Calgary and Banff – Day 6 can be found here.
I’ve long believed that travelling east to west is easier than going west to east. Those of you who have done trips from North America to Europe may agree with me – losing hours is difficult, as you must either go to bed before you’re actually tired or try to stay up a full extra day before crashing out. Neither is particularly easy.
(More recently, we’ve taken to handling early morning landings by booking a hotel room for the previous night. This way we can crash out immediately after arriving from the airport – we might only sleep an extra 2 or 3 hours, but it’s enough to take the sting out.)
You’d think that our current flight – a mere 2 hour time zone change – would be easier. Not so this time around, as we were up at 3:45 am to catch our flight to Toronto.
Thankfully, the kids are veteran travellers so we were able to let them sleep until 4 am before hauling them out of bed, stuffing toast in their mouths and driving off at 4:15 am.
No traffic this morning, so we got to the airport in record time. We also had the foresight to pre-buy a tank of gas from Avis – so no need to stop somewhere close to fill up. Finding gas stations that are open before 6am can be a headache.
Plus, we had our Nexus cards ready to go – which meant we could go through the special security that doesn’t require you to take out liquids, electronics, etc..
And this is where I made a colossal mistake.
The night before, my wife had very helpfully suggested that I put my toiletry case in the kids’ checked bag – this would help balance out the weight. I instead put my toiletry case in the kids’ carry-on bag – which we also expected to check, but not until we got to the gate.
In any case, this resulted in my sleep-addled brain putting my razor blades and large sunscreen bottles into the carry on luggage by accident – which were promptly flagged by security.
The process of flagging the bag, searching it, removing the razors and sunscreen and putting it back together only took 5 minutes, but it felt like an eternity.
All this to say that you can never really let your guard down, no matter how many trips you take. It only takes a moment’s carelessness to cause massive complications.
Fortunately, I had the world’s kindest security agent going through my bag. I can’t imagine what that would’ve been like if there had been a real jerk at the other side of the counter.
With my carry-on bag now razor and sunscreen free, we briefly debated whether we would head to the lounge or stop at the nearby Chilli’s instead. Chilli’s won out, and we had a lovely breakfast featuring a copious amount of coffee:
With the memory of our previous flight still fresh in our minds, we then went off to gate check one of our carry-on bags. By doing so, we were going to move from Zone 5 to Zone 3 in boarding thereby (hopefully) allowing us to find overhead bin space for our last remaining bag.
Zone 3 was soon called, and the line behind us was massive – though the line in front of us moved exceptionally quickly, thanks largely to a gate attendant who refused to let anyone from Zone 4 or 5 board early.
We needn’t have worried about the overhead bin space, however – thankfully, we were on a much newer and more comfortable plane than the one we flew down on, so there was ample room for everyone’s luggage.
(We’re still glad we checked that extra carry-on bag, however, as we had no desire to be left hunting hither and yon for somewhere to cram one last bag.)
We then settled ourselves into our seats for an uneventful flight. They did run out of pizza by the time they reached us in row 24, but I was able to get the sliders instead.
They were fine, but the pizza is better.
One change to inflight entertainment is the addition of a ‘tail cam’ through which you can watch the plane fly and its surroundings while in flight. I also watched it as the plane landed.
I would not recommend – particularly if the plane needs to ‘crab walk’ in due to a strong wind.
We landed around three and a half hours later, promptly collected our bags and then headed off to collect our car from long term parking. Then we headed home – making it back in time for a late dinner, and a welcome early bedtime.
Thanks for joining us on our trip to Calgary and Banff, and stay tuned for future posts as we continue to catch up on past travels – and as we get ready to head on our next trip to Sir Sam’s Ski / Ride in December, and then on for an epic adventure to Chile / Falklands / South Georgia / Antarctica / South Atlantic / South Africa / Namibia / Zimbabwe / New York in February to May 2025.