When we arrived in Toronto on our first night we stayed at the Holiday Inn Express & Suites Toronto Airport West as we had an early start to catch a plane to Vancouver the next day,
From exiting the Terminal at Toronto, we had to wait about 40 minutes for the hotel airport shuttle to arrive. The hotel is around 15 minute drive from the airport.
On arrival at the hotel, check in was prompt and we asked to buy a bottle of water at reception which the receptionist gave us for free.
We stayed in room 534. As we arrived to the hotel around 10 pm and needed to be up at 4.30 am we went straight to bed.
This hotel was a prime example that you get what you pay for. If you search on a hotel booking website, for example Booking.com and the room is one of the cheapest, there will be a reason. For us we just needed a room to sleep in for the night. This room was pretty drab, at 3 stars it is basically a motel with the IHG branding. The carpets in the room felt they could have done with a clean. The furniture was cheap looking but the bed was comfortable with white sheets
On the plus, the room had a microwave (although we didn’t have a need to use it), iron and an air conditioning unit (albeit very noisy during the night like it was in competition with the planes landing).
The bathroom was dated, on the plus side was it had a double shower but shower was either a fine spray of water or a centralised jet. Some basic dove toiletries were provided.
The hotel staff were friendly and efficient both at check in and check out. They made sure we booked the airport shuttle for the morning.
Breakfast was included in the 222 CAD rate but we didn’t have time to sample in the morning.
Toronto Airport Terminal 1
We were back at Toronto airport by 6.30 am the next day for our 8.30 am Air Canada flight to Vancouver.
The experience at terminal one was a little chaotic. Firstly at the bag drop, the conveyor belt had stopped working. We were kindly assisted by one of Air Canada employees who directed us to the Aeroplan Gold bag drop off. The woman at the bag drop wasn’t entirely happy with this (the grimace gave it away) given we don’t have status with airline plus we were travelling premium economy. Anyway in the end she gave in.
We were directed to the international security gate even though we were flying domestic 🤷♀️which took about 15-20 minutes to get through. It felt like we were back at Manchester airport during the first 6 months post the pandemic. However, I did enjoy the security guy who constantly throughout the 20 minutes, repeated how to queue, what needed to be removed and put into trays and how to get to the domestic gates.
We had a brief pit stop in the Plaza Premium Lounge, which is tucked away next to the D gate security. We had a quick juice and coffee as we didn’t have time to sample the breakfast.
When we arrived at the gate the chaos continued. Although there were queue partitions for each zone and the Air Canada staff announced that they would be boarding by zone, everyone gathered around like a herd of cattle around the gate.
Boarding should have commenced at 7.40 am but didn’t start until about 8.15 am. No announcements were made during that time so the frustrated herd gradually moved in closer so that when boarding commenced and the zones were finally called you had to squeeze past people to be able to board. With those still waiting to board giving you evils as if you are queue jumping.
After further disruption when boarding (because too many people had hand luggage only), the flight departure was late by approximately an hour.
As already mentioned, we were flying premium economy and post the airport and boarding experience the flight and service were good but not sure they were worthy of the money we paid for the ticket.
Here are the pluses:
The seats had a decent recline to them and their was a foot rest.
The food order was taken before take off.
We were provided with hot towels.
The food was fairly good for airplane food – menu and photos below.
The cabin crew member who served us was efficient and polite.
We were offered free snacks before landing and I was very pleased with my four finger Kit-Kat, which I saved and was a welcome energy boost later in the day.
Although take off was late, I think we only landed about 20 minutes after scheduled landing time.
Here are the food and drink menus:
Parsley omelette, chicken sausage, cottage cheese, roasted potatoes and red pepper relish:
French toast, vanilla cream, fruit compote:
Here are some of the photographs of the amazing and dramatic scenery from the plane on our final stages of the Toronto to Vancouver flight.
First stop upon arrival at Vancouver after picking up our luggage was Hertz to pick up our car rental.
Last year my husband applied for a Barclaycard Avios Plus credit card and as part of the benefits provided at the time you could become part of the Hertz President’s Circle.
This meant that although we had booked a particular car, once we arrived at Hertz you can pretty much choose whatever car you want. Some locations, Vancouver being one of them may then charge an small additional daily fee for the car chosen but less than what we would have paid if we had booked that particular model from the outset.
After a little bit of toing and froing we decided upon a BMW 5 Series, the X Drive version with a nice bit of umph.
It was a really smooth drive with it’s automatic gearbox and was particularly great when we made the trip to Grouse Mountain.
Finally once all our luggage was stowed, we were on our way to the centre of Vancouver city!!!!