Travelling again

June 6th 2009

In just a few days we will be off to France to visit Art's nephew Steve in Paris. From there to Marrakech to visit a couple who we "met" through an e-mail mix-up and finally to Rome, where we will celebrate our 34th wedding anniversary.

Packing is almost complete--we can probably make it with just carry-on! We will take the little notebook computer so hope to keep in touch.


All Art's clothes fit into one carry-on backpack! Gillian's fit into a slightly bigger bag,but still carry on size. Air Canada allows one carry on plus one smaller carry on--computer etc so we should make it. Not sure what the Atlas Blue to Marrakech or the Lufthansa flight to Rome allow, hope it's all carry on as it's lot faster thorough customs and immigration.

Only 3 more sleeps!!!!


June 9th

Our dog/house sitter arrived last night, Trekker ecstatic to see new friends. It was obvious that they were going to get along just fine.

Our neighbour John showed up at 8:05 AM as arranged and not too surprisingly we were on the way to the Victoria airport for our first of the 3 leg flight to Paris only 10 minutes later, arriving in plenty of time.

As we entered the terminal we ran into a former client of Gillian's, a Jazz Air employee, who immediately took us under her wing so to speak and got us checked in and and on our way without having to stand in line. We had time for a coffee (breakfast!) and in a little while we proceeded to security.


Gillian was told that the X-Ray had detected that she had a pair of scissors in her case; she said "no I don't, I'm sure!" they said "yes you do" so she opened her case and a bit of rummaging around disclosed a pair of bandage scissors forgotten in the first-aid kit. Oops! After close inspection the agent decided that they were blunt enough to pass. Meanwhile Art watched his belongings go through, several agents peering at the screen, moving the conveyor belt back and forth. Finally Art was asked to open his bag, the item of concern proving to be a small metal cased penlight. We were both released without incident and shortly thereafter we were all allowed to board and we were soon rumbling down the runway then up and flying over the Gulf Islands.



Leg one was an uneventful flight except for the arrival in Vancouver where we experienced something that we had never seen before in all our years of flying: As we taxied in, the usual announcement was made about remaining seated with seat belts on until the aircraft was at a complete stop, the seat belt sign off and the door opened. When all this had in fact occurred, the flight attendant had to tell us that we could now stand up and exit the aircraft. Each and every passenger had remained sitting up to this moment! Several people commented that they had never seen this happen before. Art suggested that perhaps we were all Islanders and as such didn't really want to go to Vancouver anyway!


An hour and a half in YVR and we boarded our Air Canada flight to Toronto. Again a pleasant uneventful flight, except that the plane was full and the midship washroom was out of service, the entire economy section had only two working toilets. They soon realised that this was not going to be sufficient end eventually we commoners were permitted to traipse through the first class section and use their facilities (no fancier than ours) though we were not allowed to actually line up in the first class section, we had to wait behind the curtain at row 12 in economy.


There were quite a few small children on the plane but happily, for the most part, relatively quiet. We were seated next to a Dad with his 2 year old daughter on his lap. Fortunately she was very well behaved with only a few isolated incidents of fretting. We tried to nap without much success, but passed the time well enough, though we were glad to hear the landing announcement.



In Toronto again there were no problems and soon the third and final leg was under way; yet again a full aircraft and a bunch of kids, but we have seen worse. A pleasant surprise was that the meal was included; edible chicken, the pasta option all gone by the time they got around to us. After dinner we got as "comfortable" as possible and closed our eyes. Gillian got a bit of not too restful sleep, Art got none but of course eventually we were below the clouds and flying over farming country on our approach to landing in Paris.