Wednesday 17 May, was a very early start as our flight to Frankfurt had a departure time of 6 am. Alarm clock woke us up at 3.15 am and by 3.45 am we checked out and headed across the street into the departure terminal. Looking on the departure board to verify which desk to check in, we discovered our flight was delayed with 4 hours, which meant we would be arriving much too late in Frankfurt as originally we only had a one hour and fifteen minutes to get onto the Air Canada plane to Vancouver.
While standing in the queue at the Lufthansa check-in desks, I received an email from Lufthansa stating they had rescheduled our flight as follows:
- The 6 am flight to Frankfurt as originally planned.
- On Friday 19 May, Air France flight from Frankfurt to Paris Charles the Gaulle with connecting Air France flight to Vancouver and Air Canada flight to Whitehorse.
No way we were agreeing with that! We patiently waited till it was finally our turn and I directly told the Lufthansa employee I had received a proposed change of itinerary with which we didn’t agree. Today, we wanted at least to get to Vancouver! I asked about the KLM flights out of Amsterdam to Vancouver, but that was overbooked. Took them 30 minutes to come up with an alternative :
- 9.20 am KLM flight Glasgow Amsterdam
- 2.10 pm Icelandair flight Amsterdam Rejkajvik
- 5.15 pm Icelandair flight Rejkajvik Vancouver
The only snag was that the Air Canada flight Vancouver to Whitehorse was still scheduled to be on Friday 19 May at 1 pm. They tried to change that to Thursday 18 May, but didn’t succeed as plane was fully booked.
We accepted, got luggage checked in till Vancouver and also our boarding passes, incl the one for Vancouver Whitehorse on Friday.
We had time for some breakfast before boarding our KLM flight to Amsterdam during which I cancelled the hotel reservation for tonight in Whitehorse and rescheduled the RV pick up with Canadream to Friday 19 May 4pm instead of 1pm Thursday 18 May. I didn’t cancel the booking we had at Takhini hot springs RV campground for Thursday 18 May, as we would certainly try to reschedule the Whitehorse flight once we were in Vancouver.
We had just enough time to have a drink in Amsterdam before boarding the flight to Rejkajvik. In Rejkajvik, we didn’t even have time for a drink at the airport as we boarded as soon as we got to the gate. The flights went perfect. We even managed to get a few photos of the rockies while flying over them on our way to Vancouver. How relieved we were we made it at least to Vancouver today.
As soon as we got through emigration and customs, we headed to the Air Canada desk to see if they could reschedule our Friday 19 May flight to Thursday 18 May. Eureka, we got the 2 last seats on the 18 May flight to Whitehorse.
It was just past 8 pm, when we finally exited Vancouver Airport. Once outside, we searched the internet for a hotel not to far from the airport and selected the Abercorn hotel.
Once booked, we headed for the Abercorn shuttle bus and the hotel.
Great was our surprise discovering welcome in Scottish gaelic above the door and plenty of Scottish items inside the Abercorn hotel.
The hotel itself could do with refurbishing its interior, but it’s clean and bed comfy, so perfect for a one night stay. We weren’t very hungry at all after the multiple flights that day, but went fir a short walk in the area before going to bed.