After all the excitement of our trip home, the wedding and all the other excitement that entailed it was finally time to begin our trek back to Canada. Our odyssey began with a relatively short flight from Perth to Sydney leaving Sunday afternoon and arriving into Sydney late on Sunday night. We spent the night in one of the cheap airport hotels before getting up at 9am the next day to prepare for a full day of flying.
We arrived at Sydney airport by 10am with plenty of time to check in and prepare for our flight to San Francisco which didn't take off until 1pm. Check in was smooth and we even had time to stop for one last decent Australian coffee before flying back to the land of percolated coffee.
The flight we were on was completely full so unfortunately there was no chance to grab a row where we could lie down and sleep for the next 15 hours. As has become tradition on recent long haul flights, as soon as the plane had taken off the lady in front of me decided to recline her seat all the way back so she was pretty much sitting in my lap. This continued for the next 15 hours only to be disrupted for meal times. Although for breakfast she contemplated not putting her seat back up, at which point I seriously considered using the breakfast utensils to force her into it.
As such there was no sleeping on the flight and by the time we arrived in San Francisco we were exhausted. By the time we cleared customs we still had five hours to kill until our flight to Vancouver. Luckily for us there were large screens set up in the airport to watch the World Cup which kept us awake for a while. By the time we were ready to board the flight to Vancouver we were both almost asleep and slept for the entire 2 hour flight.
Once we arrived in Vancouver we still had a 45 minute train trip and then 10 minute walk to get to our Airbnb. Our Airbnb host was a lovely man who offered to come and pick us up from the train station but we needed the walk to keep ourselves awake. However once we arrived he insisted on carrying my suitcase although it almost killed him as he had to go down a flight of stairs with it. We then proceed to sleep for almost 16 hours as we attempted to get over having not slept for more than 30 hours.
The next week in Vancouver consisted of lots of sleeping and plenty of time catching up with all our friends that we had made before we left. Wednesday morning we made an appointment with our good friend Bonnie to have brunch at a delicious restaurant in Gastown. What began as brunch at 11 quickly morphed into coffee and then afternoon tea then followed by a walk around the Seawall to Stanley Park. By the time we had finished and were prepared to go home it was 6:30 and time had flown by.
A few days later we organised board games and dinner with Delta and Heba to renew the strong Monopoly rivalry that we had going. Unlike the last game where Delta dominated, she was first out and Heba managed to destroy us all whilst accumulating the largest pot of money I've ever seen in a game of Monopoly. We then moved on to a board game themed bar called the Storm Crow. Here we had fantasy themed cocktails and burgers whilst playing multiple games of Harry Potter Cluedo.
The final part of our week in Vancouver was dinner and drinks at an Irish pub called Dublin Calling with all our friends from Sport Chek. It was a great night which started at 6 and went well into the early hours of the morning. Unlike our last farewell with our friends from Sport Chek, everyone managed to keep their emotions in check and there was no crying which is always a good thing.
We had one last dinner with our good friends Evan and Megan where we also attended the Vancouver Jazz festival on the Sunday and then it was off to the airport on Monday to get ready for the next destination on our trip. Calgary here we come!!!!
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