Rolling through the Rockies

Upon leaving our Vancouver hotel we, for a change, were not heading to the airport, oh no; we were heading for the train station. Not just any train station though – the station for our two-day luxury train ride across Canada, on the Gold Leaf Rocky Mountaineer.

Sitting in the middle of a long line of passenger cars, ours was a sparkling blue and white double-decker with a dining car and open-air observation deck below and our seats above, with a panoramic glass domed roof from which to view the utterly spectacular (and spectacularly varied) scenery. Indeed, the roof is partly to blame for the ridiculously vast number of photographs I took in such a short space of time!

When not ooh-ing and ah-ing at the raging rapids, sheer cliffs, towering snow-capped mountains (and in the middle of summer, remember) and miles of unbroken pine and fir forest, we were treated to first-class service, knowledgeable and engaging commentary, free-flowing wine and silver-service dining. We even met a really friendly girl from Denmark who was sitting across from us upstairs and with whom we had interesting conversations over our gourmet breakfasts and lunches.

Despite the fact that two full days on a train seems like quite a tiring prospect, even with a very comfortable setting and a stop-over in a hotel in Kamloops, the time flew past for what we will definitely consider one of the most memorable parts of the whole holiday. Rather than intersperse the text with photos this time, I thought it might be better to sign off with a photo-diary of our two days. Enjoy, we certainly did.