Finding Our Way to Vancouver Part I

Saturday –posts are being drafted in real time and posted a few days later. Or I’m trying at least.

On the way to the airport.

Chris and I have a poor track record with passports. Back in 2008 we showed up to MIA with tickets to La Paz, Bolivia with our friends Marc and Eliana only to find out my passport was fine because I’d renewed it recently, but Chris’ wasn’t because it had less than three months left on it. Queue us rescheduling our flight for the following Monday so we could get a new passport last minute for him and us flying later into Bolivia and meeting our friends there. It worked out but we lost a couple of days.

Earlier this summer we began planning a vacation. It involved traveling to Canada for a short period of time. We renewed our passports and looked into if we needed one for Forest but it appeared like we only needed a birth certificate for him. We even tossed around going ahead and getting a passport but because of that birth certificate language we didn’t.

Tickets were bought, reservations were made and it come down to departure. We are at the airport at 4am, checking into Air Canada. We hand the ticket agent our passports and Forest’s birth certificate and he asks if Forest has a passport. We of course answer no because of what we’d read on the websites and because of what Chris supposedly heard from an airline rep when he called.

But no. That’s for land or boat travel into Canada. Air travel requires a passport for minors too. *expletives* Of course we find this later when digging on a different page–so infuriating that the websites are quite cryptic and never spell it out directly on one page. How about bold and highlighting? Bullet points?

Now we are scrambling to cancel flights, hotels, car rentals, and reschedule to fly into Seattle to drive into Canada. Oh boy. And rechecking rules for minors getting into Canada. Finally Chris calls the border station and asks for clarification, to verify the things we’ve read online. And yes, we should be good. *crosses fingers*

The pit of worry in my stomach eases a little but not much. We settle into naps and lazing about for the day at home while waiting for our late evening flight. Let’s hope thunderstorms don’t delay flights this evening.

Afternoon nap vibes.

Saturday evening

We made it to our gate! Bummer is that our plane still hasn’t left Florida. Before we left the house Chris said that the incoming plane was early. And as we approached the airport he got a message on his phone that there was a delay. Good times.

1:37 am PT Sunday morning. On the ground in Seattle. 

Let’s find some sleep.