These two days are combined into one entry as they consist of checking out of my Fairbanks, Alaska, USA hotel; waited around at airports in between taking 4 flights; and checking into my Halifax, Nova Scotia, Canada hotel. Whilst losing 4 hours in the process due to flying east.

 

4 December:

Got up for breakfast at 7am, packed my bags and checked that they met the check-in and carry-on for usual carrier requirements, and then sat and read a book until 10.50am, with 11am being my hotel check out time. Said goodbye to the Westmark Fairbanks Hotel and caught a taxi to the Fairbanks airport. I checked my bags through to Vancouver (was taking two Alaska Air flights, the first from Fairbanks to Seattle, the second from Seattle to Vancouver), the bought a newspaper and a bottle of water and cosied up for a few hours of reading. During this period I also had some “pretzels” – they were long fluffy sticks rather than the round harder ones I’m used to – and a couple of JD and Drys.

The first plane took off on time and it was a clear flight through to Seattle. Caught the internal train to Terminal C, and had enough time to stretch before getting on the next flight. That second flight also took off on time. I waved goodbye for the last time this trip to the USA.

I will say that, whilst I never thought Americans (from the USA) were all like the stereotypical ones you see on TV in Australia, either on comedy shows, documentaries or the news; I found mostly everyone I dealt with or spoke to, to be polite, intelligent, friendly and they made me feel very welcome in their country. Whilst some of their service presence may be due to the need to garner tips based on the way they get paid, I found the American hotel and restaurant employees to be attentive and polite, and on average superior to the average of similar employees in Australia. In terms of their attitude and demonstrated professionalism. This is obviously a relative thing, but I was impressed.

 

5 December:

I arrived in Vancouver around midnight. After fetching my 2 suitcases I found most shops at the airport were closed, and there were no money changers still open so I could not get change for the vending machines. It was 1am, Air Canada was not opening their counters for at least another 5 hours, and the 7 or 8 people also waiting were laying on all the seats near the check-in desk. So I went in search for something to eat. There was one shop open, Tim Hortons, which I found out is the Canadian version of Starbucks. Now I was in Canada, I had to try their cuisine. So this is what I bought.

It’s a Chipotle wrap, grande French vanilla coffee, Canadian maple donut, and a French honey crueller (the last word can be spelt a number of ways). Damn it was all so tasty. And laden with sugar.

After that sugar hit, I bought a bottle of coke from a vending machine with the change I got from Tim Hortons, and headed back for the 4 hour wait. Luckily I had a good Kathy Reichs book (4 novellas) to read.

At 6am I was able to check my suitcases through to Halifax, and headed out to get a newspaper (The Globe and Mail) and a coffee, and waited until 7.20am to board. This flight was to be from Vancouver to Toronto – 4 hours and 25 minutes. Given it was a large plane, they boarded in zones, and I was zone 4. So I boarded about 7.35am and settled into my left window seat (like 50% of the window seats, over the wing). I looked out and saw lots of ice on the wing. I recalled an episode of Air Crash Investigation around icy wings and thought “damn, I hope they are going to be de-icing them”. By now it was around 7.50am and so 10 minutes before takeoff. I was wondering whether I should hop off the plane as it didn’t look like we’d have time to de-ice the wings. Luckily we were late. We left the bay 15 minutes after we were meant to leave, and it was announced we were heading over to have the wings and engines de-iced. I was very happy. That took around 45-50 minutes of waiting and then having the machines (a bloke sitting in a cherry-picker with a mechanical arm that held a pipe which sprayed the foam that turned the ice and snow yellow, and then it fell off) de-ice the plane. I am always happy to allow the airport workers to take as long as they need to do what they have to, and be as late as needed rather than be on time and miss something.

So we took off an hour and fifteen minutes late. And as we taxied across to the final runway, it started snowing! Once we were in the air, I calculated with the time change (I put my watch 3 hours ahead to Toronto time) that I would have a half hour from touchdown before my final flight left from Toronto to Halifax – 2 hours and 5 minutes. Luckily the pilots made up a little time. I have always assumed they do this by flying a bit faster which would use up a little more fuel, much like driving a car 10km / hour faster. Which I assume they cannot afford to do very often. The Air Canada team on the ground had also spent time rebooking about a quarter of the passengers on later flights than they had already booked. And they advised the rest of us which gates we would be going through on our latter flights, so we’d get there before they had taken off. Plus after we landed, two special people got to deplane first so they’d catch their next flight. All in all we got in about a half hour late. So all was fine for me.

I got onto the final leg (Toronto to Halifax), changed my watch forward again by another hour, and settled into the final leg of my 2 day travels. The flight was fine. I got to finish another story (3 down, 1 to go), happily at the end of the flight my 2 suitcases came through, so I caught a taxi to my hotel. The Halliburton Inn in Downtown Halifax. It’s a 3 storey boutique hotel, very comfortable. So I headed off to the 24 hour pharmacy a few streets away to get a couple of supplies (it was minus 2 degrees Celsius so I didn’t take my scarf or gloves given Alaska was so much colder), then came back, had a shower and shave and went to bed.