The first leg of our journey is traveling from our home to Toronto Pearson Airport. We opted to take a train from Belleville, Ontario to Toronto Union Station and then the UP train to the airport. This is much more affordable than an airport shuttle service and just as convenient. Our train leaves at 7:00 am!
We arrived at the airport with plenty of time to check our baggage and spend some time in the airport lounge for breakfast and coffee before our flight. One of the perks we got from credit cards was access to premium airport lounges. This actually saved us a lot of money because airport food is super expensive! It also gave us a comfortable place to relax while waiting to board our flights.
On our way! We flew on Air Canada from Toronto, ON to Vancouver, BC. We purchased this flight using Aeroplan points. Love rewards points for budget travel!! So much of our vacation was booked with rewards points from various sources. It was about a 5 hour flight and nothing remarkable happened. Because of a flight delay and the time zone change, we arrived mid afternoon in Vancouver Pacific time.
We stayed at the Century Plaza Hotel in Vancouver. We used some of our credit card travel credits for this hotel stay so it was very minimal cost and got us a great little suite for the night! We chose an embarkation time of 11:30 for the cruise so we went right from the hotel to the cruise port and boarded the ship! We were so excited (and a little nervous) to get underway! Our cruise would take us from Vancouver up to Alaska and then a North Pacific crossing to Japan. The cruise was 17 days (really 16 days but we crossed the international date line so we skipped a day). We were nervous about the crossing and possibility of rough seas.
We were sailing on the Norwegian Sun which is a small cruise ship that held approximately 1900 passengers. We like the smaller ships because they are more intimate and you get to know the staff and other passengers too. This was the final cruise of the season leaving Vancouver on October 17th, 2025 so it was a trans-positioning cruise and the cruise line would do Asian cruises for the winter months before heading back to North America for the summer season again in 2026. Of course we had to have a glass of champagne to toast the cruise!
We used this cruise as our means of transportation to Asia. We had almost daily time changes so it allowed us to slowly adjust to a 12 hour time difference without jetlag! It was also cheaper than a business class long haul flight. Bonus!
Watch our video below to learn about repositioning cruises and why they are great for budget travel!
