2022 Trips – Spain/Italy

That rooster on my phone is LOUD! It’s time to leave! Off we trundled to YVR to check in for our 6am Alaska flight #2165 to Seattle. It was an average Vancouver day for a flight in a Dash8 – cloudy but no rain. While I was not too impressed with Horizon, the local carrier for Alaska, as there was no ramp to get onto the flight like Air Canada uses for their Dash8 planes, the one feature of Horizon has, their valet service, does help someone who has extra cabin baggage! One can leave their roll aboard at the stairs to the plane and then pick it up as they get off the plane. As a person who carries medical supplies with them, which cannot be checked, this makes flying on these smaller planes a lot easier!

We arrived in Seattle on time, where a very nice lady met the plane with a wheelchair to escort us to our next flight, AS122, to Fort Lauderdale. This plane was a 737-ETOPS (Max) which is a really quiet and comfortable plane to fly in! I was especially enthralled with the seat back where there is a device holder where the video screen used to be on planes in days gone by. You can rest your phone/tablet on the ledge that folds down above the table and with the clamp above, that moves up and down, secure the device on top. Works well in turbulence I found out too!

I had booked us in the “plus” or front of Economy section so Andrew had extra legroom. It sure made a difference for him! Also easier to stretch out and move around. We had ordered meals a couple of days in advance of this flight, and while they did not have any gluten free specific ones, we did fairly well for the 5 hour and 19 minute flight! I had gotten the Signature Fruit and Cheese Platter which came with cheese/fruit and crackers(in plastic wrap) – the crackers were donated to Andrew! The Croissant Sandwich we ordered for Andrew and we shared the Fresh Start Protein Platter (I had the egg and fruit which were GF). The first two meals were great however the Fresh Start I expected more yogurt and nuts from the picture and description on Alaska’s website – instead they were mixed together in a tiny cup. I added a Kind bar and a couple of Dark Chocolate and Peanut Butter GFB (Gluten Free Bites). That satisfied us for the whole flight – along with some water and soda’s.

We flew in to Fort Lauderdale over the Gulf of Mexico and across the Florida Pan Handle and there, after a VERY smooth flight, we hit thunderstorm turbulence! Lots of fun! The kids on the plane did not like it and there was some screaming as the plane dropped and shimmied around – it was AWESOME! The pilot did an excellent job of “threading the needle” between electrified clouds so we could get down safely. When we landed there was a wait for my walker at the gate, so I was able to talk to the pilot about the flight which was phenomenal – he said those thunderclouds were very daunting to go around however he enjoys that kind of flying as it is true flying – no autopilot involved!

Bags arrived on time and in one piece, so we then attempted to find a taxi to get to the Westin Fort Lauderdale Beach Hotel. There are so many small taxi’s here that would not fit our luggage and my walker/crutches! I asked for a wheelchair accessible taxi, thinking, like in Vancouver, one would be sent right up from the taxi lot. However not so, it took 30 minutes for one to arrive and he had to be called to the airport! Claude, our taxi driver said that wheelchair accessible taxis are not that popular in Fort Lauderdale – most people who want to take an accessible taxi know the various drivers phone numbers. Their taxi system is also not like in Vancouver with a couple of companies – tons of different companies have 1 -5 licences. The man that Claude works for has 2 wheelchair accessible vans. So we booked Claude to pick us up and take us to the cruise ship on Sunday!

The Westin Fort Lauderdale Resort Hotel is very nice – it is across from the beach, however all the hotels are along this strip. I had booked a standard accessible king room on points and we were upgraded due to my status with Marriott to an Ocean view room AND it is wheelchair accessible which is a double luxury for me! So here I sit, at the desk in the room, looking out over the beach, writing this blog post. It is one of the most beautiful spots that I have ever written from!

Tomorrow we are going to explore Fort Lauderdale a bit, get some groceries and have a relaxing day prior to boarding the Nieuw Statendam on Sunday for our Transatlantic crossing!

“Oh the places you’ll go.” by Dr. Seuss

Andrew and I are going to take our long awaited “Retirement” trip! Andrew retired effective March 31, 2020, and with taking his vacation days first, we left on February 24, 2020 to travel to “Down Under” for 3 months, starting out in Perth, Australia. This vacation would include a side trip to New Zealand, a cruise back to Australia, meeting up with my friend Karen in Melbourne, a flight on an Airbus 380 on our way to Sydney from Melbourne and then a cruise from Sydney back to Vancouver. However our whole trip fell apart on Friday, March 13th in Auckland, New Zealand when Canada closed their Vancouver port to cruise ships and then the cascade of cancellations started involving our cruises, hotels and flights we had booked instead to get us home. We ended up spending some time in New Zealand checking out the country as United then cancelled our flight home, so we had to wait to find a different way home. On March 24th, one month after we left Canada and 11 days after entering New Zealand, we got notice from Canadians Abroad that Sydney, Australia was open for transit only. So, as we were in Christchurch at the time, with very little notice, we hopped onto an Emerites Airbus 380 to Sydney, then a Qantas 747 to Japan, changed airports and after a 14 hour layover and a call to my parents to bring food to the airport in Vancouver as there were no meals being served on flights, we got on an Air Canada 787 and flew home. We got home a month to the day we left – however our luggage unfortunately continued on the Emerites flight from Sydney to Dubai and spent the next several months in Dubai during the COVID shutdown before coming back to us 5 months later!

Now we are using our cruise credits left over from our cancelled cruises from 2020 and going to Europe! Let’s go!