I’m going on a trip, eh?

So, I’m very excited at present because I am going on a trip soon! So far in my adult life I have gone on one trip, one! This is simply unacceptable! Granted it was an awesome trip (to St. John, USVI) but still, how can I ever hope to become a well seasoned world traveler if I am in a constant state of remaining sedentary? I’ve yet to even actually leave the country! But all of this will be changing, albeit in a small way, on August 9th!

I’m going to Canada! Land of maple leaves and Mounties and… things I will learn more aboot when I’m there! I’m 97.3% sure I will blog about the trip when I get back but I want to talk about the planning part first. So, I’m going with my best friend from high school. Since I never use real names we’re going to call her Pentarial, which is really funny if you know her real name, trust me. Well, actually, I’ll probably post photos later anyway which defeats the purpose of concealing her identity so her name is Octavia. Get it now? Octa to Penta, Avia to Arial? Trust me, it’s hilarious.

Originally we were going to go to Prince Edward Island, but when we found out it would be about $1000 each to fly there we changed our minds. I did some research looking to see if it would be less if we got to Canada and then flew. It was a little but still pretty pricy. But what I learned was we could drive to Ontario (which is only 3 hours from my hometown, absurd, I know) and then catch a train to Toronto. So that’s what we decided to do.

Now here come some of the fun parts.

I have a discover card because they’re awesome, I get cash back and my card looks like this. Canada does not like discover though, so when I went to order our tickets online I had to use my Chase card (which looks much less radical). After two failed attempts to use said Chase Visa, I was told I’d attempted to use a nonexistent card too many times. As I was holding my card in my hand, this was very difficult for me to understand. Clearly, it was, in fact, in existence. So I called the Train Company. We were having a lovely little chat aboot my upcoming trip and the woman had just helped me to order the tickets, given me the confirmation number, and asked me a leading question when my phone died. And just like that I became that rude American. So sad. So I ran to find a phone charger and promptly called back Canada. I could not get the same woman though, so on the off chance that you ever read this my kind Canadian helper, please know you were very helpful and yes, I am excited about my trip.

So, now I have the tickets booked! We are taking the train from Ontario at 5. It’s going to be a long drive but we can sleep on the train then so it should be fine. That’s the train by the way. I mean probably not the train, but one from the company we’re using.

After getting the tickets I had to book our hostel. This went much more smoothly than the train part. We’re staying here. It’s called The Planet Traveler and it’s the greenest hostel in North America. Solar energy, geothermal/heat transfer, photovoltaic electricity, wastewater heat reclamation, all that. I’m really excited about it, plus the whole place uses LED lights so it takes less energy to light it for a day than it does to run a hairdryer.

So yeah, we have not totally decided what we are going to do while we’re there but we are right in the epicenter so I think it should be a fun trip. I will write about it when I get back for sure!