The Trip Gets Expensive aka Alaska Sucks.

Wake up 5:30am. Our flight was due to leave at 8am. We get ready, get in shuttle, and we are at the airport by 7am.

All Alaskan flights are cancelled.

Love it! Apparently Alaska didn’t have any de-icer. WTF?? So we were directed to a 7 hour lineup to rebook flights. I went to check around at other airlines, but there were hours long lineups for all of them. I spot the Alaska manager (know him from previous trip when we had problems With our luggage) and try the begging and pleading route. He is generally a very abrubt man, but was actually (compassionate?) regarding my plight of needing to get to NY by tomorrow because of the Boston hockey game. John and Jorden had row 4 seats (almost center ice) for the Boston/New Jersey game. He sighed, and then said he’d try to see what he could do. A few minutes later he comes back and tells me that all other airlines are booked for rest of day, and tho Alaska has resumed their flights again, they were only flying to other airports that Alaska doesn’t connect to NY through. Nothing he can do. Then he tells us we would probably be waiting at least 2 days possibly up to 4 to fly out to New York. ARGH!!!!!!! What would we do now? By now the hotel was non-refundable. Expensive hockey tickets for tomorrow night. Tickets for CHICAGO! the next night. Expensive Cirque du Soleil tickets the next night. Crap!!

John is almost hyperventilating, and so while we wait in the wonderful lineup that extends throughout the ugly Seatac airport (it IS an ugly airport even when things are going smoothly) I use my iPhone to check other flights. I find a Cathay flight out of Vancouver leaving tonight, but it is very expensive – to the tune of $980 per person. Yikes!!! We contemplate it, calculating how much denero we are out with missing shows and hotel anyway….and we book it right there on the iPhone.

We rush out, call for the shuttle, get the car, and head back home. On the way on the horrible un-salted roads we encounter a lot of this:

WE have hours to spare before our flight at 9:45pm (we arrive in NY at 6am…I hate redeyes) so we stop at home. When we arrive we can’t believe the snow that has fallen….about a foot, or more. We spend few hours, then decide to head to airport early just in case! We are worried about not flying out again. John waits at Cathay, I go to speak to Alaska to cancel our returning flight. He tells me we will receive a full refund. No duh! I”m more concerned with the extra cost we’ve had to incurr.

Kelsey plays on the computer while we wait:

Jorden just gets goofy:

We check in to our flight, and have some breakfast in this beautiful airport. I have to say, all biases aside…YVR is definately the nicest airport we have ever flown into/out of, hands down.

We head to Int’l area, still a little stressed. But is is so beautiful! A stream, waterfalls…very feng shui. Just the de-stressor we needed.

Kelsey and Hammy:

Kelsey took some of me:

Jorden doing something;

Kelsey a moose and hammy on an antler:

After few hours and a few starbucks, time to board.

We soon realize why this flight was more expensive that usual…what an airline! The seats were nice, the staff attentive, the food was awesome, drinks and everything included, and personal entertainment centers in the back of every seat…complete with many movies, tv shows, video games, and music. The best part was the seats. I HATE when people recline their seats in front of me, in fact it often sets me off into a fury of expletives….I am already clostraphobic enough with the space, don’t steal anymore from me! Well, these seats didn’t recline back. Instead, the seat bottom moves FORWARD to recline you. Spectacular!!

Good food too:

We spend a bit of time on the runway waiting for our de-icing turn, and undergoing the de-icing. The whole 45 minutes was spent listening to a boy about the age of 5 have a screaming, kicking temper tantrum in the seats behind us. *&$$. I was ready to go back there and issue a little discipline. ha! Okay, I have kids and I understand that kids can have trouble with flying and being in a confined space etc. But we haven’t even gotten off the ground yet! And this kids was just screaming for candy!! He kept screaming at the top of his lungs “I WANT CANDY! GIVE IT TO ME NOW!!!!!”. There were a lot of folks ready to give it to him, alright.

It was a long 6 hour flight or so, and I could only sleep about an hour. Same for John and Jorden, but Kelsey slept almost the whole time! Damn her.

We went through customs fairly painlessly, and walked out with our luggage. The kids were very happy with our first surprise…the gentleman waiting for us with our name on the sign and leading us to our limo.

Putting the luggage in:

Happy kids on their first limo ride:

Jorden of course, has to get goofy!

Sun coming up:

Through the tunnel (the one from all those movies! And books!!!)

The kids wanted me to make a note of this store location:

I said no way, they already had their new shoes!

More limo pics:

An hour or so later, we were at our hotel, the Westin Times Square. We checked into our wonderful room on the second-to-the-top floor, floor #44 and admired the glorious view, of which I forgot to ever take any photos! I can’t believe that. It was a wonderful view, and was especially nice at night with all the lights. The window opened, and we enjoyed opening it up and listening to all the sounds of New York City.

We were all hungry, so went out to find some breakfast. New York was awesome already! Our first breaky at the deli around the corner.

We admired the active city while we enjoyed our meal: