the day, and the aurora that a Canadian summer never shows. The cities carry on regardless.
By place — Pacific coast, Rockies, lakes and river
By kind of day — lake, falls, city or ice
Vancouver, the Rockies, Toronto, Niagara: the run most first Canadian trips end up doing.
The newest Canadian tour reviews.
The rest of the new ones →
Walking Tour of Niagara Falls Canada and Hornblower Boat
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Niagara Falls Boat Cruise with Historical Walking Tour
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World Famous Boat Cruise with Historical Walking Tour and more
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Wine, Beer, Cider, Spirit – Something for Everyone Tour
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Niagara Falls Canada Walking Tour With Boat Cruise
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Afternoon Wine, Beer and Charcuterie Tour in Niagara-on-the-Lake
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Victoria Wine Tour with Wine Tastings and Charcuterie
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Victoria City Highlights 3 Hour Walking Tour | Grauity-Based
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