Canadian Holiday Day 1 : Monday Sept 8th
Up reasonably early to finish off the last-minute packing. Our little dog had left to go on her holiday the previous week (the dog-sitter was on holiday, and had taken Jenny with her!). To get to Heathrow Airport, rather than leave VERY early and go by rail and coach, we had arranged for a door-to-door executive car; so we were duly collected, driven to Heathrow, and deposited right outside the terminal building.
Check-in formalities and security checks were MUCH less than we’d been led to expect, and we took off on time. The Air Canada flight took us right up the middle of the UK, and the visibility fairly clear, so from our window seats we saw several areas we knew, then the north-west corner of Scotland, and a glimpse of the Orkney Islands. The next land we saw was Greenland, and we say the legendary “Greenland’s Icy Mountains” – black rocks jutting out of wide expanses of snow and ice; but the most striking sight was of a glacier crumbling into the sea. We saw no land over Greenland, only white and black rocks.
The rest of the flight seemed very long, with relatively little to see other than water, land and small lakes – until we were almost at Calgary, and came down through the cloud layer to see prairie. We landed in rain, which continued for the rest of the day.
On landing, we hit a slight problem – Canada was recovering from SARS problems, and we were asked to sign declarations that we had no coughs or colds; as Bernard had a cough, he had to have his temperature taken before we were allowed in! Next we found the rental car office, and asked for our booked “compact 4-door group B saloon”, to which the clerk told us we had been upgraded – to a Mustang GT; Katie was on the point of turning it down, when (she says) she saw Bernard’s face, and realised that she didn’t want to see a grown man cry – so we went and found our red “hot” car. The young couple before us in the queue had had a similar upgrade (theirs was bright yellow), and were standing round the car wondering if they dared open the doors. Thankfully, all our baggage fitted into the boot, and we set off into Calgary.
Apart from the rain, the drive was OK, until we hit the downtown area (city centre) in rush-hour; the clerk at the car rental company had marked our route to the hotel, so after negotiating one-way streets we found ourselves right outside the hotel door … but on the wrong side of the road! We had to do quite a detour and go round the system again before finding ourselves on the right side of the road, half-an-hour later; we didn’t make that mistake again! There was an entrance to the hotel’s car-park, but we couldn’t work out how to get the door to open – no push-button or anything; so Katie got out and went in to reception, and the answer was – to drive forward, and the doors would open automatically. As the road sloped downwards at quite an angle, this took a certain amount of courage, but it worked, and the rest of check-in was straightforward.
We had arranged to meet Katie’s nephew Stephen Smith for the evening; he came to the hotel at about 7pm (or 2am UK time!), and we went out for a short walk along the river bank and to find an Italian restaurant Stephen knew of. It was really good to see him – he had been in Canada for 2-3 months, but had not settled as well as he’d hoped, and it was good to chat to him. I don’t think we were sparkling company though, and by mid-evening we were glad to get back to the hotel and to bed.