Canada on the road in Winter is a feeling almost beyond description, it has to be enjoyed personally.
It’s hard to convey feelings and impressions enjoyed travelling through report and photos.
The long distances, the boundless white, freedom, the snowstorms and the incredible warm sunny days in Winter at those latitudes.
#Canada #ontheroad feelings and many useful tips to enjoy it #lowcostCLICK TO TWEET
This is Canada and, even if it’s hard, I try to convey it and inspire you travelling there.
I did it through the posts at the moment on the socials, during our long on the road which touched the United States and the New England before,
and Canada then – I recommend you to see it in part by snowmobile speeding fast.
Meanwhile I leave here our itinerary: we enter Canada from the USA East Coast, after have visited the Acadia National Park,
and went through the Quoddy Head State Park, and the Campobello Island (Canadian territory) – I’ve already told you about it.
At the beginning the view is very alike the Maine coast one.
Crawfish are everywhere.
We go towards Rivière du Loup, Quebec City, Montréal, Ottawa, Thousand Island Park, Toronto, the Niagara Falls and go back to the United States towards New York.
In Woodstock First Nation, on the Saint John River banks, under an abundant snowfall, we scrounge a bit if Wi-Fi at the gas pump, after have filled up.
Just the time to post two photos.
The weather forecasts expect abundant snow for the next three days.
The following day the situation is covered sky with light clears.
Valeria wanted the sun…and also today Valeria beats the weather!
We spend the day in Canada on the road in Winter like we love.
We need good weather to move and to take some beautiful photos and…any snowflake falls. When snow is required…it falls!
Some useful tips as regards the car rental: we did it in New York
We have no problems to cross the borderline with Canada.
All the rented cars in the winter season have any necessary equipment.
We are thinking we have to delay our snowmobile idea for tomorrow, instead…
over the night it falls almost over one meter snow and we wake up on the New Year’s Eve with a completely snow-covered landscape!
Valeria has struck again with her luck!
On December 31st we spend the day doing one among the activities we like most by far. A full day by snowmobile!
We are in Rivière du Loup.
Speeding by snowmobile for over 10 hours without stopping (we have also returned them back late) on the snow-covered tracks in Canada,
among uncontaminated forests, lakes, detours non shown on the map and endless straight stretches doing evolutions on when you familiarize yourself with the mean is incredible!
Cold, wind on the face, maps to understand, the dark enveloping everything very early and this endless sense of freedom that is the thing that most we remember about our on the road in Canada in Winter – I’ll never be tired of repeating it.
Meet no one for hours, arriving in front of wonderful chalets from where inviting smells of food go out, look for a moment around and decide to not enter for not wasting time.
The sense of peace that these endless spaces give is beyond description. You must try!
The snowmobile can be for all, it’s really easier than what it seems!
We arrive to the hotel very tired and exhausted, but with the certainty to have spent a really funny day, where time doesn’t exist and they will everlasting in your memory! Then, with encounters of this kind…
Our Canada on the road in Winter goes on and it reaches Quebec City.
We are here on New Year’s Day.
Good morning and Happy New Year from a very sunny Canada on the road in Winter in Quebec City!
It’s an incredible day: clear and very limpid!
Quebec City in the morning of New Year’s Day it’s like that: clear sky and shining sun, but don’t make you deceive, cold is always cold.
Really cold!
We reach Levis to admire the city beyond the frozen river and we take the ferryboat to reach dontown.
It has a ridiculous amount and allows very beautiful shoots at the hotel, which is maybe the most photographed in the world, while ice is creaking under our keel.
Then these sleds make big and little ones amuse!
Downtown is very beautiful even if maybe it seems not to have its own soul.
The impression you have is that they want to make Europe re-live in every corner, in every venue, in every monument, in every market and in every decoration.
It’s enough having a look at the architecture to realize it immediately.
This certainly gives a very particular charm to the city, but personally this kind of “obsession” is not certainly the thing Canada on the road in Winter made me appreciate most.
Our Canada on the road goes on towards Montreal. It’s a much bigger city. Here you can skate at the harbour, among the Christmas’ songs and under the city’s skyline.
