Travel won’t broaden your bank balance but it will broaden your mind

© Simon Poulter 2022

The man standing opposite me on the 7.55 to Waterloo is demonstrating why we need holidays. In fact, he is demonstrating it every 10 seconds, obsessively checking his phone’s lock screen to see if anything has been added to it. Despite it being August, the train is nose-to-nose packed, so it is impossible for me not to see his phone, but it’s clear that despite his feverish thumbing of the device, nothing new is appearing. If ever there was someone in need of a digital detox, this man is it.

I, on the other hand, am remarkably sanguine. It’s hot already, on a day likely to exceed 30 degrees, but my wife and I have just returned from 12 glorious nights abroad for our honeymoon. Since you asked, we travelled to Vancouver for a city break, before taking the incredible Rocky Mountaineer train to Banff, and then flying to Southern California for the final few days to do absolutely nothing beside a pool. And, not to sound even more smug than I do already, it was glorious.

Like everyone else, not having had a foreign holiday for three years, we’d given thought to our honeymoon probably long before thinking about our wedding. Vancouver appealed to both of us, especially as somewhere neither of us had been to before. When we then discovered that the Rocky Mountaineer departed from Vancouver, and took a leisurely two days to get up and amongst some of the most incredible scenery on Earth, we were sold. Being a little greedy, we also fancied a more traditional ‘beach’ component. The trouble is that getting from Banff to anywhere in the upper parallels of North America with a “proper” beach - for example, New England or the New York Hamptons - would require a day’s worth of travel. That’s when we discovered that Southern California could be reached in three hours by plane from Calgary, meaning that we could be at least poolside by mid-afternoon.

© Simon Poulter 2022

Vancouver’s appeal was that it came across as a very agreeable city, and so it proved. For a town only incorporated in the mid-19th century, flourishing as a key seaport and endpoint of the Canadian Pacific Railroad, it retains a newness, largely the result of urban regeneration that means that the most visible part of the city is dominated by the glass and steel of modern tower blocks lining miles of waterside pathways that curl in and out of apparently upmarket residential districts that appear to house much of the city’s 662,000-strong population. 10 million tourists visit Vancouver every year, and it continues to be the fastest-growing metropolis in Canada.

It’s not hard to see why: Vancouver projects itself as open and notably diverse, culturally, ethnically and socially, presenting a relatively young and progressive city. Its neighbourhoods bustle with the aspirational and the contented, roller-blading, scooting and cycling the city’s seemingly endless bike lane that hugs the waterside edge of this architecturally sharp port city. 

Vancouver was named the world’s second-best city in the Daily Telegraph’s Travel Awards a couple of years ago, only losing out to Cape Town. Colonial, New World conurbations clearly do well. But it’s not just tourists who like Vancouver: it regularly comes out high in lists of the most ‘liveable’ cities, with things like personal safety, healthcare, education, infrastructure and the environment being taken into account. Not that local endorsement is universal. Like so many North American coastal cities, Vancouver also has a homeless problem which, while nowhere near as bad as San Francisco’s, is deep in the consciousness of many residents. Locals also complain bitterly about the Vancouver’s traffic, but we found it to be free flowing (they clearly have never been to London’s car and delivery van-choked streets...).

© Simon Poulter 2022

Perhaps that’s why, with so many of Vancouver’s attractions adjacent to water, a network of water taxis is a convenient and highly relaxing method of getting about. From our hotel - the delightfully funky Opus in hip Yaletown - we were able to paddle up and down False Creek, with its spectacular view of the gleaming apartment buildings that line the waterways, framed by the looming mountains to the north of the city. The False Creek boats service destinations such as the huge BC Place sports and entertainment arena, and Granville Island, with its funky indoor market selling everything from artisan cheese to freshly caught fish. 

Travel further by ‘aquabus’ and you can explore the trendy neighbourhood of Kitsilano, with its upscale homes and a lively downtown shopping area, or to Stanley Park with its collection of First Nation totem poles the vast University of British Columbia campus, with its associate student-friendly neighbourhoods.What amounts to ‘downtown’ Vancouver, on the other hand, is harder to define. West of the city’s waterfront is Gastown, a district stretching alongside one of Vancouver’s transcontinental railway lines, and similar in vibe to New York’s SoHo, with its independent clothing shops, designer chains, restaurants, pubs and a vast vinyl record shop that I wholeheartedly approve of. Despite its apparent age, Gastown isn’t all that meets the historic eye: it’s main attraction, a steam clock that whistles the chimes of Big Ben every quarter hour, was installed as long ago as…er…1977.

