North America 2022 : Monday September 19 Day 21 A Quiet Day in Calgary

We were up very early in the morning at the motel as we had to catch a 4.5 hour flight to Calgary leaving from Montreal at 8:30am. There were still rumours floating around that the airports were experiencing some delays due to lack of staff so we aimed to get there at around 6am. We were packed and out the front door just as the taxi arrived. Typically it was a bit of a push to get the two suitcases and few pieces of hand-luggage into the vehicle but we managed and got to the airport in plenty of time. Time enough for a quiet cup of coffee and a pastry for breakfast. My kids always give me a hard time about wanting to be at an airport way too early but I have been in a car on the way to Melbourne airport and found myself stuck in traffic due to a major accident on the freeway. My passenger missed their flight. So I’m not having that happen again.

We hit a snag when we got to check-in as Canadian Airlines is strict on their luggage limits – we were allowed 23kg in each of two bags. Some shuffling around and we made it, but got caught out when we came to the security checks as they picked up that Robyn had swapped out her make-up bag for something else. It should have been in the check-in bags but had somehow ended up with our carry-ons in the scramble. There was no choice for us but to put another bag in with the check-in suitcases, and part with a lazy sixty odd dollars for the privilege. There’s always a snag on every trip, somewhere.

I checked later in the day and realised that the distance between Montreal and Calgary was a bit more (about 50kms) than the distance between Melbourne and Perth, which tended to put things into a bit of perspective. We knew Canada was large, we just weren’t really aware of how large.

The flight itself was okay, though hardly luxurious and we made it into Calgary in good time. There to meet us were our friends Jim and Lynda Crittall who were putting us up for three days in their large home in the suburbs.

We first met Jim and Lynda on our Mekong River cruise in 2017, and again when they passed through Melbourne in late 2019, when we had a very pleasant day in the Yarra Valley visiting wineries and a gin distillery. We’d kept in touch over the years and they generously offered to provide us with accommodation for our time in Calgary. It wasn’t that difficult a decision to accept.

We had nothing planned for the day other than general house-keeping and catching up. I still hadn’t been able to get my mobile phone plan to recognise the top-up data I had paid for. I was able to use Jim’s home wi-fi to check my credit card – I avoid doing this sort of thing on public networks – and knew that the charge had been applied so I contacted the phone company via their webpage talk app and got through to someone very quickly. Within about ten minutes I had explained what my problem was, they had it checked and acknowledged that the fault was at their end, and I had been assured that the problem would be fixed within an hour. And so it turned out.

The rest of the afternoon was taken up with talking, napping and later eating. And we may well have thrown in a load of washing as well. Never hurts to keep up to date on that front.