Walking through the city by night is very nice, but only if you are well covered!
The Christmas atmosphere of this period acts as a frame and we don’t want to go to bed tonight, despite our tiredness.
Anyway, more I walk more I wonder…why they persist to copy Notre Dame in every city?
Could I maybe leave Montreal and keep going throughout Canada on the road in WInter without posting this photo? It’s very beautiful to see and it leaves gaping from the architectonic/engineering point of view.
Here, too, it’s possible to go up by the elevator to admire the boundless spaces.
The itinerary of our Canada on the road in Winter in this part of the country is quite obliged, above all if you don’t have months and months in your hands to do all the detours you would.
And yet we travel for over a month…is it possible time is never enough travelling? Ottawa is crossed by the Rideau Canal which becomes a very long ice skating rink – almost 8km – from late in January.
Look! What a view!!!
Waiting for the canal get completely frozen and we can skating safely, Ottawa municipality places freely a huge skating rink at people disposal where…it’s enough to enter!
Yes, you’ve got it right! Here people can skate freely and the skating rink is in perfect conditions.
I always repeat that the low cost can be just round the corner and it’s enough to keep one’s own eyes open.
Then if you aren’t able to find it by yourselves or if you need a little help, you always can follow my tips. Find them in the Low Cost Travel Guide.
The skating rink’s ice is fixed every half hour and every 15 minutes the staff makes the skaters reverse the march. You have to know that here hockey and skating lord it as it happens with soccer in Italy.
There’s a theory and a literature about the perfect rotation way of rinks and burning talks can be listened to on TV: discoveries you make during the Canada on the road in Winter.
As regards us…we limited ourselves to spend a very beautiful afternoon skating in this wonderful city. The music in the background and the park that lights up when is getting dark leave you spellbound.
This Christmas atmosphere is wonderful and it frames our day with its perfumes, smells, sounds, food, sweet things and above all lights. Here people can do things very well!
We even learnt to bring skates! They are taken by blades upside-down! If you go hereabout you have to be prepared, otherwise everyone will look at you and they’ll tease you! At least until somebody won’t explain it to you!
It’s getting dark and magic arrives to Ottawa. Every evening, from 5.30pm non-stop, the Parliament of Ottawa lights up. It’s simply an amazing show.
The Christmas Light Show starts among lights, music and fairytales.
Heedless of the really sharp cold, you’ll watch it again at least a second time, and if you are daredevil also a third one. It’s really beautiful and it leaves big and little ones gaping. A Christmas fairytale which is able to move without using words, but only using sounds, music and lights.
Also this show is free, of course, and the huge square opposite turns into the great orchestra of a boundless theater where tourists are thrilled, children play rolling in the white snow and the magic of these sounds and colors envelops everything.
The Christmas Lights Show in #Ottawa leaves gaping! #ontheroad #Canada #winterCLICK TO TWEET
The beauty of this moment it’s beyond description. We are very tired, but this evening we feel really well going around so that we don’t want to go to the hotel.
Tonight hotel…only two words. It never happened to find even a computer and a printer in the room! A very cool accommodation just a stone’s throw from downtown which can be reached on foot. I think we’ll go out once again tonight. Just a really quick walk!
It’s the Business Inn chain: as I’ve already told you many times and as I suggest in the Low Cost Travel Guide, the chains dedicated to business trips, at the weekend offer discounted fares and have very fast connections.
Think that this huge room with a view, 60sqm for 3 people, with breakfast, in full downtown Ottawa, on January 2nd …cost 60 € each for 3 people!
Because travelling isn’t free, but it can cost much less than what you usually think. Do you know what is the Wi-Fi password? review4tripadvisor. How amazing!
Maybe it’s the atmosphere, the accommodation, the night walks, but according to me Ottawa beats all and triumphs: it’s the most beautiful one by far here in this part of Canada!
It has its own personality and it doesn’t persist to ape French people like too much do – according to me – other cities. Here everyone speaks both English and French and – unlike it happened last days – they don’t answer French when we speak English!
