Awaking early at Aunt Dinah’s on Saturday morning, I grabbed a bowl of cereal and we hit the road around 5:15. Connie dropped us off and we went through the motions of checking our luggage. I inadvertently almost sent our luggage to Asia as there are two separate check-in counters…one for Asia and one for the rest of the world!
We had plenty of time left before the plane took off so we hit up Tim Horton’s and then headed for the plane. They started boarding as soon as we arrived so that was good timing on our part. We flew on a 767 and I must say that this is a high-tech plane. They had these interesting pod like seats in first class. Troy and I ended up in Row 21 and Nanny was a few rows back in Row 24. All was good in the flight until Troy’s video screen wouldn’t load up any movies so we ended up splitting a set of headphones between the two of us and watched “Shine a Light” which is the new Rolling Stones documentary by Martin Scorsece. It was pretty neat although it’s more of a concert than a documentary.
Let me not forget to mention how amazing it is to have your own video screen in front of you! I have always been stuck looking at video screen across the hall and watching the one movie they have on board. These personalized video screens allow choice to be at your finger tips! I could listen to satellite radio or any new albums that were out, I could watch a ton of TV shows (we even watched a good episode of Ali G after the movie), I could watch the news, tons of movies…it was great! I wanted to stay on the plane even longer!
After disembarking the plane we made a bee-line to the washroom. This is when the hilarity of the trip would start for us. Troy grabbed a urinal and I grabbed a urinal next to him. I unzipped and then said “Ah, my little friend” referring to the urinal that I’ve been dying to use. Troy gave me an incredulous look and then I realized that my comment could definitely be misconstrued and not be meaning the urinal! With shock and laughter I said “No, no I was talking about the urinal!” Meanwhile a gentleman who came into the washroom behind us scooted outside of the washroom after hearing my comment! Ha ha…this started the trip off right and Nanny had a good laugh when we told her the story.
Luckily, Uncle Richard’s estimation of when Mom and Dad would be getting of the cruise ship was wrong and we only had to wait 30 minutes for them to pick us up instead of the original timeline of 2 hours. We piled our luggage into the car (we still had to throw a suitcase on top of both Troy and I) and we headed for the ferry to get across to Vancouver Island. We were lucky and made it into the 11AM ferry with only a few cars to spare (otherwise we would have had to wait 2 hours and then spend another 1.5 on the ferry.) We grabbed a bite to eat and then sat on the deck. It is a great trip to Vancouver Island. It is difficult to peg the scenery here…I feel that it offers the best of both the East Coast water views along with the Northern elements of Quebec/Ontario. It is very beautiful. Many pictures were taken along the way.
Once we arrived into Sydney we met up with Uncle Brent and Ree who showed us the way home. Their house is in Sooke which is about 40 minutes outside of Victoria. It is a small town and their place is very secluded which is very nice. When I talk about it being secluded, I mean it in that you cannot see the neighbours and there is much forest around the property. There are also many deer sightings during the day which is amazing. I also love how their house is very cozy and I felt welcome there right away.
We met Ree’s daughter Jennifer who is a lovely woman training to be a hospice nurse and we also enjoyed a good meal of cabbage rolls. Afterwards into the night we ended up having a few beers and closed out the night playing guitar for a few hours and starting out what is hoping to be a good week of guitar playing.