As is often the case before a trip, I slept in stops and starts. However, thankfully I always fell back asleep very quickly. At 05:00, I knew that I was done. I played my game on my iPad for a while. When the alarm went off, I had a quick shower. While Graham used the bathroom, I got dressed and packed the few odds and ends that I had out. Then we headed out.
There was nobody waiting at the front desk and soon we were on our way to the terminal. We just had to cross the road and we were there. The lifts in the terminal were out of order. Considering on how much money they spent on this terminal, this beggars belief. We had to use the lifts of the parking structure.
When got to the check in area, I found out that the check in had opened at 5:50. Everything I managed to find ahead of time indicated that British Airways only opens the check in two hours before departure. Had I known that the check in opened at 05:50, we would have been there earlier. Still, all worked out. The line was not too bad and even with technical issues and them letting the earlier flight jump ahead, we were through in less than 30 minutes. My suitcase was exactly 23kg and Graham’s suitcase was less than that.
As this was the first time flying out of terminal 2 since every single airline apart from Ryanair had moved there, I purchased FastTrack tickets. We were directed straight to an empty position. Neither of our bags took a detour. However, I set off the scanner even though I had made sure that there was absolutely nothing metal anywhere on my clothes. They have a newfangled scanner for shoes that you just step on with one foot at the time. Once I had two green ticks, I was free to go.
Even with checking in later than we could have done, we still had plenty of time to get some breakfast. We headed to San Carlo. The menu had changed since the last time we had breakfast there, but there was plenty on there to tempt us. Graham had an Americano and some orange juice as well as Italian poached egg with basil hollandaise on sourdough toast with roasted cherry tomatoes. I had a flat white and a classic frittata with pancetta, mushrooms, and pecorino with roasted cherry tomatoes. I had imagined this to be something different. I ended up with an omelette, but it was the best omelette I ever had.
As soon as we finished our breakfast, I noticed that our gate was listed. We headed over there. They had actually announced the gate quite early for a change. We sat down. I noticed on the app that our second flight had been delayed by a couple of hours. This did not exactly fill me with joy, but there was nothing I could do about it.
The first flight from Manchester to London worked like clockwork. We left on time. We taxied past an Emirates plane. the flight was smooth. I read my book during the short flight. We were each given a bottle of water and a flapjack. Graham had his, but I took mine with me as I was still full from breakfast. We landed slightly ahead of schedule. On the outbound, we did not have to clear security at London Heathrow but just had to scan our boarding passes and had our photos taken. Then we found somewhere to sit.
We both read for a while. At some stage I noticed that I had left my multi charging cable at the hotel. I went to see if I could find another one, but I was out of luck. I headed back to join Graham and continued reading.
Around midday, we both started to feel hungry. I had spotted a Wagamama on the airport website. This sounded good to both of us. Sadly, when we got there, we found it closed and boarded up. I went to look for alternatives. I found another Japanese restaurant nearby as well as something called Gordon Ramsay Plane Food Market. We don’t go for the whole celebrity chef thing, but in 2024, we had found a restaurant called Gordon Ramsay Street Burgers in London. The prices were not crazy and the burgers were excellent. Gordon Ramsay Plane Food Market combined the menu from this as well as other casual concepts under the Gordon Ramsay umbrella. This looked good to me. I quickly popped into WH Smith where I got a charging cable that plugs into a standard USB socket and then went back to Graham. I told him what the options were, and he opted for Gordon Ramsay Plane Food Market. I agreed with his choice.
The restaurant did not look like much from the front, but it had a huge dining area. We were seated and were given the menu. Graham Lipton lemon iced tea and Gordon’s Combo which consisted of fried cod, fried chicken, fried shrimp, with chips, southwestern ranch, and mayonnaise. I had homemade lemonade. I also had the chicken combo which consisted of fried chicken, chips, southwestern ranch, and sriracha aioli. Everything was delicious. We both had an Americano to round things off.
After lunch, we headed back downstairs. There had been a departure board near our table in the restaurant. All transatlantic flights seemed to depart from the C gates. We found a seat near to where the access to the train to the B and C was. We had not been sitting for very long when I had a notification on the app with our gate number. Our gate was indeed one of the C gates. We headed over there. When we had last flown from London Heathrow in 2024, there was very little in terms of facilities at the C gates. This had now changed. They have added a Starbucks. We headed straight to the gate. There was a charging station right by our gate. I made use of this. While I got my gadgets plugged in, I missed one of our A380s taxiing past. I did however see another one land before it was our time to board.
