Vacations always come with unexpected problems and surprises. Our flight from Ottawa was at 6:00 AM. For the first time I was on a plane that needed de-icing. We taxied to an area marked with signs like “Contact the iceman”. They sprayed the wings with chemicals until they turned a fluorescent green. This put the flight behind by 30 minutes. That was our first concern. We had a tight connection in Toronto and now it was looking very problematic.
Thank goodness there are no speed controls up in the skies, no officers to pull you over and ticket you. Our pilot made up the 30 minutes and we arrived on time. Our flight from Toronto to Vancouver was late leaving too but made up time and landed in Vancouver early. Unfortunately our gate was occupied so we sat and waited, and waited, until we finally arrived at the gate late. Again more concern because we have another tight connection. We arrived at the gate as boarding started. No problem, we’ll make it to Kelowna – but will our luggage?
We arrive in Kelowna and wait for the baggage to come. I get my bag and we wait. Nothing else is coming. Dave’s bag and both of our ski bags don’t appear. We fill out missing baggage claims and we are told they will be delivered to us the next day. We can’t understand how 1 of 4 pieces made it and the rest didn’t? Dave phones the number on the claim in case our bags arrived on the last flight of the day. We are told they did not and will be shipped overnight.
We find out that the plane from Vancouver can hold only 1/10th of the baggage of the plane we arrived on. Since almost eveyone flying to Kelowna are coming to ski it seems they will be over-taxed with luggage. The girl is very co-operative and explains that 325 bags did not make it to Kelowna. They ended up trucking the bags overnight.
The driver phones us at 10:00 AM and delivers our bags to the door. He seems to know the area well and finds us easily. It must be that they do this probably every day.
If you are ever flying into Kelowna get a direct flight from Ottawa or Toronto!
I ordered our appliances on Thursday from Universal Appliances. Dave and I had been in a few weeks ago to price them out and decide on the models.
I managed to get our order in while the refrigerator was still on sale (barely). There was also a new “green” promotion for buying GE energy saver appliances. We’ll get a rebate of $200. That was a nice unexpected bonus.
We have never had really nice appliances so this is a real treat. The stove (GE Profile) has so many features. It’s a convection oven, has a probe and is self-cleaning. Our old one has none (well none that work).
The refrigerator is also a GE Profile. We decided on a 1 door vs 2 door refrigerator. The way our kitchen is setup we have plenty of room to walk around the open door. With 2 vs 1 you loose space on the shelves on the doors. We also felt we would end up opening both doors most of the time. This one worked for us. I’m looking forward to the freezer on the bottom, fridge on the top.
I had looked at getting a microwave drawer. They seemed really cool but in the end I couldn’t see how you would clean the interior since the drawer didn’t come out. I went for a Panasonic model that we can build in instead. It’s a microwave/convection oven. It has a tiered rack so you can reheat 2 plates of food at once. That’ll come in handy at our place.
We don’t have a fan hood and we do set off the smoke detector frequently. It’s a running joke that if the smoke detector is screaming that means dinner is ready!
We picked this fan hood by Zephyr. It’s a stand-alone piece. We decided on this because we have an old house with slanted floors/ceiling. We figure this will break up the upper cabinets and it will be less apparent that the ceiling is out from one side to the other. That and it looks really cool.
We also ordered a Miele dishwasher. It is supposed to be the quietest & best quality. It’s all stainless inside with a cutlery tray along the top. I really like that. I forgot to take a picture of that but it’s basically a stainless steel door on the outside with a few buttons and lights.
They should arrive shortly after we get back from our trip.
Once we have them we can order cupboards. I better get my plans ready!
