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-   -   Canada's vacation politics (https://britishexpats.com/forum/canada-56/canadas-vacation-politics-899040/)

bgpz Sep 16th 2017 2:57 pm

Re: Canada's vacation politics
 

Originally Posted by dbd33 (Post 12337973)
America has loads of different places to visit but it's expensive to fly there from Canada so, if exploring is the aim, I'd choose to live in Canada as close as possible to a US airport so as to be able to take a bus to it and fly from there. In this context living in Hamilton or Windsor suddenly makes sense.

Can't speak for Windsor/DTW but from what I understand, flights out of hub airports can be more expensive than tacking on a connector flight in to the hub for then taking said same flight.

The thing about the dead cheap flights out of BUF/ROC is that they are the very early ones - but you can work this in your favour by driving down the night before, airport hotel (get them to match the cheapest parking rate you can find if there aren't any park'n'fly deals - but these usually aren't cost-effective for weekend/week-long trips). It also means more time at your destination, so you can make the most of a long weekend trip.
Airport hotels around BUF are a very good way to use hotel points (and a good reason to churn hotel credit cards in particular).

This approach isn't for everyone (which is why there's such a premium on direct flights with nice timings), but if you can make it work for you it's a great way to do trips on the cheap and make the most of your time at your destination.

Weirdly, sometimes it can be cheaper to fly to/from the US in and out of YYZ - not always, but depending on your location and circumstances (i.e. if you have a Nexus card - YYZ transborder can be brutal otherwise) prices can be pretty close to make the schlep across the border not worth the additional expense.

The nice thing about Hamilton in this instance is that you can get the YYZ in 45 mins, and BUF 60-75 mins depending on what side of the city you're starting from (assuming you have Nexus and the line isn't going across the Peace Bridge - Whirlpool is a safe bet for lines, but longer drive time).

The other way to maximize exploring US cities is to play with google flights and see if you can engineer long layovers (i.e. less than 24 hours - more, and it's a stopover and can cost more, although not always). Depends on the city, but some have great transit links to where you want to explore, and lots of competition for well priced hotels. Or, if you're flying further afield, early start flight to a hub, have a day trip, and then sleep on the red-eye - we've had a day exploring Philly and overnights in Boston before going on to Europe, for example.

dbd33 Sep 16th 2017 11:33 pm

Re: Canada's vacation politics
 

Originally Posted by bgpz (Post 12339490)
Can't speak for Windsor/DTW but from what I understand, flights out of hub airports can be more expensive than tacking on a connector flight in to the hub for then taking said same flight.

The thing about the dead cheap flights out of BUF/ROC is that they are the very early ones - but you can work this in your favour by driving down the night before, airport hotel (get them to match the cheapest parking rate you can find if there aren't any park'n'fly deals - but these usually aren't cost-effective for weekend/week-long trips). It also means more time at your destination, so you can make the most of a long weekend trip.
Airport hotels around BUF are a very good way to use hotel points (and a good reason to churn hotel credit cards in particular).

This approach isn't for everyone (which is why there's such a premium on direct flights with nice timings), but if you can make it work for you it's a great way to do trips on the cheap and make the most of your time at your destination.

Weirdly, sometimes it can be cheaper to fly to/from the US in and out of YYZ - not always, but depending on your location and circumstances (i.e. if you have a Nexus card - YYZ transborder can be brutal otherwise) prices can be pretty close to make the schlep across the border not worth the additional expense.

The nice thing about Hamilton in this instance is that you can get the YYZ in 45 mins, and BUF 60-75 mins depending on what side of the city you're starting from (assuming you have Nexus and the line isn't going across the Peace Bridge - Whirlpool is a safe bet for lines, but longer drive time).

The other way to maximize exploring US cities is to play with google flights and see if you can engineer long layovers (i.e. less than 24 hours - more, and it's a stopover and can cost more, although not always). Depends on the city, but some have great transit links to where you want to explore, and lots of competition for well priced hotels. Or, if you're flying further afield, early start flight to a hub, have a day trip, and then sleep on the red-eye - we've had a day exploring Philly and overnights in Boston before going on to Europe, for example.

I bow to the depth of analysis here. All I can be bother to do is to add up the cost of the flight and the cost of the parking ($25/day in Toronto, $4/day in Detroit) and take the cheapest one. Buffalo is an attractive airport because it's small and because the surrounding hotels offer free parking with one night's stay. Drive to Buffalo, check into the Holiday Inn, go for wings; it's like you're already on vacation.

Oh, one neat thing about flying back to Buffalo is the sense of passenger solidarity. They've all seen "Once Upon a Time in America", they know people not going to Buffalo are laughing at them. Appropriately, last time around, the plane announcements were in broad scouse.

scrubbedexpat091 Sep 17th 2017 2:09 am

Re: Canada's vacation politics
 
I'll typically use Bellingham,WA or Seattle when flying. The past 2 times though the fare was YVR was the same in CAD$ as the fares from Seattle but in US$ so YVR it was

As long as you don't fly into YVR in the 10am to 3pm time frame customs wait are minimal.


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