Day 1 Barcenlona November 20, 2013

The countdown finally came to the end. We booked this cruise way back in December 2012. On Tuesday morning, we got ready for our flights to Barcelona, Spain. It was a fine morning in Ottawa, sunny but a little chilly of 1C with windchill.  We got to the airport at around 10:45 and check in was smooth. Delta airline is really good, took us on time to Detroit. It was our first time in Detroit airport, the design is quite like the Chicago airport, but the tunnel is much nicer in Detroit and looks like this terminal is pretty new. Our flight departed on time again in Detroit to Amsterdam. It was a 7 hours flight with dinner and breakfast. I didn't sleep too well, guess it was because we were flying out in the afternoon and early evening. It also didn't help that the light was quite bright. We finally landed in Amsterdam airport and by this time I was super tired. However, we had to go through immigration and security at Amsterdam. The security was quite stupid in Amsterdam, they made us take out ALL electronics including the wires! The other stupid thing was that KLM didn't let us take our carryon luggage with us. Their excuse was that the flight was pretty full and only one piece of carry-on allowed per person. But I only have my small backpack and the carryon, how big is that?! My impression of Amsterdam was not that great at this point but I did get a key chain with Holland clog.

We finally arrived in Barcelona at around 10:15am, but we were so sleepy that we didn't want to get off the plane. The luggages came out relatively quick, then we took a cab to the port. Check in at the port was quick. Rather than getting to the ship, we walked to La Rumba for lunch. The walk was about 30 minutes one way. We 'd been to Barcelona back in 2010 and we didn't walk from the port side and it was very crowded last time.

This time we walked from the port side and we saw some stuff we didn't see last time. But our first stop was our favour place for Iberia ham (jamon), Viena. We stopped for sandwich and coffee. Then we stopped by the nearby supermarket for a bottle of Rioja and walked a little bit down the market where they have Iberia ham, fruits stand etc.

After our adventure in La Rumba, we walked back to our ship. We checked out the ship a little bit, got our wine package, checked out the laundry room. But, We were really tired, so we napped for an hour before the Munster drill and then dinner at Toscana (yes we got Toscana for the first night)Dinner was good as always and we also watched the opening show tonight, Magic. It was a good show, although we'd seen some of the tricks with another magician with another cruise ship before, guess they learnt from the same master!

We just went to bed after the show to catch some sleep and get over jet lag.

Vacation 2010 - First cruise - Day 1 Miami

Miami, originally uploaded by pottery-girl.

We managed to get up early to hit some balls at T-to-Green before we headed to the airport. We went to check in and security quite easily in Ottawa and we even had time for lunch at Tim Hortons. We arrived at our gate around 11:30 and still had time to shop around. When it was 15 mins before our departure time to Toronto, we learned that our flight was delayed due to the inbound service. It wasn't really a hugh delay, I think we were delayed for about 15 mins or so. We arrived to Toronto at around 1:15 or so. We had to get our checked in luggage and went through American custom. It didn't take too long for lugguqge and going through custom. However, going through security was quite painful. Not only we had to go through a scanner, the security officers had to take our luggages apart. They checked every single little thing, I was worried that I couldn't put everything back together. The good thing was that security wasn't too busy today as it only took us about 10 minutes to get through even with all the searching. And we still had to wait for next flight for an hour and half. The flight was delayed by a little bit again, but it didn't bother me much as soon as I heard that it's 23 degrees in Miami! Vacation in March is really just around the corner in just 3 hours away!

The first officer announced that we are 25 minutes (40miles) away from South Beach and it will be a short taxi ride to gate. I was getting very excited and I was about to take off my fleece! In the meantime, I will get back to my sim☺

It was not too warm in Miami when we arrived, it was 18 degrees. Our hotel is not too close to downtown Miami, it was $40 cab ride to get there. It's sort of far and there is nothing near by, but just for one night, it was good enough. We went into our room, Egret 417. It's a pretty big room with a king size bed. Since, there isn't anything near by, we decided to have dinner at the hotel's restaurant. I ordered a Quesadilla and Richie ordered a sliders (American kobe beef burger). They were both quite good especially the Kobe beef. They also have wifi at the restaurant, so it was a great choice! The first day of vacation seems to be quite nice, looking forward to see Miami in day light. We will be greeted by the complimentary hotel breakfast.

Hawaii Trip - Day 1 (November 26, 2008)

It was about 1 degree Celsius and chance of rain/flurries mix on this Wednesday morning. We woke up at 6am to catch our 9am flight to Toronto. Our friend, Stephen showed up at our door steps at 7:15am and we hit the road. We got into the usual rush hour traffic on Woodroffe and Fallowfield, but by 8am we were at the airport. The check-in and security check went smoothly and we had lots of time to spare, we even shopped a bit too! We finally got on our first flight of the day to Toronto, however, due to the just above freezing temperature, our plane had to use the de-icing system. Of course, our flight was delayed a bit. Since we only had just over an hour and a bit time to catch our next flight to Vancouver, we were rushing a bit. We were really worried about our check-in luggage.... By the end we got to the gate, we found out that the Vancouver was also delayed for about 15 minutes or so, and when we got there they hadn't even started boarding anyone. Then, we felt much better.

After a long flight (close to 5 hours), we had arrived to Vancouver. The Vancouver airport is under renovation and it was kind of confusing for us to find the US transfer (also for our luggage to find US transfer...story to follow). We finally found it at the end and we were very lucky that it wasn't busy at all at the US custom. Once we had gone through US custom, we were supposed to pick up our luggage for the transfer. We must have waited over an hour and there was still no sign of our luggage. We got really worried as we would be flying out to the Big Island the next day, we wouldn't want to have no clean clothes and no snorkeling gears with us. Anyway, we reported this issue to the Air Canada ground crew member. Since our flight would be departing soon, we were forced to board our flight without our luggage. Just before we boarded our flight, the ground crew member told us that our luggage was at the domestic baggage claim. And he was trying to get it to our flight before the flight departure. So, when we were sitting in our seats worrying about our luggage, I saw this lonely luggage in a cart ridding close to our flight. I told Richard that must be our luggage, although I wouldn't really tell if it was our bag as our bag is black in colour, just like everyone's bag.

After a bumpy, another 6-hour ride later, we had finally arrived at Honolulu, Oahu. One would have thought that if your luggage was the last one in, it should be first one out, right?! Guess what, that wasn't the case. We saw others picked up their luggages and we were still waiting. We must have waited half an hour (or it seemed like half an hour), and finally it showed up. We were so happy that it came with us! (the luggage sounded like our pet for a moment there :D) By that time, we were extremely tired, we'd been on the planes for over 10 hours and it was 1am Ottawa time. We called up our hotel for shuttle and rested up for the early morning again the next day.