Manchester to Amsterdam
Despite a 6am alarm call, we were 20 minutes behind schedule when we set off to drive to Manchester airport at 7.20am, for our 9.15am flight to Amsterdam. I'd stumped up for Meet & Greet parking, which saved us a lot of time and hassle, given that we had three bags to check in, then another three cases including Lara's trunki as carry-on bags, Danny's change bag, a backpack carrier for him, his pushchair and my manbag with the electronic gadgets. Never mind we were all wearing our biggest coats and boots as well. There was quite a queue for check-in when we joined the back of the queue at 8am. The lady at the desk could move us around on the flight to Amsterdam to get us sitting together, but the Manchester software for seat booking for KLM is different from that one used in Amsterdam, so she couldn't change our seats on the main flight - the 10 hours between Amsterdam and Vancouver, we'd have to try and sort that during our 1 hour 40 minute stop there.
Getting through security for was a bit of mammoth task, we were endlessly loading things on to the conveyor, what with all the bags, coats, boots and the pram.
Then we were sat on the plane, not moving, for 40 minutes due to a "miscommunication" between Amsterdam and Manchester, which took us from "we'll be in Amsterdam early, we'll have plenty of time to do the seat faffing and make it to the gate" to "this could be a bit too close for comfort". In the end - maybe because it was Christmas Day, and we had small kids with us - we were all seated together for the long flight, in the best row for families; the bulkhead seats, with extra legroom and space for a small cot.
Amsterdam to Vancouver
We had three of the four seats, and briefly another mum arrived with a 13-month old girl (who loved pointing at Danny and shouting "Baby!"), but she was happy to move to two spare seats just before take-off, so we had the luxury of all four middle seats. Things were looking up...
This flight was delayed in taking off too when the pilot noticed a suspicious patch of fluid on the tarmac below the cockpit, once he'd pushed back a few metres. This meant we were towed to a maintenance area while it was made certain that the fluid was from a previous plane on that stand and not ours. Another 30 minute delay...
However, once we were airborne everything went really well. The cabin crew were excellent and couldn't be more helpful. Lara's loved her child's meals, especially the fact they were brought before our meals. They provided a jar of baby food for Danny, who over the course of three sittings, demolished it, and kept it down, so he seems to be over the worst of his poorly tummy. Lara was restless, but only half tried to sleep, and decided she would wait until we got to our hotel before she would sleep. There was a Scooby Do film on the On-Demand video service on the plane, so she put that on three times, watching different parts of it each time. Danny was more difficult to handle, but each time he was ready to sleep, he'd snatch 30 minutes or so, either on Olga, or on me if I walked him around the galley area at the back of the cabin. He did this 4 times over the first 7 hours of the flight, but at last, with 1 hour and 45 minutes to go of the 9 and a half hour flight, he fell deeply enough asleep that Olga could put him in the little cot the crew provided, and everyone had a rest and a chance to watch our films in peace. He never really screamed the place down during the whole flight, he grumbled loudly when he didn't get his own way, but he does fall asleep quite quickly when he's ready so long as either Olga is holding him, or I'm walking around and holding him (he doesn't like it if I sit with him!). There was no snow on the ground in Vancouver, it was all a bit cloudy and grey, and we landed about 30 minutes late, which would impact the next step..
