Düsseldorf to Vancouver

Monday, 20 May

Up shortly after 6 and we were both ready long before the Reisebaron shuttle arrived at 9. Nice to have a relaxed time getting ready, but we both admitted it felt very odd to sit around for half an hour or so with nothing to do!

The shuttle arrived a few minutes late, but we made excellent time getting to the airport. Check-in took about 2 minutes. The line at security was quite long but moved along nicely. We stopped at the usual cafe for coffee and a snack.

Our flight to Amsterdam was delayed for nearly an hour. Once we landed, we really felt as if we had to go from end of the airport to the other. We should have had a three-hour layover, but because of the delay it was much shorter. We did stop for a bathroom break and to buy a bottle of water, and then were able to sit and wait about 10 minutes before boarding.

When I checked in online on Sunday, they said the flight to Vancouver was very full and that they would be glad to check in any hand luggage, for free. I decided to take advantage of that and took my little trolley as a carry on. And indeed, I was able to check it in from Düsseldorf on, which was quite nice.

Once again, the flight from Amsterdam was delayed nearly 45 minutes, but after boarding. Not what you want when you have a 9 hour flight ahead of you. The odd thing was that the flight was not overly full at all. Norbert and I had a row of three to ourselves, which was nice. 

 And seeing as how it was KLM, we were not surprised to see bikes on the plastic cups!

The flight went relatively quickly, either that or we are just getting used to it. I found it odd that the flight to Vancouver took the same amount of time as the flight to Atlanta. Despite the delay, we arrived at the scheduled time.

Landed in light rain in Vancouver. Immigration took about 3 minutes, as they have the automats and we were apparently the only flight. Didn't even have to wait that long for the luggage! Walked over to Alamo, and continued the trend of not having to wait at all. Our car is a Ford Escape – which is the same model as my Kuga! There are some minor differences but it is really 98% the same car as I drive every day.

As always we managed to make a wrong turn on our way to the apartment but we were able to save ourselves with relatively little trouble. It is a holiday in Canada, so there was fortunately no rush hour traffic.

Found the house quite easily. Our landlords live in the house, and we have the basement apartment. The stairs aren't that great but that is the only drawback. Very light, modern and obviously newly done. We are very happy with this apartment.

There is of course also a full bathroom and a lovely washer and dryer set.

We were much less happy with the Walmart. TINY! Even the parking lot was tiny! Argh! We really only looked at groceries and were surprised at the very narrow selection of items they had. We ended up eating potato chips for dinner because that is all we wanted. The flight times and changes meant that we ended up eating next to nothing all day.

Stayed awake until 9, then hit the bed.