Jilted Jaunts Series - Table of Contents
| Entry | Notable Places/Events | Start of Day | End of Day |
|---|---|---|---|
| Day 0 - May 22-24 2025 | Introduction, Planning | - | - |
| Day 1 - May 25 2025 | Edmonton > Calgary > Canmore | Edmonton | Canmore |
| Day 2 - May 26 2025 | Banff, Tunnel Mountain | Canmore | Canmore |
| Day 3 - May 27 2025 | Three Sisters Pathway, Canmore, Lake Minnewanka stargazing | Canmore | Canmore |
| Day 4 - May 28 2025 | Canmore > Calgary | Canmore | Calgary |
| Day 5 - May 29 2025 | Calgary > Vancouver, Crystal Mall, Aberdeen Square, Aberdeen Centre | Calgary | Vancouver |
| Day 6 - May 30 2025 | Parker Place, Main Street, Chinatown, Gastown, Shipyards Night Market | Vancouver | Vancouver |
| Day 7 - May 31 2025 | Richmond Public Market, Vancouver Aquarium, Richmond Night Market | Vancouver | Vancouver Airport |
| Day 8 - May 31 2025 | Vancouver > Calgary > Edmonton, Vancouver Airport, Lilac Festival | Vancouver Airport | Edmonton |
Thursday, May 22 2025 to Saturday, May 24 2025 (Day 0)
Welcome to my newest travel blog series! This series will concentrate on my travels around Canada, but outside of Edmonton, in the calendar year 2025. I don’t know as of writing how many of these trips I will make, but I plan to make a few of them, so hopefully this won’t just be one 8-day series and that’s it. That would be awfully boring and anti-climatic.
Previous travel blog series I have written include:
– A Grand Tour of the States (USA, Oct-Nov 2021)
– Rose-Tinted Goggles (Singapore, May-Jun 2022)
– Kami Watch Over Me (Japan, Oct-Nov 2022)
– The Slightly Longer Way (Japan, May-Jun 2023)
– Where the Wind Takes Me (Japan, Taiwan, China, Hong Kong, Singapore, Apr-Jun 2024)
And now this one! Which is a little different in that I am going to try to write this as a combination of several small trips this year instead of one giant trip. Any trips I make are contingent on a lot of things though, with money, time, and the outcome of my ongoing search for a new house being the foremost three things, but over the past year or so I’ve wanted to travel around and explore and experience festivals and museums and maybe other things in various other cities and towns in Canada, as I’ve never really been around our vast country outside of Vancouver, Edmonton, Calgary, Banff, and Jasper. And Toronto and Montreal when young. And outside of Edmonton where I stay, all my time in the other places have been very limited and short, or as layovers on my way somewhere else, or with other people and a shared itinerary.
I figured targetting specific events or places to visit would give me a reason to go back to some of these places and also explore new places by myself, at my own pace, enjoying the things that I enjoy. But travel is expensive, especially lodging, and although it’s already May, my calendar is already littered with events that I was interested in perhaps going to and doing, but which I rejected in the end because either they were too far away, too expensive, or simply overlapped with other things. There’s so much to do in Canada, and my calendar of possible events is filled with Jilted Jaunts — stuff that I would have loved to go to if transport was cheap and especially if lodging was cheap.
Lodging costs reaching over $100 a day, and often over $200 a day, pile up very, very quickly though. If this doesn’t really happen in the end, and Jilted Jaunts ends up just being this one week-long trip, then well, it’s because of lodging costs.
But anyway, these trips are built on the foundations (or one might argue, broken bones) of those Jilted Jaunts — I make lists of festivals, events, places, and other things that seem interesting, and then see if anything fits with my schedule and other constraints, as well as with each other, with transportation and lodging prices, etc, and try to jigsaw together trips based out of that.
I do this within Edmonton too, but Edmonton’s a lot easier to adjust for because it’s a small, contained region and I have an apartment to stay in here even if not an outright house. Which also means I can visit even smaller events because I’m not out $200 or something if the event turns out to be a bust, which several have. For events in the wider world, I don’t have such a luxury. But that doesn’t mean I won’t take a chance on visiting a place for a specific event, if the stars align, just to see what it’s like. Worst come to worst I spend a day of two gawking at a relaxing landscape in a different city or town, or find some other interesting thing to do instead. Plans can change, and that’s why I like the name Jilted Jaunts.
(You could also perhaps say that Jilted Jaunts could also refer to me rage-leaving for a trip after being jilted on yet another housing offer that I made. And you wouldn’t be totally wrong! But it’s more the first reason, and the fact that I like both the words Jilted and Jaunts and wanted to use them together in an alliterative fashion.)
