Canada - holidaying in and around Vancouver!

[susanmt]

We are planning to go to Vancouver to visit BIL and his wife in August/September, (they are out there studying) and were a bit shocked at the price of flying in August, and are a bit worried about the weather in September as we have heard it can change quite suddenly.
Has anyone done this or similar with small kids (they will be 1.5 and 3.5 then). Any tips about airlines. We would ideally like to fly direct to Vancouver from Europe.
Am going to do some searches but thought we would ask here first as there is bound to be someone who knows!!
Thanks

Susan - it sounds a great trip (I'm not jealous really!). I think Jasper is probably a bit more spectacular - but it's also bigger so there'd be a bit more travelling between sights. More popular too though of course, so you might find more people there in August. There's quite a good website, with video etc here for Glacier National Park , and here for Jasper which might give you more idea of what to expect/which you'd prefer.

GillW - just wanted to say a huge thankyou to you personally for all your help. Just with the Canadian Affair tip you saved us £200, which is a train trip to Jasper from Vancouver if we want it! Thanks!

Back to this thread now our tickets have arrived!!! Getting very excited.
We're spending about a week in Vancouver, probably about 5 days on Vancouver Island and have decided for the rest of the time to go to the Rockies - I know it is August and will be busy but this will likely be the only chance I get (dh of course was there twice before I met him!)
So -- we think we will do a round trip through Jasper, Banff and Yoho National Parks, by road. Although it is a lot of driving, you can drive to Jasper from Vancouver in half the time it takes to get there on the train, and we could stop if where we like or drive through the night as our kids are really good at sleeping in the back of the car.
We are thinking about hiring a camper to do this, rather than staying in hotels, as it will give us more flexibility and we think it may work out cheaper. I've had a look around on the web for rental agencies and they seem to be much of a muchness. Does anyone have a recommendation about this? Thanks a lot!

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susanmt, we used Alldrive in Vancouver, they do everything from a ford exploere, suburban, expedition to the large campers etc and trhey were very reasinable. They were so helpful, they do have an agent in this country now. If you can't find them on the web, I'll look out the details.

Susanmt, try here

Amanda1 - I'm actually going to stay with an old schoolfriend who lives in Courtenay, but would love to have ideas of good places to go there!
Alibubbles - Alldrive seem to be the cheapest (offering a 10% early booking discount) and you can buy your km's in advance at half the price.
We have an old VW camper which we take out in the summer but dh has never dsriven one of the BIG vans - anyone know how hard they are to get used to?

We booked our big camper (29ft, to sleep 4 adults and our 2 kids) today!!!! Now we have to wait 4.5 months until it is time to go!!!
Thanks for all your help!

Susan - just a thought about your trip. As a visitor to Canada you can claim back the GST (7%) which you'll be charged on things you buy to bring home/accomodation (as long as each receipt is for over $50 - which is only about £22 and the toal over $200). At the airport you'll find all sorts of forms for doing this, but make sure you get the official government one, (or you can download it from here which won't charge you anything, as most of them are commercial services who'll take a fee for "organising" your rebate.

Way - heyyyyyy!
We're off tomorrow for 3 weeks, so I'll not be around.
Verrrrry excited!
I'll fill you in when we get back.
Thanks for all the advice.

So how did it go Susan? Hope you didn't get caught up in all the forest fires they've had in the area our friends there live.

We had a FAB time! Canada is SO child friendly and laid back, and everything went smoothly (except me forgetting to take my medication with me, but the doc I saw was great and very helpful and not too expensive!)
We managed to avoid the forest fires. The only time it affected us was when we were driving to the rockies - the road we had been meant to take was shut so we had to go the long way round, but in the end it was better that was as I got to see all the glaciers twice! It was just sheer luck I think that we didn't get caught up in smoke etc.
I'd highly recommend it to anyone - even the flights were good (though one was delayed 7.5 hours, in the end it made it more of a night time flight so actually better than we had planned) and we especially enjoyed the week in the RV - it was great fun. Thanks for asking!