Vancouver and home

 We dock in Vancouver the next morning and have plenty of time to

have breakfast, go back to the room and then get our stuff out, exit the ship to go walk around the battery with shops around the bay.  We read about the history of Vancouver and go in a few shops and waste time before our float plane ride.  We find a great place to have lunch and Oscar again gets pizza and his usual things.  It’s okay, he can order off the menu in most places now and I’m fine with that.  At least I don’t have to bring snacks everywhere for him now.  In fact, most of the snacks we bought and brought with us have not been used, so I guess those days are

behind me now.  We head out to check in for our flight and check our luggage in with the little airport that has little float plane flights to Seattle, Portland etc near here.  We finally head out the the plane with our pilot and he says that Oscar can be his copilot.  So, he gets a headset and to sit up front with the pilot to see how everything works.  He is beyond excited and gets the best view of anyone in the plane.  We take big plane flights.  I know I’ve done this kind of flying before, sight seeing flying some time in my life, but not often.  I forget how well you can see

everything when you’re flying low.  It’s so awesome to see the land, the trees, the water so close, but a great aerial view.  We fly over some beautiful, huge houses and see the great port of Vancouver from a different perspective.  This turns out to be a great add on to our trip because Oscar now thinks that he wants to learn to fly before he learns to drive and will fly us all out to Bimini, Bahamas in his float plane.  We usually vacation somewhere near water, but only the Bahamas and Alaska have seemed to have so many float planes that they seem like a must have in the future for him.  That would be awesome and I’ll encourage him on that

goal because with the amount of travel we do, a pilot in the family would be helpful.  We get an uber after getting the luggage and head out to our Airbnb out by the airport.  The airport is no where near the port of course and we get to see a lot of the city as we go through most of it.  Wow, it’s big and busy and I’m so glad that we didn’t even attempt to do it justice.  You would need at least a week here to properly see Vancouver I think.  We check in to the worst airbnb we’ve ever stayed at….I mean even the hunting cabin in Georgia that Oscar called a stable was better.  It’s not unclean, it’s enough for us, I don’t know what made me so unhappy about it.  I guess the price with the little bit that we got for

that.  The hosts were nice and would have breakfast in bags for us when we left at 3:30 am.  It was just hard to get to sleep, get food there.  But, we tried to go to bed at 6pm at night in order to be somewhat rested for the flight.  It was excrutiating with John leaving his C-Pap packed for a quick getaway in the morning, Oscar not wanting to go to sleep.  We finally get several hours of sleep and our scheduled Uber arrives in time to take us to the airport to find out that everything at the airport is not open yet.  Our airline’s desk is not open, security is not open yet, it’s a wait and see game after trying to get there so early.  We are able

to eat some of our breakfast and get through security, hang out in front of our plane’s departure gate.  Our first flight home is underway and we get to watch the sunrise over Vancouver as we fly away and to Calgary.  We’ve never explored the western part of Canada, not even really the eastern part enough, so we have to return to just explore this country some time.  We land in time to walk straight to our next flight in the international part and get on to Atlanta.  We have a ton of time in Atlanta and waste time all over Hartsfield, but should have sent John to finish his Global Entry membership while we had 7 hours here.  There’s no

earlier flight to GR, so we spend the day in Hartsfield and get home at about 1am eastern time.  Luckily, we’re all still on Pacific Coast time and can make it home in the car before crashing at home.  Thankfully, we arrive home on Saturday night before having to go to school and work on Monday.  So, we get Sunday to recover.  

An addition to this trip.  Oscar gets to go to school one day on Monday before saying that his throat is sore on Tuesday.  We just traveled and even though we masked up and were negative at the time we got on the boat, he got COVID on the trip.  So, he gets to miss another 5 days of school before getting to return after Labor Day.  So, we’re probably already the family on the truancy officer’s list.