Departure/Landing

6:30 am - too much beer! Rush round getting our gear together. 5 suitcases, 2
bike bags and hand luggage filled with paperwork.8:30 am Arrive airport. Get the most miserable check in desk. Charged £512 for
our excess baggage (twice what I estimated!). Haggling not an option.

I should have know better than to think that we'd get away with disappearing quietly. Doug's family and a good number of mine came to theairport - It felt like the Green Mile.
It's a great flight to Vancouver - you go towards Iceland, over Greenland, over the Hudson Bay but the best bit is when you start to descend over the Rockies, the view of lakes, peaks and valleys is ace and it looks like the plane is just skimming them. Then you get the view of Vancouver Downtown, Stanley Park, the Coastal mountains and the pacific.

12:30 PST land Vancouver 9 hours later. 13:30 Pick up bags and head for Immigration.

New photos taken for PR cards. Wait for our turn. Get talking to a man who is also emigrating from Blackburn.

15:00 Number comes up. Customs go through paperwork and stamp our goods to follow list. Took about 30 mins.
The realtors who found the apartment for us met us from the airport, helped us with our luggage to the appartment and bought us a welcome pack of food, maps etc to last us a day or so so that we didn't have to venture out to the shops which was nice of them.










Our apartment is in Lower Lonsdale, North Vancouver although pricey is really nice though - very clean and modern, all open plan. Great views of the mountains and Two Lions from the balcony; named so because that's what they look like.











19:00 quick lie down - but seeing as it is 3am uk time we are out like a light.