On our way

We are on our way. We said goodbye to Joey at 5.30 this morning. He stays home and Martine’s sister and her family will be spending time in our house. That way, we are sure he will get his epilepsy medication on time and the chance of seizures is lowest because he is in his own home.

Our day was a very long one. We arrived at Schiphol around 8.30, four hours before departure. After dropping off our luggage it was on to security and passport check. Then we had some time to relax and have a bit of breakfast. We were flying to Montreal, have a stopover there and then take a flight to Vancouver, our destination.

The flight to Montreal was quite uneventful, but once we had landed text messages from Air Canada came in: our connecting flight to Vancouver had been cancelled and we had been rescheduled to fly to Toronto instead and then have another flight from Toronto to Vancouver. This meant our arrival (local) time in Vancouver would not be around 20.30, but at 23.20 instead.

In Montreal, I contacted our hotel in Vancouver to make sure we would still have our rooms. I also tried to contact Hertz, because their Vancouver Airport office closes at midnight and we would be getting very close to that. I called their number, listened to their automated menu of options and tried to get through to customer service, but this did not work. After a couple of seconds, I was told that transferring the call was not successful and I was back in their menu. Not exactly the smooth start to our holiday we hoped for.

The flight from Montreal to Toronto was a short one at around 45 minutes. Then we had further delays as the plane had to have some "scheduled maintenance" as the captain called it. After boarding, we sat and waited and our delay was another 20 minutes, meaning we would land even closer to midnight. Luckily, they were able to fly a bit faster I guess, as we landed at 23.30 in Vancouver. I had spoken to a flight attendant who deemed it doable to still be at the Hertz desk in time before midnight.

After landing, we had to taxi for 10 minutes, leaving me with 20 minutes to get off the plane and find the Hertz office while Martine, Nienke, Inge and Ellis picked up our luggage. I did not succeed getting there before midnight, but fortunately they were still there and I was able to pick up our car!

Regrouping with the rest of the family proved more difficult, as there are several pick-up points at the airport and it took us quite a bit of time to find each other again, with me driving the same circle around the airport at least five times. In the end, we met at the domestic arrival pickup point and then we drove to the hotel in Vancouver, arriving there after 1.30. Taking the time difference of nine hours into account, this means we had been on our way for 29 hours. Time for a well deserved sleep!