We have decided on a single blog entry for our days on the train - the time did rather blur into a whole! Having done the 'adventure' experience of one night in Economy with reclining seats on the first leg of our Trans-Canada journey we were excited by having a cabin for two for this further journey. The cabin was tiny, definitely no cat swinging but everything you could really need for three days and nights on the train. We were intrigued to see how the two bunks replaced the daytime seating: the chairs fold to go under the lower bunk then the ready made lower bunk swings down from being stored vertically and the upper bunk moves down from its ceiling storage to be secured at shoulder height. Once in place only thin people would be able to manoeuvre from the door to the bunk ladder: clearly a challenge for some of our fellow travellers. The cabin had a private toilet, sink, mini-wardrobe and some storage space. The cabin attendant even left chocolates on the beds when she readied the cabin for sleeping! The coach also had showers which worked surprisingly well: we can honestly say we'd never showered on a train before - yet another first experience!

Our coach, Cameron Manor (all the cars are named after famous Canadians) was towards the back of the train which gave us access to the rear Panorama Coach and Dome Car - we whiled away many a pleasant hour between meals here watching the scenery go passed and listening to our audiobooks. We did spend some time catching up on blog writing but not as much as we'd thought we would. Amazing how it's possible to spend so much time doing nothing much. Well and eating - lots of eating! The dining car staff produced pretty good food, amazing really considering the small space it was cooked in, although Dave did say that the breakfast pancakes were not as good as Laura's. (Laura's pancakes clearly are to be the measure by which all future pancakes are to be judged.)

All along the way we were told that the train could make up the delayed time, and certainly there were periods during the first whole day and second night on our way to Winnipeg that the train went like the clappers. Sadly this was interspersed with periods when we were stationary whilst we gave way to the freight trains that have priority on the single line stretches of track. Also sadly the periods of high speed were over exceedingly bumpy tracks that made the train rock from side-to-side. Jill did spend the entire journey fighting low level nausea so the journey was not quite the pleasant experience it was meant to be and sleeping was, well let's just say it wasn't undisturbed. However, nausea not withstanding, we did enjoy this part of our trip.

The scenery was interesting: we'd been told that the prairies would be boring and whilst it's true the scenery didn't have the awe of The Rockies we did still find it fascinating, not least because of the scale of it. We don't have any comparable travel experience where it can take over 24hours to cross a significant landscape type. The prairies were not quite as flat as we'd expected, but roads did disappear in a straight line into the horizon from rail crossings. The landscape was maybe not as featureless as we'd imagined. Fields were not as huge as we'd thought they would be and there are frequent grain silos - but perhaps these are a particular feature of the track side with grain being transported by freight train.

We also passed the time chatting with fellow passengers, both sharing tables at mealtimes and in the Panorama Car. Everyone was friendly but Jutta and Pat deserve special mention. Jutta spent ages tracking down the phone number for the CN Tower restaurant via the intermittent weak signal on her iPhone so that Dave could book us in for Jill's birthday treat. And as we passed through Parry Sound (in daylight, a joy we wouldn't have had had the train not been delayed) Pat shared with us her love of a beautiful area of Ontario that we were inspired to visit (see later blog post). She also shared with us ALL of her holiday photos....she's lucky we didn't reciprocate as we have hundreds!

The Canadian has its own time zone - we passed two time zone lines during this journey but our timelines changed at Via Rail's bidding as the train chooses not to announce an hour change during the night, nor during a meal service, which makes sense as it would only confuse passengers at these times. Unfortunately Dave's phone, that we were using as an alarm clock, didn't know this and thoughtfully changed the hour when we passed the zone boundary in the middle of the night and so got us up an hour early for breakfast - we were asleep then too!

Jill's birthday dawned with trees and ponds outside the window so it was clear that we hadn't made up the delay overnight and would be late into Toronto. The attendants at breakfast were explaining that there would be a lunch service, so a long delay (5 hours) was anticipated. Lunch was good: interesting that there was sufficient food on the train for the 80 people to be offered a two course lunch with two choices. Indeed all credit to the resourcefulness of the staff. We were so late that we were eligible for compensation by way of Via Rail credits: more on that tomorrow.

We'd postponed planning a meal out to celebrate Jill's birthday - partly because we'd not had a phone signal on the train to make a reservation but also with the uncertainty of our arrival time we'd not been sure if we'd want to go out. This proved to have been the right decision as we were a little too tired to enjoy a meal out. We headed out to buy a take away but found a supermarket with a great fresh food deli counter so decided on BBQ chicken and salads instead. We also bought freshly made triple chocolate cupcakes - finding yet again a sales assistant with a sense of humour. She dead-panned that these cakes were only available in six when we requested two! Well she had us disappointed for a few seconds! With fresh cherries and Ben & Jerry's Cherry Garcia ice-cream they made a fabulous birthday cake. And so to bed in our lovely Toronto condo ready to explore fully in the morning.