Ireland day 0959. Tuesday 14 May 2024- To Vancouver

Today’s summary	Travelled via Air Canada from Dublin to Vancouver last via Toronto. An eventful journey. First we were trapped in the Casino grounds because the PIN code on the electronic gates had (unknown to us) been changed overnight. Then the flight for the first leg of our journey was delayed by 2 hours so we only managed to catch our connection to Vancouver with 2 minutes to spare. Straightforward once we left Toronto and were in our B&B in by about 7pm Vancouver time (3am Dublin). That glass of wine on the plane felt very well earned this evening!
Today’s weather	Pouring with rain when we left Dublin. Light easterly wind. Appx 12c. Vancouver sunny and dry.

Today’s overview location (The blue mark shows the location of our route)		Close-up location (The blue line shows where we walked) (No GPX today)

Commentary

(Summary blog only. Last full blog was Day 0368).

A long day today – but then we have travelled a third of the way round the world since I last updated this blog. We are in Vancouver now, at the start of a trip which is going to see us away from Ireland for the next few weeks.

It’s been quite an eventful day – which started when the alarm went off at 5 am to get us up and ready to catch the 6am 102 bus to the airport. It wasn’t the best of awakenings though – for one thing it was pouring with rain but more to the point we had received text messages overnight unhelpfully advising us that our departing flight from Dublin was delayed two hours.

If we had been on a direct flight to Vancouver, that wouldn’t have mattered so much. But from Dublin the direct flights don’t start until June so today we were travelling via Toronto. We had just over two hours to make the connection at Toronto airport, so with this delay I knew we would be cutting it a bit fine.

But we soon discovered that we had a more immediate problem to contend with. Given that we were going to be late in departing we had another cup of tea in bed and then gathered our things and headed off to catch the 102 bus. But as we tried to get out of the Casino by typing the PIN into the electronic gate, we discovered that it wouldn’t work. So we tried another gate and that didn’t work either. Another resident arrived and tried to get out but she similarly failed.

Eventually we escaped when someone drove up and managed to unlock the gate using the remote control unit from his car. He also told us that we “should” have received an email advising us that, overnight, the gate exit codes had all been changed. Well, evidently we hadn’t. By this stage we could see the 102 rumbling down the road towards us so we had to dash out and flag it down before it roared off to the airport and left us stranded in the rain at the roadside. Luckily the driver took pity on us and he pulled up and we hopped on.

So altogether not the most relaxing start to our trip. Anyway once at the airport we sped through security and given that we arrived at the airport late, we didn’t seem to have too long to wait for our flight.

Once we were onboard and managed to get airborne, the first leg of our journey was comfortable and straightforward. But as soon as we landed and mobile data connection was restored (at great expense!) a text message from Air Canada popped into our inboxes telling us that we had been “bumped” off the flight we were supposed to catch (presumably on the assumption that we would never make through immigration in time) and put onto one departing four hours later.

So rather disconsolately we meandered through immigration and customs and started to make our way to the gate where our new flight was due to leave from.

Just on the off chance, I glanced at the departure bord and noticed, to my surprise, that the original flight we were supposed to catch still hadn’t left – and wouldn’t in fact be leaving for another 20 minutes.

So we hot-footed it to the departure gate to see if we could get back on our original flight.

Well the flight gods of Toronto must have been smiling on us today as we were put on a standby list and when the remaining two passengers didn’t turn up, we were given the last two seats on a very full Airbus and set off to Vancouver more or less exactly on time. All possible, I should note, only because we are travelling with no checked bags. Another couple with hold baggage were denied boarding because their bags hadn’t been transferred over from the Dublin flight.

The rest of our journey was somewhat less stressful although the internal flight from Toronto to Vancouver was considerably less deluxe than the first stage from Dublin. But that glass of Prosecco did feel well earned – even if it did cost me the princely sum of nine dollars.

Anyway we were met at the airport by family, which was great, and now we are safely ensconced in our B&B in downtown Vancouver. Time to start planning our adventures for the next few days!

Today’s photos (click to enlarge)


According to the map on the seatback, we flew right over this structure in northern Quebec. It’s the remains of a meteoritic impact crater, former 214 million years ago. It’s about 100km across	From the time our wheels touched down to the time the wheels on our second flight left the ground, we were in Toronto Airport for all of 45 minutes. Possibly the fastest transit ever

Always a bit alarming when the man in the orange jacket gets onto your plane and starts adjusting the floor with a screwdriver	Outside our home for the next few days in downtown Vancouver



By the time we made it into the air for our second flight, this felt well deserved