We have arrived.
The whole thing went pretty smoothly. We arrived at the airport too early to check our bags in so we had to wait for 20 minutes. The terminal is vast but there are very few seats. We were lucky that things were quiet. When all the BA flights are transferred to T5 it is going to be rather bad.
Seats on the other side of the barrier were not too plentiful either.
Our seats were right at the back of the plane as a pair and this provided a bit more space. The downside was that behind us was then toilets and a small area where the attendant sits during take off. We had a large group of school children who kept using the area to have meetings and things got pretty noisy at times. We had to call the attendant a couple of times to clear them away.
Sleeping was also a problem because the whole journey was during our normal waking period and also we were tracking the sun so it was always midday outside.
I took a few photos on the flight from the window, which was a little scratched on the outside.
We passed over Iceland, Greenland and then Canada. For much of the time there was complete cloud cover so little to see.
We arrived at Vancouver a little late but the weather was prefect. I had checked and found that there was a shuttle that visited all the downtown hotels and when I asked ours wasn't included so we had a queue for a taxi. I must say I was impressed by the taxi service. The route from the airport was one big construction site. The driver informed us that they were building an underpass from the airport to downtown which will be ready for the 2010 Winter Olympics.
After we checked in we had a couple of hours nap. At 7pm local time [3:30am body time] we went out for a stroll. We strolled towards Chinatown. The whole area looks run down and there were lots of homeless people standing around in groups. We were asked a couple of times for change.
We finally found an Italian restaurant and had a meal. We got back to the hotel at around 8:30pm and went to bed.
This morning at 4:30am we were both wide awake. Go figure.