If you do choose to go to Halifax, I hope you fly out of there because otherwise you would be losing too much time to travelling within Canada in such a short period....

I took the Ocean Limited (the Halifax train) and although it is a comfy train, it does take over 24 hrs to travel from Montreal to Halifax and it travels through Quebec during the night so you won't be able to see the senic St. Lawrence Valley. You mentioned visiting a national park; there is Gatineau Park across from Ottawa on the Quebec side.

I would say your plans are a little ambitious. You could drive from Montréal to Halifax in two days of 7 hours solid driving, stops extra. It's a greater distance than from Perpignan to Lille.

In March, it will still want to be winter in eastern Canada. So it might be wiser to fly to Halifax. rent a car and spend 5-7 nights. If I recall correctly, the Maritime provinces can see snow in March. However, you could easily allow 3 nights for Ottawa, 4-5 nights for Montréal, 4 nights for Québec City. There is good train travel available between the 3 cities. There may be some countryside to visit closer to Mtl and QC.

I would type the words "Québec Forum" in the search field above the green navigation bar. That will take you to the province of Québec forum where there are very knowledgeable posters for that area who will be able to advise.

As mentioned in previous posts, March is a transitional month weather-wise. If you were to drive from QC to NS you might end up spending a couple of your vacation days in a motel waiting out a late winter storm. Flying in & out of Halifax would be the best way to travel in March. Once you were in downtown Halifax, you could walk to many of the historic sites such as the Citadel & museums. You could drive out of the city on day trips. Our schools have a March Break the week of March 12th so there will be lots of March Break specials re hotel pricing.

Is your flight back to France from Montreal? If it was possible to fly back through Halifax without too much extra charges then it might be feasible to visit Nova Scotia, otherwise I agree with Maryann you could have a great trip just in Quebec

Assuming your daughter will be in Montreal next year you could plan to meet and spend 2 weeks in Nova Scotia!!!

Hope you have a wonderful trip whatever you decide!.

-:- Message from TripAdvisor staff -:-

TripAdvisor staff removed this post because it did not meet TripAdvisor's forum posting guidelines with prohibiting self-promotional advertising or solicitation.

We ask all of our members to keep their forum messages free of self-promoting advertisements or solicitation of any kind - members affiliated with any tourism-related business should not include commercial contact information or URLs in their forum messages.

To review the TripAdvisor Forums Posting Guidelines, please follow this link: http://www.tripadvisor.com/pages/forums_posting_guidelines.html

We remove posts that do not follow our posting guidelines, and we reserve the right to remove any post for any reason.

When we visited Eastern Canada a few years ago, we took the train from Montreal to Halifax.

As we had flown into Toronto from the UK, we first hired a car in Toronto which we dropped off in Montreal after visiting Kingston and Ottowa.

We then bought a train ticket from Montreal to Halifax but we were able to stop off in Quebec City for 3 nights en route. The train from Montreal arrived in Quebec City and we travelled during the daytime. For the second leg of our journey (QC to Halifax), we first had to take a shuttle bus to Charney (about 30-40 minutes away from QC). The train left Charny around 10.15 pm and while the first part of the journey is indeed overnight, the scenery during the daylight of the 2nd day was spectacular.

The Ocean Train was our first experience of Canadian rail travel and there were no problems with the journey or the transfers.

We have been back to Canada since then and have always found the train service (both Via Rail and the Rocky Mountaineer) to be a positive experience.

I am always pleased to see such a positive posting re our Canadian rail travel. I love to travel by train when time allows & have nothing but praise for the relaxing experience. The meals are prepared with such care & the dining tables with the crisp white linens (plus the excellent service) make you think of an Agatha Christie novel. Hopefully, minus the murder mystery part!

Taking the train to Halifax would eliminate any weather related driving frustrations & the train arrives in the "centre ville" area. You could even stay at the attached Westin Hotel (www.thewestinnovascotian.com), an historic landmark in its own right.