Our holiday trip started quite early this morning. Dale was up at 5:00. That was way too early for me so I tried to sleep a little longer, but I was up by 6:00. I washed, dressed and made the bed. I put the last minute things into my suitcase and manhandled it down the stairs. I asked Dale why he was up so early. He said he didn’t want to be late. I’m so paranoid about being late, and Dale knows that it stresses me, so he really took it to heart. We were out the door and on our way by 6:30. The traffic was heavy on the TransCanada, it was a Friday rush hour after all. But once we got off it, the traffic was fine. We got to the airport, parked and hopped on a shuttle. The sun was peeking out, it looked like it was going to be a nice day.

Once inside YVR we made our way to a self-serve kiosk to print out our luggage tags. We had already checked in online so we had our boarding passes on our phones. We don’t typically have much luck at the kiosks, and Dale doesn’t typically have patience when they don’t work. However, there was a patient young woman there who helped us out. She even put the luggage tags on our bags. Minutes later we were through security and on our way to our gate.

Dale treated us to a stay in the Plaza Lounge where we had a small breakfast and he checked his work emails. At 8:30 I started to get antsy. Our passes said boarding would start at 8:40 and we would be in the first group to board as we were sitting in the emergency exits seats. Of course that’s when Dale decided to go to the restroom. I sat as patiently as I could, watching him wander around the lounge looking for the signs. By the time he returned I had packed up his bag and was standing, holding it out for him. He got the message and we were off.

We arrived at our gate just as they announced they were ready to start boarding. I wagged my finger at Dale, we were almost late! Dale returned the wag, we were still early. Of course he was right as we stood there for at least another ten minutes. However, if we had done it my way, we would have been sitting, as we would have gone to the gate as soon as we got through security and stayed there.

Now, as I was standing there somehow I put some of my mail into another folder on my phone. When I went to the desk to board, I pulled up the wrong boarding pass. I fumbled with my phone trying to find the right one but couldn’t. The attendant found me on the computer, checked my ID and let me head down to the plane. As I was walking I found it. We got into our seats and settled in for the flight. We got our iPads out and opened the Westjet app. As soon as the safety talk was over we were able to access the onboard wifi. I watched an episode of “Who Do You Think You Are?” and then two early episodes of “Gilmore Girls”. Dale watched a movie. We both played some games and had started a game of two player Scrabble when the voice of the pilot came over the speakers. We were taking longer with our descent as the airport in Toronto was experiencing some bad weather and only one runway was open. We would be getting in about half an hour late.

Well, my anxiety went through the roof. We had to make a connecting flight to Halifax and we had only about 45 minutes. Thankfully we had only a short walk from our arrival gate to our departure gate, and the flight was delayed about 40 minutes. So we had time to make a quick bathroom stop and get our IDs and boarding passes in order. We didn’t have time to eat, so we ordered a snack on the plane.

The lady sitting in our row with us was from Toronto. She told us a huge storm had come through the area, with heavy rain and hail but it hadn’t lasted long. She was on her way to her aunt’s 94th birthday. Her mom had lived to 104 and another aunt had made it to 108! We got into Halifax about 8:40 pm local time. Our luggage came quickly and we headed out to the taxi line. It was about 8 C, there was a tangible nip in the air. The taxi took us on the short trip to our hotel, The Inn on the Lake. We asked about the restaurant hours as we checked in. The kitchen closed at 10:00 so we had 20 minutes to get our orders in. We took our bags up to the room and hotfooted it to the lounge. The server was very accommodating. She got our order in before the kitchen closed. The lounge closed at 11:00 so we had time to eat, we even had dessert. Now, normally we would never eat at 10:00 at night but it was 6:00 our time. I had  the seafood casserole and Dale had the seafood crepe.

We got back to our room at 11:00. Dale is insisting that we stay up until at least 2:00 local time, which would be 10:00 our time. I guess after I complete this post we’ll finish our Scrabble game. Tomorrow we’ll get our rental car and start our maritime sightseeing. Dale is reading the brochures now.