by We have arrived….well we actually have been here since lunch and I’m wiped! Quite possibly due to the fact I only had 4 hours of sleep – found a good Steven King movie on TV and well before I knew it the witching hour had arrived. Regardless – 5 am arrived and I bounced up out of bed ready to Rock & Roll. Chloe went to bed around the same time – had to get all the cuddles in with her beau that she could – she set her alarm for 4:30am so she could shower….did that happen – nope!
We left Grande Prairie with a quick stop in Edmonton then landed in Calgary where we had to change plans, retrieve our luggage, clear customs and find our gate…which is fairly easy to achieve if you have a good quality of time….of which we did not! We walked briskly to an area which seemed on the other side of the airport to a line that stretched forever. With only one rather-crotchety, white cowboy hat wearing fellow who had to check each and every customs form & passport. Took us probably 20 minutes to get through line #1. Once past there we got into line #2 – this was considerable longer line – it snaked back & forth and there were probably more than 100 people ahead of us!! We were there for at least a half an hour – by this time I was beginning to sweat reaLizing this was only the customs part and we still had to find & go through security. Had a great conversation with an older couple behind us from California – they had travelled through France & Germany carrying 2 bottles of wine and a cork screw as carry on luggage – not until the USA did they have it confiscated.
We finally made it through this line – I was eyeballing other people’s luggage tags to see if anyone else was flying on our flight and felt somewhat reassured when others started panicking out loud about missing the flight. While in this line I witnessed a lady more organized than me – she had all. Her paper work in a plastic folder well was she really more organized than me…..mine was binder clipped in order of cities and tucked in my backpack – hahaha.
Onto line #3 – security we were preparing for our turn – Chloe removed her belt and had her laptop ready to pull out. I removed my shoes (not a rose scented smell emitting from them) and had all the passports & boarding passes ready for quick viewing. You know they pull every so many people aside for the pat down or full scan and I’m saying the serenity prayer the whole time. By this time our plane is either 10 minutes in the air or being held for us. I see the Westjet lady come through and start pulling passengers and taking them to the front of the line so I know we are not stuck in an airport…yet. Thank you to whoever was watching over us weflew through security, put our shoes on, grabbed everything and began the run.
Just as we rounded the corner to show our boarding passes they called ‘passenger Smith, party of 2’. Now the step onto the plane goes something like this – we run down the hallway get to the plane, the stewardesses smile and then we step in front of them….the plane full of passengers who are all staring back wondering why we have held the plane up by 20 minutes…..do you know what it feels like having about 200 eyeballs looking at you….a bit unnerving – should have sent Chloe in first – haha.
Its 730pm here now – already getting dark. We have gorged ourselves on food – taken a walk along the wharf – found some HUGE jelly fish and watched some San Diego 5-0 doing their job -fields sobriety test on some skateboarders – aerie weren’t young kids but almost 30 something’s. Who we later watched fishing at another spot and landed a baby sting ray which was kinda cool. Tomorrow we are headed down town to tour the USS Midway – which was the world’s largest aircraft carrier for 10 years – should be very cool thenwe’ll do some shopping at the Seaport Village and check out the Gas Lamp section.
I’ve been keeping notes on some interesting sights to blog about later….like ‘Are all Asian people whizzes on computers?’
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Ciao, Shannon & Chloe