One of the weddings we were honored to attend this year took us to Alberta, Canada! So, we decided to make a whole trip “Journey Across the Superior America” out of it 🙂 During our 10 days trip, we were able to visit Toronto, Vancouver/Richmond, Whistler, Calgary, and Banff!
First, I’m going to break down our flights!
Tip: Book long layovers to explore more cities on 1 ticket!
The first flight destination for our trip was Vancouver! However, with all of the delays and airline problems nowadays, it was going to be a 1 stop flight with 6-10 hours of layover in cities like Newark, New York City, Chicago, or San Francisco. However, I noticed that there was an option for an 11hrs layover in Toronto, and since I’ve never been to Toronto, I wanted to do a day trip there since the layover was long!
So we booked separate tickets from Washington DC → Toronto (layover) → Vancouver → Calgary → DC.
DC-Toronto-Vancouver: $559 for 2.
Vancouver-Calgary: $304 for 2
Calgary-DC: $496 for 2 (Redeemed 39,722 Chase Credit Card Points)
Total: $863 for 2, or $431 for 1.
For reference, a 1-stop flight round-trip from Raleigh, NC to Calgary, Alberta was roughly $600 for 1… 🙁
Cashback for Activities!
Tip: Look out for promotional cashback deals on your banking apps!
Most of our tourist activities took place in Vancouver! Since I didn’t know much about Vancouver, I decided to look for short day-trip tours around the city! I found a bunch of tour providers just through Google, but I realized that I get really good cashback for the month of June if I make purchases through Tripadvisor. And so we booked a bike tour and a sea tour!
Both Chase Freedom Flex and Bank of America Cash Rewards were doing 20% cashback up to $23 for Tripadvisor purchases. My Bank of America also offers 3% cashback for online transactions.
| Items | Chase 20% CB | BofA 20% CB | BofA 3% CB |
|---|---|---|---|
| Bike Tour ($85.36 per person) | 1 ticket; $17 | 2 tickets; $23 | $6.40 |
| Sea Tour ($60.68 per person) | 1 ticket; $6 | 2 tickets; N/A | $4.55 |
| Bus to Whistler ($98 for 3 people) | N/A | N/A | $3.68 |
| Total | $23 | $23 | $14.63 |
*3 tickets were for myself, the BF, and 1 friend who reimbursed.
Total cashback: $60.63
Hotel!
Tip: Always cross-check prices on different platforms, and split with a friend if possible 🙂
I initially looked for an Airbnb for the trip, but I realized most of the locations were very far away from the city center and were generally more expensive than hotel pricing! Our arrival time for Vancouver was around midnight, and for our departure date, we wanted to wander the city a bit more, so we wanted a baggage storage option!
Airbnb surely did not have those conditions available to us; one of the places we booked initially said they cannot provide late check-in and baggage storage information until 24hrs before the reservation, so we canceled that reservation!!!
One of our friends joined us for the Vancouver leg of the trip, so we decided to split a hotel room with 2 double beds!
We got a hotel in Downtown Vancouver for $1004 USD for 4 nights. Or $334 each!
For Calgary, we thought we were staying at an Airbnb and splitting it with our out-of-town relatives, but they all decided, at the last minute, on the arrival date, to stay with our local relatives in Calgary instead! So we ended up not having to spend anything on Airbnb for Calgary!
We treated our relatives out for dinner as a thank you for their hospitality 🙂
Afterthought
Of course, these are just baby steps in the credit card churning and cashback realm! We are happy that we were able to discount parts of our trip to make it a lot more affordable and realistic. The USD to CAD currency exchange was also super nice! We loved the 30% discount on everything 🙂
Great food, awesome views of cities AND nature, cooler weather, better air quality, and better public transit! Overall, we loved our time in the superior America and cannot wait to visit again.