Ultimate Canada: Chic Cities & Wild Frontiers

The first night is spent in the heart of downtown Calgary at Le Germain, a hotel that gets the boutique brief right: well-positioned, well-designed, and surrounded by the restaurants and bars that have made this city worth arriving in rather than passing through. The museums and galleries around the neighbourhood are worth the afternoon. Dinner is the priority.

The drive west into Banff National Park is the first indication of what the next several days are going to look like. The Fairmont Banff Springs sits in the forest of this UNESCO World Heritage Site and is the most luxurious way to spend your time here. A helicopter ride over the Canadian Rockies enables you to make sense of the sheer scale of your surroundings, while hiking trails and hot springs cover the rest of the first day. For those who want more adrenaline, the Kicking Horse River offers whitewater rafting. For those looking to wind down, the Willow Stream Spa at the Fairmont is the correct way to end the day.

East across the park to the Fairmont Lake Louise, which sits above an emerald glacial lake with the Victoria Glacier directly behind it. A scenic trail ride on horseback through the surrounding wilderness covers terrain that would take considerably longer on foot. Sunset kayaking on the lake, with the glacier catching the last light, is the kind of thing that ends up being the highlight of the trip.

Two days aboard the Rocky Mountaineer, travelling through scenic valleys, the Coastal Mountain Range, and the Fraser Canyon. The glass-domed coaches mean nothing is missed: the white water, the dramatic cliff faces, the moment the landscape opens up into the Pacific ranges. An overnight stop in Kamloops breaks the journey before the train pulls into Vancouver the following day.

The Rosewood Georgia Hotel puts you in the centre of a city that takes some time to understand and then becomes very difficult to leave. Gastown is worth exploring on foot, the public market at Granville Island is worth the morning, and Stanley Park is the kind of urban green space that makes you wonder why more cities haven’t managed it. The seafood is exceptional throughout. Two days is not quite enough but it is enough to get the measure of the place.

A seaplane from Vancouver to the Wickaninnish Inn on the edge of Tofino. Four nights in a location that regularly appears on lists of the best hotels in the world, and earns its place on all of them. The beaches are wild and largely empty, the surf at Chesterman Beach is serious, and the black bears and orca pods are close enough to require no special effort to find. This is the correct way to end a trip across western Canada: somewhere that makes you forget there is anywhere else.