Vancouver Immigration
Our next flight - to Calgary - was due to leave at 5pm local time, and we joined the queue at immigration (the "New Residents" queue, nonetheless!) about 3pm. We told the officer at the desk that we wanted to activate our visas, and we were told to collect our checked-in bags and head to the immigration office. Much like the deli counter in Asda, we were given a number and asked to wait to be called. It's 3.25pm by now, and boarding of our flight was due to start in an hour. We were 20th in the queue, made up mostly of Chinese families, and by 3.45 there hadn't been much progress, and the liklihood of us making our flight was getting more remote. Danny took this moment to be picky about his food, and refused to eat the jar of food we'd asked for on the plane - this one was different to the one he'd eaten earlier, it was lumpy and at the moment he's not good with lumps. So, about 4pm we decided I should go and subtly ask one of the officers if anything could be done to speed us through so we made our flight. His initial opinion was the we were unlikely to be processed in time, but rather than leaving it at that, and telling us that it's not really his problem, this guy checked on his mobile phone the times of the next WestJet flight to Calgary on Christmas Day, as I was worried that the 5pm one might be the last of the day. There was one at 7.15pm and another at 9.30pm. I mentioned at this point that we had no food for Danny (not entirely true, as we did have powered meals for him that require hot water, but we had no hot water), and expressed my concern about waiting for another 2 hours, and this seemed to pull at his heart strings. I'd been lucky and picked on the shift manager to talk to, and he looked about the room, and quietly asked me to gather all our bags up, and to meet him in 2 minutes at the exit to the baggage reclaim hall... all very cloak and dagger! We did so (gathering up all our bags and coats couldn't be done subtly, and I'm sure we got some dirty looks from the people left to wait in the queue, as it was clear that something I'd said had caused us to be processed more quickly. He took us to the customs area - that place where your bags can be searched just before you enter the arrivals hall - and asked one of his colleagues to process us quickly so we could make our flight.
That process took 10 minutes or so, during which time we chatted about our reasons for immigrating to Canada, and he couldn't believe we'd choose somewhere that we'd never visited, and what made us make that decision. I explained that part of the reason were the Canadian people, and his attitude towards us that afternoon, and the way he bent the rules to help us, just reinforced what we had been told. His opinion was that he would like to help everyone, but it wasn't possible, but that fact he'd helped us that afternoon made him happy. Not half as happy as it made us, as we got to the gate for our final flight just as they started boarding, now as official Permanent Residents of Canada. We'd only been in the country for 90 minutes.
Vancouver to Calgary
This flight wasn't even half full, but there were a surprising number of families with small children, given it was Christmas Day evening. It was the only flight for us that took off on time, at 5pm, and by which time I worked out we'd been on the go for 18 hours. Lara finally cracked, and fell asleep the moment we took off, and we practically had to carry her off the plane in Calgary. It was only an hour and a quarter flight, but the clocks changed again, so it was 7.30pm Calgary-time when we collected our bags for the last time. It took me a little time to get Olga's phone to work properly and call the hotel to find out when their shuttle bus would pick us up. We had to mill about for 45 minutes, so we wandered the arrivals hall, and found our first example of a Canadian legend - Tim Hortons:
It's a coffee shop chain, and we smiled that there was no queue at the Starbucks about 20 metres from where this photo was taken, but there was a queue for "Timmy's".
It was -23 deg C outside, so when the time came to go and wait for the shuttle bus, we got all the cold-weather gear on. It wasn't sooo cold that I was worry my lungs would freeze when I breathed, and you could tell it was this famous "dry cold", it was actually nice and refreshing, for the five or so minutes we stood around in it for:
We got checked into the hotel, dumped our bags and tried to decide if we were hungry. Olga and I definitely wanted a beer though, so we all went down to the hotel cafe and ordered some dinner. By the time we went back to the room to go to bed, it was 11pm and that meant we'd made it to the magical 24 hours mark without sleep.
Everyone was asleep until 2am, when Danny woke, and that woke the rest of us, and jetlag overcame exhaustion, as our bodies decided it was 9am really, so by 3am we were all awake and the technology came into it's own. I was on the netbook, Lara was watching a film on the eeePad, Danny was watching nursery rhymes on the nexus7 and Olga was surfing on her phone. By 5am we'd snatched a few minutes of sleep here and there, but the only way I could see any of us getting some sleep would be to get Danny into his pram and walk him around reception, so Olga and Lara could get some sleep. Danny did drop off for an hour, and the hotel put on free coffee and cake through the night in reception, so I had two cups and got this new blog underway.
I'll try to keep future posts shorter than this, but this was a busy day, and one I wanted to document.. There'll be more photos too on later posts.