Depending on your budget, there are some bigger ticket tourist attractions to eat up the credit card. A huge fleet of seaplanes take off every few minutes from the waterfront, carrying tourists out over the city and even further afield, depending on how long you want to be up in the air and how much you’re prepared to pay for it. 

For us, though, the possibility of seeing whales out in the Georgia Strait, that runs between Vancouver and Vancouver Island, looked like an excellent way to spend half a day. And so it was - five relaxing hours out on the water, catching sight of seals, a pack of sea lions ligging about on a navigation buoy, and even a bald eagle perched atop a tree. Whale sightings were “90% guaranteed”, so we were starting to get a little disappointed when, during Hour 4, we’d not seen so much as a ripple on the water. But, then, sudden excitement. A black dorsal fin, followed by the distinctive spinal arching of a humpback. And then again, and again, sometimes with longer intervals between appearances as she dove deeper after taking in great lungfuls of breath. 

Picture: @princeofwhaleswhalewatching

Finally we were rewarded with a full breach, as her barnacled head emerged from the sea like a submarine surfacing. Her name was Divot (marine biologists have identified them all by their unique tail fin markings) and she’d travelled up from Hawaii to give birth in the Pacific North-West. We learned that she was part of a remarkable re-population of Pacific humpbacks generating a ring binder’s-worth of tail fin pictures of hundreds of the animals, including one called Big Mama, whose annual returns to the area to give birth to the one calf a year they carry had played a huge part in the revival of an entire species that had been hunted almost to extinction.

How do you beat that? You don’t, really, but as experiences go, the Rocky Mountaineer comes pretty close. The luxury train service snakes its way up to breathtaking at-altitude destinations in the Canadian Rockies such as Banff, Jasper and Lake Louise, taking its time (its average speed is just 30mph) to let you take it all in. There’s a choice of packages, with two levels of service and the possibility to travel up to Jasper. Our preference was a two-day journey to Banff, the winter sport resort that, each June, plays host to the international television industry. That fact alone made it seem a good choice - if it’s good enough for expense account-funded TV executives, its going to be good enough for Mrs. P and myself. 

© Simon Poulter 2022

To get there we chose the ‘Gold Leaf’ package, which gave us very comfortable seats in a carriage with giant windows and a semi-transparent moon roof out of which to gawp at God’s work as we progressed at a glacial pace north-east. The idea is that you sit still and just watch the ever-changing countryside, occasionally being interrupted by a drink and a snack served at your seat, a visit to the open viewing platform in each carriage to get a little closer to nature or, a couple of times a day, downstairs to the dining car (it’s the lower half of the double-deck Gold Leaf carriages) for gourmet food. 

Mobile reception for most of the journey is either non-existent or viciously expensive if you’re roaming, so it’s easy to switch off and admire the alpine pastures that become high desert, the vast forest-clad mountains and the seven dramatic rivers that course alongside the majority of the line’s route. If you’re lucky you might catch sight of the wildlife teaming in this part of Canada. Some passengers have seen bears, but the most we saw was another bald eagle in a tree and a confused group of caribou wandering the streets on the outskirts of Banff. Camera buffs will end up with more pictures than they’ll ever need, as the awe-inspiring sights sail past. At some point, the train passes the Continental Divide, marked only by the sudden realisation that the seventh and final river is flowing in the opposite direction to the other six.

It is an overwhelmingly relaxing experience, but also supremely well organised. Your luggage is collected in Vancouver and transported by road to your final destination, briefly reuniting with you in Kamloops, the somewhat nondescript town where you make an overnight stop on the first day. Your hotel room key is handed to you while still sitting in your seat on the train, and your bags are waiting for you in the hotel room. The bus transporting you to the hotel is parked up in front of the steps to your carriage - Bus 13 for Carriage 13. It’s a well-oiled machine. If there was one anxiety, it was being forced to talk to strangers at meal times on the train, though much like an extended speed dating encounter, the conversations are convivial and reveal the same reasons why everyone else is taking the same journey. Over two days, and four meals, we only had to sit with three other couples, fate intervening and giving us a pass on the final lunch in the dining car (there are also plenty of drinks and snacks served at your seat).

© Simon Poulter 2022

The gentle pace of a vast train comprising 41 carriages, pulled by two or even three locomotives, plus the lack of Internet coverage forces you to appreciate the view. At times, the journey grinds to a complete stop, as the Mountaineer waits for mile-long freight trains to pass in the opposite direction (one, my wife counted, contained 140 units). But whereas such a 45-minute delay on that 7.55 to Waterloo would result in a Twitter meltdown, it’s just part and parcel of this experience. as you ride to ever-higher elevations. 

