Figure 1. There are two Toronto airports. This is Airport Code YYZ.
I recently(September 2016) took a vacation to Toronto Canada. I wanted to briefly share a few helpful tips with you. I will also make a few suggestions. Monetary exchange rate could always change, but currently $1 U.S. Dollar is equal to about $1.33 Canadian dollars or another way to look at it is that $1 Canadian dollar is about $0.75 or seventy five cents in the U.S. This exchange rate can fluctuate; nevertheless, it may be a great opportunity to do a little high dollar shopping. Personally I didn’t capitalize on the shopping aspect, but it did come in handy with taxi cab rides. For example, let’s say the taxi drivers says your fare is $25. The taxi driver is only talking about Canadian dollars; so, if you pay with a credit card, when you see the charge on your credit card statement, it will be less than $25. So, my recommendation is to get Canadian dollars when you arrive in Canada or use your credit card or debit card to pay for items. Otherwise you may overpay for an item if you use U.S. dollars. Let’s use the taxi cab ride as an example. If the taxi driver says your fare is $25, a person from the U.S. may give him or her $25 U.S. dollars. If you were to give the taxi driver $25, you would have just given the taxi driver a hefty tip and on top of that, you may give him or her an additional tip because you’re not familiar with the exchange rate.
The second tip is to contact your cell phone carrier to find out if there is an option you need to “temporarily” add to your cell phone plan to allow your cell phone to work(for making phone calls and texing) in Canada. Any time I mention work as it relates to cell phones in this article I’m referrig to texing & phone calls. I will not name any cell phone carriers in this post; nevertheless, don’t assume your cell phone will automatically work in Canada. I’ll tell you a few scenarios. I went to Canada with a bunch of my buddies. One cell phone service automatically worked in Canada. I will not name the carrier. Another cell phone carrier’s cell phone only worked if the person had Wifi. Then a third cell phone carrier’s cell phone did not work at all. The third cell phone carrier’s cell phone did allow people to send emails if he or she had a wifi connection. The most important take away from this second tip is to CONTACT your CELL PHONE provider before you go to Canada otherwise you will be without a cell phone and when you’re in a foreign country without a cell phone you will be immobile unless you have a friend that does have a functioning cell phone. Not having a working cell phone will take away from your vacation. The people who did not have functioning cell phones in Canada were very dependent on those that did for things like calling taxis and uber, ect.
The third tip is that if you have a large group of friends going you might want to consider using airbnb. It is probably more economical with large groups and it can save you money. We used airbnb
Figure 2. Airbnb house during our stay.
during our stay in Canada. For our vacation it was the perfect decision. I can’t stress prefect enough. We split uber or taxi rides to the airport, grocery store, and going downtown; so, the cost was negligible. Using airbnb worked for the purpose of our trip. With the number of people we had, it was the most economical option. If you’re vacationing alone, then a hotel will probably be the best option because of the monetary exchange rate I mentioned above plus you may or may not have to pay for taxis and uber to go to different downtown locations. If you stay in a hotel, you may be less dependent on your cell phone also. Please check back to this blog, I’ll use a future post to post a few tips for nightlife, sight seeing, games, interesting garbage cans, & a nice restaurants to try. Feel free to leave a comment and share this post on your social media sites.