Thursday, May 22 2025
But let’s get to the trip planning! While I did draft out an itinerary, I didn’t actually book any tickets and hotels until today, 3 days before the trip started, as there was still a lot of variation in the exact route that I could take, and also I was trying to iron out some meeting possibilities, and talked to both WingBenny and Allen about an afternoon in Calgary and Vancouver respectively. I learnt today though that Allen had actually left Vancouver with his family in late 2023 and returned to Singapore, though, so so much for meeting him here in Canada. Oops. I’ll tentatively meet Benny midweek next week though, which will be nice if we can find the time for it. Otherwise, we live so close together anyway that we’ll find another time.
By the end of the night, my itinerary had been fixed to look like this:
Sun May 25 2025 – Edmonton to Calgary 🚌
Edmonton 7:30 am
—> 3h 10m
Calgary 10:40 am
Thu May 29 2025 — Calgary to Vancouver ✈️
Calgary 11 am
F8801 –> 1h 40m
Vancouver 11:40 am
Sun Jun 01 2025 — Vancouver to Calgary ✈️
Vancouver 7:45 am
F8800 –> 1h 30m
Calgary 10:15 am
Sun Jun 01 2025 — Calgary to Edmonton 🚌
Calgary 2:40 pm
—> 3h 15m
Edmonton 5:55 pm
There’s a few buses missing from this list because Calgary and Canmore (and Banff) are so close to each other and have so many buses going between each other that I can usually just pick whichever bus on the day and go, and they’re like $15 each or so, but just for completeness’ sake, I also booked a bus from Calgary to Canmore on Sunday May 25 that operates from 2:00 pm to 3:40 pm. I will need to book another one back from Canmore to Calgary, but as I haven’t booked the hotels for May 27th and May 28th yet, I am not sure when exactly I will be coming back (or if I am just going to book a much cheaper hotel in Calgary and transit back and forth between Calgary and Canmore/Banff on the 27th and 28th), so I haven’t booked that return bus yet.
As for prices, the Edmonton to Calgary and vice versa buses cost $36, the Calgary to Canmore (and back) ones cost $20, and the Calgary to Vancouver plane roundtrip cost $201 after all taxes and a carry-on bag extra both ways. I’ll be carrying one rucksack as well as my shoulder sling bag with me, and all the buses and planes that I’ve booked on this itinerary should allow for that.
Lastly, I booked my hotel for the first two nights of the trip today. I’m not going to name it in advance, for minor safety reasons, but it cost around $350 for 2 days in Canmore, which seemed like a good price. It’s pretty difficult to find any sort of deal on Canmore or Banff lodging, outside of hostels which I don’t want to do, for under $200 a night. This deal I found from the hotel’s direct website.
I don’t have any of the other hotels or lodgings decided on yet, but to save money, I will be staying in the Vancouver airport overnight as well on May 31, since I have a flight early in the morning on June 01. I’ll need to book two nights in Vancouver on May 29 and 30, as well as either two nights in Calgary on May 27 and 28, or one night in Calgary, May 28, and one other in Banff, Canmore, or Calgary, May 27.
I’m kind of looking forward to that Vancouver airport overnight stay, even though I’m sure it’ll be tiring as well. This will be the third airport that I’ll do an overnight stay in, after Singapore’s Changi Airport in 2022 and Tokyo’s Narita Airport in 2024. I wonder if I should visit Edmonton’s airport at some point this year and just sleep there overnight for fun.
Calgary will be kind of a weird pivot city in this trip — I will be there for 3 hours on Sunday May 25 for an event, 4 more hours on Sunday Jun 01 for another event, and possibly an afternoon and evening on Wednesday May 28 as well
I aim to pack about 4 days of daytime clothing on my travel, which will mean that I will have to do some laundry on Wednesday May 28, in whatever hotel or lodging I pick in Calgary. That should be the only time I need to do laundry though, until I get back home. 2 outfits of clothing should be fine for the nights. Hey Tigey? This is your notice that you’ll be having a bath when we return after this trip, too. Prepare thyself.
Friday May 23 2025
I didn’t do that much today as I had other real life stuff to catch up on, however this day was spent catching up on my blogging duties, and I finished up both the main Diary entry for this week (My Diary #192) as well as made templates and this initial writeup for this trip, Jilted Jaunts Day 0.
Also, deciding on the blog travel series name. Do you have any idea how many days this took me last time? This time it was just “oh yeah, Jilted Jaunts has good alliteration, let’s go with that” It took me weeks this time as well!
