Vancouver

07:00 walked across to T2, found check in, nobody waiting, onto security would have been through quicker if Karen’s boarding card had worked at the entry gate. After what seemed like 15 minutes down several escalators then up in a lift we found the lounge and helped ourselves to the breakfast buffet. Boarding went smoothly and push back was on schedule, then the usual 30 minute crawl till you get to the end of the runway to actually take off, then 9 hours Iater we landed in Vancouver. Long walk to arrivals then fortunately (required 2 attempts) the machine recognised my passport and associated it with all the pre entry information I had registered, took my picture and printed out a mostly empty piece of paper - date, picture and a number, I was number 6. That was the easy bit, long queue to see a real person looked at the picture on the paper, looked at me (mask off) and let me through to collect the cases. Then to the exit gate where another human took the piece of paper and after checking let us in. Probably about 20 of us from the flight were gathered together for the ride to the hotel in downtown Vancouver. Very slow journey due to traffic and the drivers apparent desire that we should experience every red traffic light en-route. Sheraton Wall in downtime Vancouver is where people were being collected together, lots more people from all across Europe, Karen estimates Germany to have provided the largest contingent. Finally found our documents, the group is divided into 3 groups for the flight to Nome. We are in there’d group. Which means be downstairs in hotel lobby at 03:30 for the first flight leaving at 07:00, I guess the benefit of the early start is the roads will be clear and we get settled on the ship first. (Apparently not at a dock in Nome, expect to get wet when being transferred in small boats to where the ship is Anchored. Today not been that well organised, our documents took a while to be found, at the covid test (15 minute queue) after the test you wait for result, another 15 minutes, so we went out to where some snacks and drinks were available and came back with drinks and a few minutes later some organiser complained that by doing this had broken some rule and potentially infected everyone (who incidentally we had been stood in a queue with) with covid, both our test were negative. Long wait for the room to be available, helped ourselves to more snacks and drinks, during which time Karen realised her nose had been bleeding all this time from the swabbing. Eventually a room, but no cases at 16:00 we went for a wander. Walked down to the coal harbour waterfront, walking around the convention centre and cruise ship quay looking across Stanley Park to the mountains north of Vancouver and watching the sea-planes landing and taking off in the harbour. Back to the hotel and yes our cases had finally turned up. Last job for today is set an alarm so we don’t oversleep our early start.Read more