Paulette

Dave drove Ronnie & Pauline to the airport just before 7:00 AM this morning. Our hotel room comes with a free breakfast. I’m never impressed but food is food. We head down to the main floor and enter the dining area.

It’s a self-serve setup. They have cheese omelets ready to pop in the microwave to warm up. Wow they are creamy and taste great. Next they have waffle makers. The mix is pre-measured into cups. You pour the batter in, close the lid and flip it. A timer counts down and beeps when your waffle is done. Again they taste amazing. Coffee, juice everything you need is readily available. What a nice surprise.

Our trip home doesn’t start until 1:00 PM. We decide to drive along the lakeshore. Our first stop is in Peachland. It is a small community by the lake. We walk around a bit and everyone is very friendly and says hello. I get the impression we’d need to own 2 dogs to live here as people are out in couples each walking a dog.

We stop for a coffee & hot chocolate (the wind is chilly off the lake) at a little bakery. It seems to be the destination of choice on a sunny Sunday morning. A running group is meeting there. We manage to get seats before the whole group arrives.

We look at real estate brochures and are wowed by the prices. Living in or near Kelowna is not cheap especially if you want to be near the lake.

We continue along the highway and reach Summerland. Again it’s a nice little community near the lake. We only stop briefly to turn around and head back to Kelowna. It was a nice drive on a sunny morning.

We arrive at the first of 4 airports we will visit today. Our first leg is to Vancouver and our plane leaves on time. We have a tight connection to make there but luckily we arrive as expected and the gate is close to where we get off the first plane.

Our second leg is to Calgary. We wait in airport #2 and realize that we are going to be late. Our plane is not ready, we board late, leave late and with only a 45 minute gap between flights we are thinking we aren’t going to make it.

Our next flight is at 3:45 with boarding at 3:10 and we are only now arriving at the gate at 3:25. We still have to wait for the plane to stop, unload everyone and as we are almost at the end of the plane that takes more time. We finally run off the plane to our next gate at 3:35. I’m sure I’ve heard that they don’t allow you on in the last 10 minutes. We may be too late. Airport #3 might be our downfall.

We run up to the gate and notice a lot of people still hanging around. We are informed that the plane is late as they are repairing a seat. They haven’t even started boarding yet. It’s our lucky day. Maybe our luggage will make it on the plane too?

We finally board and lift off. We are on our last leg to Ottawa. I’m ready to go home. The pilot makes up the time and we arrive at exactly the scheduled time. Funny how that happens. Will our luggage have arrived? We had a couple of quick connections.

Brian comes to pick us up. It is now midnight in airport #4. We wait for our bags and they all show up. We can’t believe our luck. Lessons learned on this trip – no 3 hop flights, leave more time between connections and come home a little earlier especially when you have a 3 hour time difference!