They called us for boarding quite early. I was surprised about this as I could not actually see an aircraft at the gate. However, I could see that the inbound flight had landed a while ago. Things soon became clear. Our gate had two airbridges attached to it. One was right by the gate. The second one was the longest airbridge I ever encountered. Our plane was attached to the second airbridge. Suddenly the early boarding time made sense. Still, even with the distance involved, boarding was completed in record time. This was just as well as we had quite a distance to taxi to the runway and there were plenty of planes ahead of us. Nevertheless, we were due to land in Vancouver slightly ahead of the revised schedule.
Once we were at cruising altitude, they offered a drinks service. Graham had a class of Sauvignon Blanc, which he said was horrible. I had a gin and tonic. I felt thoroughly spoiled. Not only did they serve Tanqueray gin and Fevertree tonic, but I was also given double rations. I had one and kept the second for later. I had checked out the entertainment offerings while we were taxiing for take-off and had created a list of favourites. I started with one of my favourites, Crazy Rich Asians. I will never grow tired of this movie. I was about halfway through the movie when they came round with lunch. The option for lunch was either Chicken Tikka or tomato pasta. The Chicken Tikka smelled absolutely amazing. Sadly, I was still stuffed from lunch. I passed on dinner and Graham did, too. We did however have some coffee when they came round with hot drinks.
Once I had finished watching Crazy Rich Asians, I put on The Greatest Showman. I did not get very far with this as I fell asleep. I got woken up by some pretty impressive turbulence. I checked where we were. We were flying over Greenland. After a while, I could feel that they aircraft was climbing and things settled down. I curled up on Graham’s shoulder and went back to sleep. The next time I would up, we were about two hours from Vancouver. We had some rather gorgeous views over the Canadian Rockies. I went to the bathroom and then I decided to play some Trivial Pursuit.
With about 90 minutes to go, the cabin crew came around with drinks and a snack. We both had orange juice and coffee. We also had both a cheese and onion roll. I was excited when I saw the brand. It was Higgidy. I had a few of their products as part of a meal deal over the years and have always enjoyed them. I also love the combination of cheese and onion. Well, this was truly horrible.
There was still some very pretty scenery, and I alternated looking at this and finishing my game of Trivial Pursuit. Soon we started our descent into Vancouver. Once we have safely landed, I switched my phone back on, but I did not get a signal until I reached the terminal. As we were supposed to land in the middle of rush hour, I had figured it would be sensible to book a transfer. As soon as I had a signal, I spotted a message from our driver who wanted to check if we had landed. I messaged him an update. He asked me to message him again once we were through immigration.
We had quite a long walk from the aircraft to immigration. There were plenty of kiosks and everything worked like clockwork. There was no line at the desk where we had our immigration tickets checked. I messaged our driver again and he asked me to let him know once we had the luggage. That did not take long either as our suitcases arrived on the luggage belt the same time, we did. There was a bit of a line for customs, but that moved very quickly. Our driver told us to head for a specific Uber pick up zone and asked me to let him know once we were there. He was in a holding car park, but was there less than five minutes later.
We had a nice clear run to Burnaby. It turned out that the driver had gone to university in the UK and had lived in Preston, which is not far from us. Once he graduated, family encouraged him to come to Vancouver. We had a nice chat. It took just over 30 minutes to get from the airport to the hotel.
We had stayed in Burnaby in 2024 and found that we rather liked this. Hotel prices in Vancouver are insane. Burnaby is a much better bet and is linked to downtown Vancouver by Skytrain. When I looked at hotels in Vancouver, I found a really good rate at a Best Western Plus in Burnaby. Better still, it included breakfast. It was also quite close to a Skytrain station. When we arrived at the hotel, check in was very smooth. We were given directions to our room, and she also pointed out where breakfast would be.
The hotel was nothing fancy. It consisted of a number of low-rise motel buildings. It had an onsite Chinese restaurant, a guest laundry and an outdoor pool which had not opened for the season yet. Our room was in a quiet building near the pool. The room was big with a huge and very comfortable bed. There were also plenty of sockets plus some USB sockets for charging my gadgets. The only thing I was not overly keen on was that the shower was over a bathtub. However, thankfully the shower was not slippery. We quickly freshened up; I put my gadgets on charge and then we decided to call it a night. Graham was asleep as soon as his head hit the pillow. I read a couple of pages and then I was ready for some sleep, too.
Dolphingirl’s Travels 
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