Off to Vancouver Airport…Have Accommodation will Travel!
Our good friends Leslie and her husband Chris have kindly offered to take us to the ferry in their large truck. This is ideal for carrying our luggage and trikes. Thanks! We prefer to head over from Saltspring Island the night before as we don’t want to risk something going awry. We will stay at the Fairmont Hotel at the Airport and be onsite for our flight. Travelling with our trikes, we love the ease of getting to the airline’s check in with a short walk from our hotel. It took us years to realize what a bad idea it is try to save money by staying at hotels in Richmond and struggling with our heavy load with the shuttles. With the prices for hotels increasing in the past few years, we find that the price for the Fairmont is now not so bad.
Could this really be all of our stuff? It looks immense but it is only 2 trikes, 2 panniers each.
It was our good fortune, that upon check in at the Fairmont, we were given an upgrade. We were given a larger room with a view of the runway and the ocean. We really enjoyed watching the plane traffic from a wall of floor to ceiling windows in our room. We walked down to the airport and had dinner at the new White Spot…delicious and then off to bed. It is so quiet and comfortable here.
“It takes a village” to load our trikes in a taxi.
Our trikes are being taken to the inspection area before being released to the ground crew for loading on the plane. One of the many reasons we love JAL is the care they take with our bags and our trikes.
This JAL employee wore many hats today. She checked us in, then she and Barry dealt with our trikes for the Inspection and finally she drove us in the golf cart to security and then to our gate. It surprised us but she remembered us from a previous flight because of our strange looking trikes.
Barry and I had seats across the aisle from each other. My neighbour is Misata who had visited Vancouver. She works for JAL at Narita Airport. Really enjoyed visiting with her.
Neither of us love flying anymore. It is a means to an end. However, flying with JAL makes it as good as it can be. Nonetheless, it is exhausting and we really look forward to getting off. The next flight is a little over an hour taking us from Narita to Itami.
