And now the end is near….
The alarm went off at 7am and we were straight up and getting organised before going down for breakfast. By 8.45am we were all packed and ready to go. We hadn’t finalised how we were going to get to the airport which was some 15 miles south of Seattle.
My preferred route was to walk for 20 minutes and then catch the airport train. This was also the cheapest by a long margin, but Karen was not happy at the prospect of wheeling her cases through the streets in the heat. If she had her way then we would have ordered a private limo to take us straight to the plane door. Needless to say I had to find a compromise. I had been monitoring Uber since we got up and the dynamic pricing model was all over the place. Then suddenly it dropped by 50% and so I booked it as a price that was cheaper than a shared airport shuttle bus. After our disaster the night before Karen was nervous about this option, but this time the driver turned up on time at the hotel door.
The ride was straightforward and we were soon at the Virgin check in desk waiting for them to open. It was only a short wait and we soon dropped our bags and went through Security. After getting Karens final Starbucks of the trip we took the train to the correct set of gates. We passed the time waiting for the flight by grabbing some average airport food.
Boarding the plane went smoothly and we were soon settling into our Premium Economy seats with the complimentary Champagne. The seats were very good with loads of room and worth the extra air miles we used to pay for them. Again we were impressed with Virgin Atlantic.
I watched a couple of films (Game Night – just an average plane film & We are the Millers – which amused me a lot). Karen watched the box set of Picnic at Hanging Rock. After the first film and meal I fell asleep but only managed about 2 ½ hours.
We landed about 20 minutes early and breezed through passport control in under 2 minutes. The queue for non EU people looked to be about 2 hour long though. We were so quick that we had a bit of a wait for the luggage to start coming off. After this we met Sunny outside who returned our car to us and just over a hour from touch down we were on the car journey home. The journey was not pleasant due to traffic and roadworks. The Sat Nav kept rerouting us and we ended up heading up through St Albans and then Cambridge and it took us 3 hours.
It was nice to finally get home, even if we were tired and tetchy and we were straight into the unpacking. We nipped out to the Drayton Red Lion for a carvery for lunch before I had a couple of hours sleep in the afternoon. I then made it to Carrow Road for the match that night proving that the team needed my cheering to inspire them to their first victory of the season.
So that was it, trip over. We had a great time. We saw so much and did so much. The views were at times stunning, just a shame about the smoke haze as we went further on. We travelled by plane, train, ship, car, gondolas, chairlift, bus, Ice Explorer, luge and pipe coaster. We met loads of interesting people (and some less so). We both really like Canada and it reminded us in many ways of New Zealand. It did feel though we got back to civilisation across the border into the USA. I think the end of the trip proved to us that on these types of trip we prefer the National Park type of places rather than big Cities which are just too anonymous. I am not sure exactly how far we drove but believe it was almost 2000 miles. I think in total we walked about 150 miles. My favourite moment was Moraine Lake whereas Karen’s was the drinks we had on top of Whistler Mountain. We took 561 photos (many of which I will delete). We spent far too much go the boys inheritance. Canada – Thank you for your hospitality.
Until next time…..
