With a little fore planning can make a journey so much more enjoyable, well those things that you can control. The hotel offers a shuttle service to the airport which even though was a bit more expensive than a regular taxi was so much well worth it. So, for the additional 7 euro you get the son of the hotel owner driving you in a new model Mercedes sedan, for those of you familiar with a ride in a regular taxi you know how much comfortable the ride is in the Benz. Since we left the new ArriveCan app was introduced as well as within the last few days the requirement of being Covid tested upon our return. So for the fore planning, we booked our mandatory Covid test 5 days ago, we downloaded the App and populated it within the 72 hours prior to departure and we booked the hotel shuttle the day before, so we were all set.
We headed down for breakfast at 9am, which was fortunately between rushes. This hotel, is a buffet style format but with Covid it is not self serve, meaning you wait behind a barrier while a staff member fills your plate with your pointed finger as you select your items. Now this works out okay but the line can get long and then a bit complicated when people sneak back in for seconds. The day before, the seconds line was just as long as the main line causing some major delays. So, today was good, we left the breakfast room good and fed at our estimated time of 9:35. Back to the room for last minute room sweep and tail end packing with the phone ringing at 10:00 with the front desk informing us that the car is at the front door, “we will be right down”. The fine young man loaded our luggage, opened the doors for us and then, drove like an Italian, to get us to the airport in about 40 minutes. Drove like an Italian you ask? Well, that it as safe as you can, ignoring all forms of road line divisions and as fast as traffic will allow, upwards to 150 K/hr at spots - speeds like this is where the Mercedes sedans really shine.
Check in was very quick, well only if you have all the necessary documents relating to the current, and I mean current, Covid requirements. We used the Lufthansa app to upload our vaccination certificates, and the new Arrive Can app receipts as well as the emails from the Covid Test people from here in Italy. Note, travelling without an electronic device is not an option in today’s world. We were in the Business class lounge by about 11:00 am. Time for a second breakfast, lol.
Our first flight to Munich was turbulent drive, shaking rattling and rolling pretty much the whole way, beautiful scenery but a rough ride. The captain came on after we landed and apologized for this and that we were late given the massive head winds most of the way. In most cases this would not be a big deal but our connecting time went from an hour to about 30 minutes, and we needed to go through customs, great. Well we fast paced walked as quick as possible and did make it to our gate in time for boarding, well late as it related to our original boarding time but things were running late for our flight, so all good as we settled into our seats, a bit worse for wear but fine.
The first hour and a half of our second flight was met with same turbulence that we had just experienced on the previous flight, oh, it continues… but after which it did settle down. The only problem that people were trying to get up and use the facilities etc, this was met with, “please sit down and fasten your seatbelts until the captain…” . This announcement was also followed with “the new Covid requirements require everyone to remain seated with you masks on except during the meal service, any departure from this and we are required to report you to the Canadian authorities “, oh boy, getting serious here. Everyone complied. For me, this was like a 4 movie flight, no sleep even tough we were very comfortable. Just a timing thing, this flight took place during our usual waking hours, with us usually going to be at about 1am, by then they started serving our second meal, we remained awake.
We landed in Vancouver at about the regular scheduled time of about 5:20pm and prepared ourselves for customs and the chance of being selected for the dreaded Covid test. So, this mandatory testing turned into a random possibility. With our fingers crossed we went through customs and found that, Jan, was selected to be tested, great. Do they know we have a life when we get back, we have our little puppy waiting to be picked up, I have the boat scheduled to be winterized. Well this now all must wait until we get the results. Yes, I know I could go up the coast and get Zhalbey but with this being his first time I really think we should both be there. The Covid test itself was fast and easy only costing us about 10 minutes in time. Within the next half hour we were turning our key at the condo and unpacking, got to love the convenience of our new, well I guess, not so new, location here in Yaletown.
Picked up a few basic supplies and a pizza for dinner and by about 9:30pm we were done and hit the hay. I will be posting my trip summary in a few days after we get ourselves better in our time zone. For those of you that followed along, I hope you enjoyed our long awaited adventure. Thank you for following. To all the new followers, welcome and I also hoped you enjoyed. Stay tuned for more adventures at this blog site. In the meantime, if you haven’t already, follow me on Instagram at gd0008 and or send me a Facebook friend request to see what we get up to until our next big adventure… Only a few pics of our flight, including an almost empty business class, the Alps and the sunset in Munich…
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