At one point the vast train performs a remarkable change of direction through a right-angled tunnel that seemingly corkscrews up and through a mountain, with the front of the train emerging as the last carriage is still entering. A remarkable piece of human engineering - one of many which built the Canadian Pacific Railway from east to west between 1881 and 1885, with hundreds of European and Chinese immigrant navvies earning just a dollar a day...and often paying with their lives (an estimated 800 Chinese labourers died constructing the line).

Reaching Banff, and travelling across and out of British Columbia and into the province of Alberta, we encountered a lively town teaming with summer tourists. Out of the ski season, its main tourist attraction is the gondola that ascends the near-8,000ft Sulphur Mountain. At the top a four-storey visitor centre offers more views of the breathtaking local peaks and valleys, as well as a couple of restaurants, one of which provides an all-you-can-eat buffet for just C$34 each and all the Rocky Mountain views you can handle. For hardier types, there is even a bar on the open top floor, from which you can grab a beer and shiver under a blanket, looking out over the incredible scenery thousands of feet below.

Vancouver and the Rockies are definitely bucket list-ticking destinations, but that won’t stop us going back. Over the course of a week it felt like a rich and glorious tasting menu for what Canada has to offer. Given that the country itself covers a greater land mass than its southern neighbour, I would certainly look forward to seeing more of it (a Channel 4 travel series presented by Griff Rhys Jones is currently whetting the appetite for a nation and its people that deserves more attention). I’ve never been on a honeymoon before, but as holidays go, this was superbly relaxing, due in part to where we went and the experiences. 

That even extended to our departure for California: though we had to have a brutal, Rude O’Clock 4.30am pickup from our Banff hotel to get to Calgary Airport to check-in for a 9.50am flight to Los Angeles, the airport experience was just as relaxed as the previous few days had been. The check-in area was deserted, security screening a breeze, and then the best part - clearing US immigration while still in Calgary, thus sparing us the often nightmare queues at LAX when large flights from Asia and Europe land at the same time and overwhelm the system.

The three-hour flight to LA, and then the 40-minute drive down the 405 freeway to Huntington Beach in Orange County meant that our brilliant planning worked out perfectly, and we were sitting in the sun, eating lunch with a view of the ocean by early afternoon.

We spent the final four nights of our honeymoon in the lap of luxury. I won’t lie, it came at a price: such is the dismal exchange rate between the pound and the US dollar that every meal and even poolside softdrinks that, a few years before would have cost half the price, required an eye-watering use of the flexible friend, especially once you added 8% sales tax and a 20% tip (even branches of that corporate behemoth Starbucks had a tip jar, not that employees working from 4am for, presumably, minimum wage don’t deserve customer gratuities).

© Simon Poulter 2022

But what cost the memories - the glorious sunsets, the poster paint-blue skies, the palm trees and all the things about SoCal that I’ve been enjoying over almost 30 years of visiting there. There’s so much of the state that I’ve experienced over those three decades that it never fails to draw a grin. 

Cruising up PCH to Malibu for coffee on our final morning is something else I’ve done plenty of times. And it never gets old. For a culture nerd like me, growing up on California-filmed TV shows, driving on roads that have appeared in episodes of Columbo or CHiPs, or popping into the branch of Ralphs where very real Hollywood stars get papped while out doing their weekly shopping never fails to amuse. That the reality cheesiest that is Selling Sunset has now spawned an Orange County spinoff means we can gawp at the actual prices of the incredible beachfront properties we saw up close in places like Laguna Beach. It all adds up to being immersed in your own virtual reality experience - except the sights and sounds of California are all very real.

Spending a few days in this gilded paradise was just the finale to our honeymoon we wanted. Forget the expense and just soak it all up. Those sunsets aren’t just the selling point of ridiculous estate agents. They’re a potent symbol of the dreams and aspirations associated with reaching the ‘left coast’, even if you know that soon you’ll have to get on board that big ol’ jetliner and leave dreamland behind to return to reality.

This, then, wasn’t just our honeymoon. It was the trip we needed. The previous time we’d gone anywhere for fun was a weekend in Palma in the autumn of 2019. So much has happened since then, not least a global pandemic. When we walked into a Guildford travel agency last December we were still in the process of planning our April wedding. A honeymoon at the end of July seemed even further off, but from the moment we dropped cash on the deposit, it was the desirable end of a long road that only included the wedding itself. Canada excelled itself - we will be back! - and no doubt California too. As lifelong memories go, these 12 days and its three distinct components - city break, train ride through breathtaking scenery, poolside decompression - will remain with us forever.