How to plan a trip to the Maritimes on a budget

We moved back to Vancouver in August 2018 after living in different cities in Canada. Before we decided to move back to Vancouver, we decided to go to the Maritimes in July 2018. In this post I would like to show how we able to achieve this trip on a reasonable budget. We had $2500 to spend for two adults. We wanted to travel to four regions in the Maritimes: Gaspe Region, New Brunswick, Nova Scotia and Pei. How did we go about achieving this:

1. We made a list of important places and things we wanted to see in the Maritimes. These are the list of places and things we wanted to do: Confederate Bridge, Eat lobster, Bay of Fundy, Swim in the Atlantic Ocean, Bonaventure Island, Anne of Green Gables House, Halifax Downtown, Magnetic Hill of New Brunswick, and Peggy Cove
2. We explored different tour companies online and visited travel centers to see what their prices and their reviews were and how we could best match our to do list to our price list. After much research we decided to avoid flying or driving by ourselves to the Maritimes. We wanted the option to cover as much area in the Maritimes as possible with comfort and without having the headache of having to negotiate the time and energy of going through four provinces and seeing all the attractions
3. So finally we decided to book our trip with a tour company that will give us that comfort and enjoyment. We narrowed our choices to three tour companies. Since we lived in Ottawa we decided to choose three companies that were close to the area we lived. Our choices were Ottawa Valley Tours (Ottawa), Midearth Tours (Ottawa), Taketours.com (Toronto). We immediately disqualified Ottawa Valley Tours. Although it seemed like a impressive and extensive tour, the cost was out of our budget. It was $4750 per person. We were left with two options Midearth Tours and Taketours. Although both offered similar value, we decided to go with the Midearth because it was located in Ottawa and we would have avoided extra costs in travel and finding a hotel to stay before and after the tour.
4. Located at 738 Bronson Avenue, Midearth Travel has positive reviews, getting 4.4 stars out of 5 in most reviews. Midearth Travel caters to a Chinese clientele. So much of the food choices offered was chinese buffet on the trip. However you could opt of the buffet options. Both My husband and I are non-Chinese, but I found the experience on this trip to be very enjoyable and I would really recommend it. The total cost of the trip was $2577.87. We were budgeted for $2500. The next post on either Monday or Tuesday I give you an itemized cost and post the pictures from the trip.