A while ago I set things up so that I could email in blog entries from my phone. I don’t really want things to look all wonky or have a silly “sent from my blackberry” message at the bottom. So, we’ll just have to see how the entry turns out and see what improvements can be made before we actually leave.
Ah, all in the name of keeping readers happy…all 3.5 of you out there!
Next I will have to figure out how to include photos. Oh technology you give me a headache.
Sent from my BlackBerry device on the Rogers Wireless Network
It’s hard to believe that it has been almost a year since we went to Europe. We’ve been working through photos bit by bit and selecting a few from the thousands to put up in frames. (Taking too many photos is a double edged sword!)
Eight months have passed since the last update, and a lot of stuff has happened since then. I’ll get you caught up in 250 words or less! July and August were typical Summer months–Jon had more road trips than I did as he was off work for a couple of months. In August my littlest brother got married.
In September WE got married. It was a simple no frills affair–the witnesses found out the night before and no one else was invited. We managed to keep it a secret for several months which is pretty amazing. October, November and December are a blur as work was insanity. January was great–my cousin had a beautiful little baby! I had a weekend trip to Seattle for some shopping and touristy stuff. And here we are now in February, which means I’m back to tell you that we’re going on another adventure.
For a couple of weeks in May & June we’re headed to Peru. We were talking about a potential Peru trip last year when we were waiting to leave for London during the whole passport fiasco at the airport. Jon found a Peruvian coin on the floor which pretty much sealed the deal. (Let’s hope there is some Yen on the floor while we’re waiting this time–but without the passport fiasco– because Japan is my next intended destination.)
Jon has already posted several hundred photos on Facebook. I’m not keen on Facebook photos–it takes too long and always screws up the posting order. So, I looked into Flickr, but I’m not keen on having to have a yahoo ID to use it. (ps: Thanks blog for not making me get another e-mail account!) So you all have to wait patiently while I sort photos to post. And by you all I mean the half-dozen of people who will ever find me here.
**Update – Flickr was definitely not the way to go! It was way to frustrating for me in several different ways. You’ll have to settle for photos here, or Facebook if I ever get around to it!
Let’s just give you some background story here for a sec…Jon did not sleep on his entire flight to Thailand last year. He watched approx 8 movies. Prior to this UK flight, he checked that the flight would have onboard movies, and even went as far to check what movies were going to be playing. (Yes, he’s crazy, and who knew you could find that on-line?!?)
Miracle 1–We get to fly a day late, but a day early at the same time, and our seats are together!
Miracle 2: The movie screens for our 2 seats weren’t working. Everyone else had stuff on their screen–we had BLACK screen. I could tell Jon was super dissapointed. But, about 20 minutes later, they magically started working! Hallelujah!
The ticket agent at Air Canada (after the whole passport fiasco) happily charged us $300 to switch our flight to Monday, when we were originally supposed to fly on Saturday. SUCK MUCH?!?!
Anyway, she told us 2 things–the earlist flight we could get was Monday at 10:00am, and with a connecting flight in Montreal, and that there was no such thing as stand-by. She also said that we could come back at 2:30 on Sunday and see if there were any seats for the Sunday flight.
PS: She’s a liar! We flew Stand-by direct from Vancouver to Heathrow on Sunday. Thanks to Cherryl and Jane! Jane rocked! So did Cherryl, Gord and Narinder. They all helped us. Jane was the one to tell me my passport didn’t work, and she remembered us the next day (well how many idiots does she deal with, on such an extreme level?) They ended up getting us the earlier direct flight. Cherryl even phoned to tell me not to worry when she kenw our stand-by seats were finally confirmed. Thank-you for double booking 6 people Air Canada!
AND, Jane was at the boarding gate to see us off. She was so happy when we walked onto the jet way. She was awesome.
We were pretty much stranded in Vancouver for the night, so we ended up staying with our friends Adam and Kelly. Totally unexpected drop in on them, but it was a good visit, and nice to see their “new” house that they’ve been in for 3 years already. New to us, not so much to them. Obviously it would have been better to have not missed our flight at all, but we met their sweet pets, Cosmo, Newton and Gilligan and saw their latest vacation photos.
The virtual safari and safari guide Kelly were absolutely amazing. Thanks Adam and Kelly for making a horrendous situation better!
We had a couple of options as to when to go to Vancouver to be ready for the airport. I REALLY wanted to leave Friday night for Saturday night’s flight. Jon wanted to leave Saturday with Coquihalla prone to closures, poor conditions and accidents, I thought we could use some buffer time. And I was right–we missed our first flight even though we got to the airport with TONS of time to spare. We were the first people to “check-in” for flight AC854 on Saturday.I passed Jane (you’ll see why I know her name later) my passport–no go. I brought my OLD one that expired in 2006. New one was at home 3 hours away in my dresser.
Needless to say, breaking all land speed records wouldn’t have even helped to get my passport to me in time to check in.
My brother had already left us at the airport. I’m pretty sure you can’t even guess how panic stricken I was. After about 100 phone calls home to my parents and making my brother turn around and come back to the airport–we confirmed that my current passport exists (THANKS MA!) and had my fazh drive to meet us in Chilliwack to do the hand off. (THANKS FAZH!)
Passport crisis over, but day 1 in London gone. Sadder.
At this point I have about 12 hours before we leave for the airport, and about 8 of those will be spent sleeping. Blogging is about the last thing I need to be doing, but I just can’t finish packing.
And then I see Venice! Bet you though I was gonna say something about underpants! Tricked you.
As if anyone wants to hear about the economy right now, but it actually helped us out! Hotel prices in Venice went WAY down, so we switched our accommodation to something nicer for the same as we were already paying. (Note: We’re not going deluxe apartment in the sky, but it is still a cooler hotel and a SWEET location.) We’re staying at the Hotel Caneva which is about 2 minutes from the Rialto Bridge, and about 3 minutes from Piazza San Marco. Check out the photos of the hotel it looks pretty cute. It should be a fine place to stay for the few days we have in Venice.
Thanks Air Canada for turning me into a total stress ball! Last night we got an e-mail saying our flight home had changed. Originally we were leaving Rome at about 8:30am, flying Lufthansa to Munich, then Air Canada from Munich to Toronto and then to Vancouver, arriving at 8:20pm.So, the flight was switched to leaving Rome at 6:50am. That most certainly doesn’t work with having to be at the airport hours before check-in, and having no trains going to the airport until after 5am. Either we had to spend the night before in the airport (so, check out of our hotel a day early, carry all our crap with us for the day of sight-seeing, and then waste a ton of time at the airport) or take a taxi super early in the morning for like a billion Euros. Anxiety much?!?!
The flight was also rerouted through Frankfurt and the second leg from Frankfurt to Toronto was on Lufthansa instead of Air Canada. I don’t really care about the air line change, but the time change…not cool. Jon was on hold with Air Canada for 2 phone calls, so about 2 hours, but now we’re leaving Rome just after 10am. Hopefully they didn’t mess up the booking.
Adventures of a couple seeing the world 2 weeks at a time.
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