Day 13 (Friday, June 2, 2006)

 

Holland America advises us to be at the airport 2.5 hours before our 8:45 flight and, since the first airport transporter bus doesn't leave the hotel until 6 AM, we trade in our bus vouchers for a taxi voucher. The bellman arrives at 5:30 AM, and we're on our way to the airport by 5:45.

Vancouver has three terminals at their airport: U.S. departures, Canadian departures, and international departures. We go to U.S. departures since we're heading to a U.S. city, and check in with the airline. Since we still need to clear U.S. customs, we keep all our luggage with us. (Vancouver airport does provide free luggage carts, so this wasn't bad.) After clearing customs, we give our checked baggage to burly folks who put it on a conveyor belt headed to the bowels of the airport. Even though we're still in Vancouver, we're technically in U.S. territory. This makes it much easier for people traveling to Los Angeles or New York, where it takes a much longer time to clear customs.

We have plenty of time to have breakfast in one of the airport restaurants, then catch our flight to Dallas. We're not sure why we're going to Dallas since American Airlines also has a hub in Chicago. We made all the arrangements through Holland America, so as long as we wind up in Buffalo, we don't really care. Besides, Dallas is a cool airport and we've never been to it.

We had booked aisle and aisle seats on a 757 from Vancouver to Dallas. Wonder of wonders, the plane is not full and there is an empty row behind each of our aisle seats. When the door closes, we move back a row, we each get the aisle seat in an empty row, and make the middle-seat passenger in our former rows very happy!

We have lunch at Fudrucker's in the Dallas airport, and take the tram--which runs on the roof of the terminal--to our departure gate where we find that there is a long standby list for the one flight to Buffalo. We have boarding passes, we're tired of traveling, and we don't like the thought of our luggage sitting unguarded for many hours at the Buffalo airport. We have no intention of being bumped, and we board the flight and arrive in Buffalo at about 9 PM. By 10 PM we're celebrating with hot dogs and onion rings at Ted's. Breakfast in Vancouver, lunch in Dallas and dinner in Buffalo. It's been a long day, and Barb is developing a cold. We head home, find everything OK and go to bed.

End of Dick and Barb's excellent adventure. Thanks for letting us share it with you!

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