I stayed at a Holiday Inn Express last night......

So yesterday, we went to the airport for our 1:30pm flight out of Kahalui to find huge line-ups of unhappy, disgruntled people. The boys and I got all our luggage together and got a spot in line while John went and returned the rental car. By the time he got back, the line hadn't budged one spot. It was crazy, so John went to make a few phone calls and when he got back we remember his Platinum Aeroplan AMEX card!! Which gives us access to the business class line. So the boys and I stayed in our current position while John went to the business class line to wait, it looked incredibly long too. But while we moved about 5 people, John got to the beginning of his line, so much to the chagrin of everyone else in the line, we jumped in with John and made it through in know time. They had already delayed the flight again to 2:45pm, but had to make it even later because they couldn't get everyone checked-in in time.

Air Canada is really unbelievable. You would think that they might have brought in one or two extra staff for their mistake! But no, they didn't, they let 3 agents check-in the whole plane. They added a fourth briefly but then she must have had to go on her break. And as we were sitting at the gate, one of the flight attendants went around telling everyone that there would be no fresh food on the flight and that there was already limited items, so not enough for everyone. I appreciate that she took the time to do that, because at least then we had sometime to get some snacks to bring with us.

We finally took off around 3:30 or so and the flight was good, it actually went quite quickly, just over 5 hours. 

Then we landed in Vancouver. 

We got our luggage and then they announced that they were giving out hotel vouchers for people who had to spend the night in Vancouver. We didn't know that they were going to do this, so we had already booked 2 rooms at the Holiday Inn Express. They hadn't made this announcement until after we already had our luggage, but I decided to go wait in line and see if the voucher would be good for our hotel. After close to a 30 minute wait, we were told that they had Holiday Inn vouchers but they weren't sure if they would work at the Holiday Inn Express. We took two anyways and decided to try our luck. When I booked the hotel, I made sure that they had a 24-hour shuttle service, so we weren't worried about getting there.

It was close to midnight at this time and we hadn't had a meal since breakfast, so we looked around the airport for somewhere to eat, as the hotel probably wouldn't have anywhere. We found a Burger King and ate some food there. Once we were done we went to look for the shuttle. We found a phone to call for it, and the guy on the other end told us that their 24-hour shuttle means after midnight take a taxi and we'll reimburse you. John was livid, he swore a little and told the guy that we had 10 bags including golf clubs and it would probably take us 3 taxis to get there. Anyways to make a long story short, the shuttle driver came and got us, and we tipped him very well because of it.

The hotel was pretty nice, but they didn't take the vouchers. We didn't get to sleep until probably 2:30am or so, but we slept in until 10, so that was okay. So we all got up and ready and headed back to the airport. 

Here was the view out our hotel window:

We had no problems with our flight to Calgary. We checked in quickly, with an extremely nice agent, went through security quickly, and then the flight left really close to it's scheduled 2:00pm. And I can't even tell you how good it is to be home. I don't even mind the cold, although it is not even near how cold it was while we were gone.

I am so happy to be sleeping in my own bed and cuddling my little dog. So I will enjoy it for a few days and then we are off to Vegas!