There is one wrench with the whole trip, which I partially alluded to last week, but I do have a plushie package from Makeship coming in at some point. It wasn’t originally even due to ship until July, but it shipped on May 16 instead. Anyway I talked to Jon (yesterday afternoon) and arranged with him to possibly come by to save the plushie from sitting outside my door if it’s delivered while I’m out. I have the tracking number and will be monitoring it while I’m out of the city, and praying that it will get slowed down by the Canada Post strike (even though it’s not being shipped by Canada Post), and/or general slowness from using a no-name local courier company.
I also booked the lodging for my third night in Canmore/Banff. Banff itself was way, waaaay too pricey to book at, even the $175 a night for the first two nights in Canmore made me uncomfortable due to the price. However, for the third night, I booked a private room at a hostel instead, which will be interesting because while the room is private, the bathrooms and showers are not. Also, the hostel is next to a nightclub and there are assorted complaints from people about noise. However, I’m only there one night, and I do sleep fairly easily in general, so I don’t think it really matters that much because the total price after taxes and fees came out to a cool $85. Any private room under $100 makes me happy, so there we go! Plus I want to experience this (without actually staying in a dormitory) because it’s apparently a historically significant building!
Now I only have my two nights in Calgary and two nights in Vancouver to book lodgings for.
Saturday May 24 2025
What a pain. I thought that now that I had booked the lodgings for the Banff/Canmore leg of my trip, the Calgary/Vancouver ones would be a lot easier. Nope.
Calgary’s booking took an hour or so to pare down, but mostly because I needed a place with laundry services as well, and one that wasn’t on the other end of the city from the airport. I was only staying there one night, and I ended up picking a room in someone’s house on booking.com for just over $100 after the laundry charge. It did take a while to choose, but no big deal in the end.
Vancouver though. The lodging prices in Vancouver are madness, and if people are complaining about people setting up Airbnbs there (and elsewhere), they need to give their heads a shake — outside of hostels, hotels everywhere are grossly overpriced and nearly everything north of the Fraser river is basically $200+ a night, often $400+ a night the closer one gets to downtown or the airport. Even a stupid Travelodge that all the reviews say is full of old, run-down furniture was $516 for two nights. Yeah no.
Looking onto the booking.com and Airbnb markets brought the number down significantly, and I actually did eventually find one for about $100 a night, while being located in a nice central location, which was nice. I booked it, and it was confirmed, and then 5 minutes later the owner cancelled it, saying that they were overbooked for that room. Oh well. And even though booking.com makes me pay instantly for bookings, processing refunds takes them 7-12 days somehow. It doesn’t directly affect me, but it was still irritating. In the end, I booked a slightly more expensive place, for about $135 a night, that apparently was very close to a train station to make travel a lot easier. There were several other $110 a day or so homestay places that I could have booked, but they were in much more inconvenient locations, so I decided to pay a little extra to smoothen the travel time while not paying exorbitant hotel prices. This also made me doubly certain that my plan of staying the 3rd night in Vancouver airport itself is a good one. That will easily save me $130-$150 at a very minimum, possibly $200+ depending on where I would have had to end up to catch an early flight the next morning.
I also basically fully mapped out my first 3 days in Canmore and Banff and marked a few things that I am going to try to visit. Short non-mountain hikes, museums, shops and malls, etc. That part was fun. I haven’t fully done the Calgary and Vancouver portions, but I assume that there’s so many things to do there anyway that as long as I hit my main objectives the middle parts will fill themselves in. I don’t really have much extra time in Calgary either, though I do have a couple of days in Vancouver to kill.
I also checked all the weather forecasts and I’m apparently dodging a hot day in Edmonton and a rainy day in Vancouver and should have pretty great weather through my entire trip.
I do have a bunch of things scheduled on the trip to do, but I also barely missed doing a bunch of other things by 1 or 2 days because the days just didn’t line up with when I will be in each place. Like farmer’s markets in Banff and Canmore the day after I leave. Oh well. So many jilted events.
I believe this trip will cost me about $1,600-1,700 in total, we’ll see how accurate my estimation is! I have completed all my lodging and inter-city transportation bookings and it’s been about $1,200 so far.
I also got a minor headache from the stress of booking accommodations and digging around trying to find a way to save a couple dozen dollars. So I decided to leave everything else be. That’s enough pre-planning. As per my usual bad habits, I started packing 3 hours before I had to leave, and finished with time to squeeze an extra anime episode in at the end before I left the house. Safe!