Around the World in 80 Days

To Canada, Alaska and North East USA in 73 Days

Wednesday 10th August 2016

Up early to clean the paint brushes and rollers from the previous day's painting. An exciting start to the day. We still managed to be ready for the Adam/Lauren taxi service at 7am 7:15am. (We were a little late as we had to say goodbye to the Boys!). We had good run to the international airport for the drop off. We had a clear run through check-in and security. On to duty free for the makeup, perfume and alcohol. After that dent we went up to the Virgin lounge (an advantage from 4 years of flying back and forth to Melbourne bi-weekly) for Marg to have breakfast! (Vince didn't do too badly on his breakfast selection).

We were lucky enough to get the front row of seats for our section which meant extra leg room (Don't mention that I selected these seats over 6 months ago). An extra bonus was there was only the two of us for the three seats. The downside was that the seats had fixed armrests so we really could not spread out with the extra room.

The flight was about 20 minutes late taking off as one passenger had become ill and had to disembark and their luggage needed to be removed from the plane.

Finally, we were in the air. A very uneventful flight through to LAX airport. Not a great selection of movies. However, Eddie the Eagle was quite good. Not many planes landed around the time of our flight so getting through customs was quite quick. The slowest part at this stage was waiting for the luggage at the carousel. There were more people standing around waiting than luggage coming down the chute. We then had a short walk to terminal 5 to check-in for the next leg - Seattle.

We were to have a 2 hour wait for this connecting flight but due to delays we waited a further 40 minutes. Due to good tail winds we made up some time on the uneventful ( thanks goodness) flight into Seattle.

We then had a 4 hour wait for our connecting flight to Vancouver. As Delta airlines ( who we were now travelling with) had their system crash 3 days prior and were only back to 70% recovered data at this point we needed to have our seating reallocated. However, they would not do this until an hour and a half prior to our departure time. We therefore sat rather close to the check in counter to pounce the moment the time arrived. ( Sorry but can't resist putting in that at this point after over 24 hours we were Sleepless in Seattle).

When we finally boarded it was a short half hour flight to Vancouver. No dramas with retrieving our luggage and clearing customs. A 20 minute taxi ride and we reached our home away from home in a pretty tree lined street on East 30th Avenue. Our hostess came and welcomed us and brought us a glass of NZ white wine to settle in to the apartment.

A short walk up the street to get a few supplies and then an easy dinner and early bed once the sun went down just after 8.30pm.