After training to San Francisco I needed a route to Victoria. I overheard some friends talking about kayak.com and man are they right. As ticket search sites go, it’s a world beater. I can’t wait for the next big thing that combines airline with other transit options and reports it all with time vs. cost graphs.

Among other things, Kayak helped me discover that it is actually cheaper to take the train from San Francisco to Seattle and then get a float plane from downtown Seattle to downtown Victoria than it is to fly to Vancouver and ferry to the Victoria peninsula. The downside is, at least going south to north, you spend a night in Seattle. Right now it’s almost impossible to get a hostel bed there, so you’d end up making up more than you would save paying for a hotel room. And its a much longer trip obviously.

But think about it, train up the pacific coast of the US and then fly a de Havilland Beaver into the inner harbour from dowtown Seattle. Modern luxury.