Ottawa has elegant and huge monuments and it’s nice to discover so many hidden corners, independently of cold.
The tour of Parliament is free. Here parking – as in the other cities – costs a fortune, but the Parliament’s parking is free for all on Saturdays and on Sundays. Because the low cost can be always just round the corner. It’s enough to keep one’s own eyes open!
We start again Canada on the road in Winter among boundless expanses.
Thousand Islands Parkin Winter, while it’s snowing, with the water of rivers and lakes frozen in some traits, offers breathtaking views!
We reach Ile Aux Coudres, one of the many islands linked to dry land by a completely free ferryboat.
This island gives absolutely nothing and you have to pay attention to the return schedules to the dry land.
More than remaining stuck here, maybe we have to wait a bit longer for the next ferryboat.
Despite this…we liked it really much.
Going through these roads, admiring and taking photographs of their farms, their countryside, their animals, talking to the locals on the ferryboat, astonished by the fact that there are some tourists in this season and that they go and visit right their own island…a slice of daily life in a corner of Canada where the very strict climate runs life.
Our Canada on the road in Winter keeps going towards Kingston, in Ontario, to reach Toronto. Do we have enough cold and wind?
We cannot help to send everyone a very heartfelt hello from -25°C this morning.
The CNTower di Torontois a stage not to be missed.
Can we perhaps not going even up here in a so clear day?
I very nearly…prefer it even to the Freedom Tower in New York. It’s certainly less spectacular and less historic and it doesn’t have the emotional charge of the uphill in New York…
Whether you want or not, who experienced September 11th cannot help to be caught by thousand of emotions, but I almost prefer it – from the panoramically and tourist point of view.
Very few people if you arrive in the morning at the opening, we didn’t book anything and we are close to New Year’s Day: we have very few people ahead.
The advantages in comparison with the Freedom Tower are several: it offers the chance to go outdoor up there to take even more beautiful photographs, a glass to walk on and look down (how wonderful!) – many people are afraid of it – and the panoramic glass elevator climbing it.
You are able to see planes taking off from the airport: so small and so “low there”! We spent endless hours up there admiring all the possible perspectives. Then the pendulum conveying the idea of how this building is swinging is very efficient.
Another place from where – after hours – we just didn’t want to get off!
But a wonderful winter sunny day with clear sky, a unique view from the lake banks which reflects this intense blue, a deserted skating rink, the mild temperature (for these standards)…
What could we do?
Of course a few hours skating before a long walk among the boats packed for winter! We skate even without jacket. I’ve told you it’s a mild day!
Even some shoots from the several perspectives with the inevitable downtown…
From Toronto we reach the Niagara Falls.
We arrive in the evening and…they are lighted up like that. Certainly a remarkable “show-off”, but….it has its own reason! It’s exaggerated, but I have to tell that I liked it in its absurdity!
All the neighborhood area here is dazing. A huge carnival where you are deafened by sounds, lights, colors and really high music everywhere!
There are even the falls coming down reproduced on a skyscraper’s wall!
Everything here gets money everywhere, but the long deserted walk in front of the lighted falls is amazing. It’s not right deserted…it’s really deserted: due to this cold and wind only the three of us were there! And yet it’s enough to get covered properly…we were there and hoped for a bit of more wind so that the fog could raise and we could take even an umpteenth photo!
Even this evening we have a reason, in spite of the tiredness, to not going to bed at a normal hour!
The following day runs by admiring them from every perspective and in all sorts of ways! Above, under, with sun, without sun, from the Canadian border, from the USA one…billions of photos!
It’s time to leave again.
Left the Niagara Falls, our Canada on the road in Winter keeps going on towards the United States.
Our day ends with a bit of relax in Victor: Best Western is always a right choice, if it’s Plus even better!
Really fast connection everywhere, swimming pool, big room and very quick check-in and check-out, as I like.
With breakfast, of course!
Good night from this corner of USA!
Tomorrow we’ll reach Old Forge. Many surprises and many new experiences are ahead of us, but here…we’ve already crossed the border and we aren’t in Canada anymore. So there’s nothing left to do but…see you next post!
