Stunning Scenery, wildlife and our "Wonder"ful Disney friends! - Rockies & Alaska Aug 2014 - Day 1

[1972]

Saturday 16th Aug – Night before travelling

About 36 hours before our flight, after getting home late from a concert, we discovered that our youngest name didn’t match her passport! We are usually really good at checking and double checking things when we book, but for some reason DH didn’t ask me to check our flight details. Where it should have said Miss Katie “Surname”, it said Miss Miss “Surname” (so missing out her Christian name). Everyone else was fine, but we knew that the name on the ticket had to match the passport, so decided to call Air Canada. Of course, at 1am in the morning the UK office was shut, so we could wait until the morning or ring Canada then. Decided we wouldn’t be able to sleep if we waited, so rang Canada. Was on the phone for about 15 minutes, but the advisor was really helpful and reissued the tickets while we were on the phone, so we could go to sleep!

Had our tea in Pizza Hut en route to Heathrow and arrived at the Travelodge Heston Services West Bound about 9pm. It wasn’t very nice as it was quite old, tired and needed a bit of a clean in places, but at only £27 for the night, it was OK.

Sunday 17th August – Travel Day

Left the hotel around 7am and drove to NCP Flight Path. Have used this car park a few times in the past and have always found it very reasonable. The bus driver was very helpful and moved one of the car park signs that was parked in a space, so that we could have a space near the bus stop which would be convenient when we got home. The bus to the airport was good.

Terminal 2 was very nice and has been refurbished and check-in was quick and efficient. We were relieved when we did the self-service check-in that the tickets matched the passports! The saga the day before gave us visions of being on an episode of Airline. We always watch those and say how “stupid” those people are for not checking things before flying!

We were flying Air Canada for the first time to Vancouver. We boarded on time, but 10 people didn't show, so they had to off load bags, so we were almost an hour late taking off.

We were very impressed with the airline and plane. There was individual back seat entertainment with a good choice of films, music and TV. I watched The Other Women and The Railwayman, watched something on TV and listened to some music. DH watched 3 films including Pulp Fiction and the kids watched a few films and seemed happy.

Drinks were served just after take-off and a little late a hot meal with a choice of a creamy spinach pasta or chicken in a red pepper sauce with mash and broccoli, an onion salad, bread roll, cookie and bottle of water. Both were very nice and probably the best airline food we have had.

There were two more chances to get drinks during flight and a tub of ice cream and pretzels were served and then about 90 minutes before landing, we got a meatball or vegetarian wrap.

The cabin staff were very attentive and overall we were very impressed with our first flight with Air Canada.

We arrived in Vancouver at 12.20 and it took us about 30 minutes to get through immigration and then found our luggage quickly.

Then the hold up started when we got to Alamo. All their computers had crashed the night before and deleted some of the price codes. The advisors all seemed confused and we were there for around half an hour, but at least it was sorted and we were given a Dodge Charger.

We got a little lost leaving Vancouver as we requested “No tolls” on the Sat Nav, so it took us on a bit of a journey around the houses and added to our journey!

The weather was lovely, in the high 20s and we drove through Hope, which is where Sylvester Stallone filmed First Blood. There was a 1/2 hour traffic jam after Hope, which slowed us down a bit.



We finally got to Kelowna at 7.30pm and glad we decided to get on the road straight away rather than stay in Vancouver until the next morning.

We stayed at the Fairfield Inn and Suites. It was very nice and was £80 per night.



It had an outdoor pool and water slide.



We were all tired now after being awake for 24 hours and a bit grumpy, so we decided just to go to Wendy's. We fell into bed at 10pm, knowing we would wake up early the next morning.

Stunning Scenery, wildlife and our "Wonder"ful Disney friends! - Rockies & Alaska August 2014 Index

[CheshireCaty]

Great report. I'm hoping to do something like this is the next few years so I'm looking forward to reading more

[1972]

Originally Posted by CheshireCaty

Great report. I'm hoping to do something like this is the next few years so I'm looking forward to reading more

See more...

Thank you, it really was a fantastic holiday!

[Eeyorefanuk]

Looking forward to more please

[1972]

Originally Posted by Eeyorefanuk

Looking forward to more please

See more...

Yep, I really need to get on with it, but my daughter has a sleepover tonight and they are playing on my ipad which has my notes on.

It is nice doing the trip report though as I will be going back over what we did.

Fab memories!

[Chilly80]

Yeah you've started. Can't wait to hear more.

[Gary]

good start to the holiday

[1972]

At last I have got Day 2 up - going to take a while to get all of it up, but hopefully it will be worth the wait! Enjoy!

[Lisa29]

Great start, looking forward to more.

[Helen0705]

Lovely start to your trip .
Looking forward to reading more