Help please planning a trip to New England and Canada

Doris1969

Hi folks,this is my first post although I have been an active lurker!
I have booked return flights to Boston in June for 17 nights and now would like a bit of help planning our fly drive. Its just the 2 of us now kids grown up and we would like to take in Canada.
These are my thoughts so far,I would welcome views from anyone that has done similar or found any good places to stop and stay.
First 3 nights in Boston and will then hire a car. Is it best to go back to airport to hire a car?
To go to the White Mountains for a couple of night? Is Conway the best place to stay? Then to head to Quebec for 2/3 nights,either Montreal or Ottawa for 2/3 nights followed by Niagara Falls on the Canadian side for 2/3 nights.
We would then head back in to USA and go to beach resort maybe in Cape Cod before flying back from Boston.
I have my ESTAs for USA,how easy is it to go over the border to Canada? Any advice re best car hire to go to both country's ? Cape Cod seems expensive for the quality of hotels any suggestions of other costal resort to chill at?
I have found this forum great for ideas to West Coast of America,so any help for this trip would be greatly appreciated.
The only things I have booked so far are flights and 3 nights in Boston.]

buglawton

I did something similar, suggestion #1 is book Niagara hotel early, I was able to get a room with a view of both Falls for a very realistic price. To cross into Canada all we needed was a passport, however I heard Canada is introducing its own ESTA think it was 2016 sometime.

Guess you are giving NY a miss as you've already done that?

richardw

If you want to drop the car off at the airport before flying home, it may best to go back to the airport to hire the car to avoid any one way drop off charges. A two week rental may be cheaper than 13 nights, because you'd get the weekly rates.

Canada is introducing ETA http://www.cic.gc.ca/english/visit/eta.asp

I've driven in Maine and New Hampshire, roads are good.

EssexExile

It's a lovely part of the world but I can't offer much advice. 1978 & 1990 were our visits. I didn't like Boston much but then I don't like cities. Have a boat ride around Lake Winnipesaukee on the way to Conway. North Conway's a nice little town. Frankonia Notch State park is good. Any chance of getting up to Acadia National Park if you like the great outdoors? I like little local motels & we never booked but things may have changed.

Angelite

Sounds similar to a trip we did a couple of years ago. We found the same thing in Cape Cod (expensive, not great quality hotels) but settled for the Doubletree in Hyannis. It had it's pros and cons but Hyannis was a nice base to explore the rest of the area incl. Martha's Vineyard. Plus, it was near the Cape Cod Potato Chip Factory

Some of the coastal places in Mass. and Maine are glorious if you decide against Cape Cod. Beautiful small towns.

We didn't do Canada and just stayed in the 6 states in the North East. There is so much to do! We didn't love Boston, but it gave a nice contrast to the very small towns we visited at the start of the trip.

For car hire, we found the rental place at Boston airport really quick and easy to use.

I wrote a few blog posts about my two week trip if you're interested in the places we visited. It was an amazing time - best holiday we've had and we'd love to go back. You'll love it!

Doris1969

Thankyou so much for the replys so far. Lots of useful information, for me to investigate. Yes we have been to New York. Thanks for advice on Niagara, I must get it booked. I've now looked into Canada ETA,thanks richardw and we don't need one,so that's easy. I think we will go back to Boston airport to hire car.
Angelite, so much info, I have started reading your great blog. We are actually booked in the Revere Hotel in Boston! Is it as easy to get free bus from airport to hotel,even with cases or would you get taxi? Did you book car hire in advance? Did you book all hotels in advance? The hotel you stayed in Hyannis is one I am considering,although it's not far off £200 a night!::)

Angelite

The Revere was lovely - very clean and great location. We decided to walk to the hotel from the hotel (which took me a while as I had sprained my ankle the previous night!). Really, we should have taken a cab.

That said, the free bus from the airport to the city was great, just didn't quite stop near enough the hotel. Wasn't a problem with the cases as there was plenty of space on board. I think it was the Silver Line from Logan to South Station, and then it should only be about a 15 minute walk to the Revere.

We actually spent a lot of the planning time on trying to figure out Cape Cod as we just couldn't pin down where to stay. We went slightly off season so that made the prices a little better, but it doesn't surprise me about the Doubletree price. One think to be aware of is the traffic at the weekends in the summer, so you might want to stay midweek.

We did book the car in advance through Car Hire 3000 (which seems to be www.rentalcars.com now). We found it was easier to book from the UK as you avoid all the insurance confusion when you get there. That website will compare all the rental companies that are at the airport, and we went with Budget in the end.

We also booked all the hotels in advance. All the guidebooks we read said it wasn't necessary, but it just meant one less thing to worry about when driving around. We liked having a bit of structure! Again, this was out of season - you may find that in June, places get booked up a little quicker.

Murphy_The_Cat

from my trip to that part of the world.
I'm not a city person, but liked Boston. Traffic was very heavy at peak times and parking was cough, ahem, a tad pricey. Parking on the outskits and taking the subway/commuter train was easier on the pocket and worked well.
We really liked, Salem (Witch hunt), Gloucester (Wicked Tuna, Perfect Storm) & Rockport.

Cape Cod accomodation is certainly pricey. The trip to the end of the peninsula is quite a long trek. From memory, Chatham was a lovely small town.
We stayed at Bayside Resort, Yarmouth,
which was the best compromise of cost, location, accomodation that we could find.

skint_chick

2/3 nights in Niagara might be a bit much - after you've seen the falls there isn't much to do in Niagara unless you like casinos etc - Niagara on the Lake is a nice little town with some lovely non chain stores. The queues to get across the bridge both ways can take hours at peak times. I would suggest 1/2 nights would be better and use the other night somewhere else. Also I would check out the Maid of the Mist as I saw it now only goes from the NY side of the falls rather than the Canadian side

blindman

Doris1969 wrote: »

Thankyou so much for the replys so far. Lots of useful information, for me to investigate. Yes we have been to New York. Thanks for advice on Niagara, I must get it booked. I've now looked into Canada ETA,thanks richardw and we don't need one,so that's easy. I think we will go back to Boston airport to hire car.
Angelite, so much info, I have started reading your great blog. We are actually booked in the Revere Hotel in Boston! Is it as easy to get free bus from airport to hotel,even with cases or would you get taxi? Did you book car hire in advance? Did you book all hotels in advance? The hotel you stayed in Hyannis is one I am considering,although it's not far off £200 a night!::)

We did a similar trip in 2005 (:o)
Used Priceline to bid for the Airport hotel and Got the 4* Revere for $66

Used it as a base (bus\metro into Town IIRC) and then picked up the hire car.

Did our research on Cape Cod and came to the same conclusion as others that it's expensive with quirky B&B's
Drove to the end and back IIRC and stayed in Hyannis at the 2.5* Harbor hotel OK for one night-just (Some advice in that thread about Cape Cod)

My review
Tripadvisor reviews are no better