So stayed at Gatwick airport last night, up early to head into the terminal and to our WestJet flight to Vancouver. I booked the holiday ages ago, but only just realised that tomorrow Canada celebrates it’s 150th birthday. So this should be interesting . . . <\/p>\n
Had breakfast at Jamie’s Italian, which was very nice. A short stroll around the terminal, then to the gate. We were actually flying posh class this time – WestJet doesn’t have business or first, just plus, which has larger seats. We figured a 10 hour flight needed more comfort, so splashed out. So boarding and we get to go on the first round, board the flight and get handed a small Canada flag pin, round the corner and each seat has a paper Canadian flag or 150 Years multi coloured maple leaf flag on the seat back. Ok. Get seated and get handed a sparkling wine and OJ. Ok. Everyone gets on and settled and the announcements start – the first announcement was about Canada day and celebrating 150 years so the government had them hand out the pins and flags. Then a rousing patriotic speech about Canada. Ok. We were also told to ask for whatever we wanted – so I asked them to make the flight shorter please. The flight was long, but we got to see Greenland. And then Canada which looked a bit like Greenland. Lots of snow, glaciers, and icebergs in strikingly blue water.<\/p>\n
As we neared Vancouver, watching the Rockies out the window, we get the announcement about the couple who are returning to Canada after living in the UK for over 30 years and how wonder it was they were returning on the 150th birthday. Ok. Then one of the flight attendants sang ‘Oh Canada’ and we were all to wave our flags and say ‘happy birthday Canada’. Ok. But we’d already packed our flags, so. It was an interesting flight. And it was actually early! So they do actually get what you want!<\/p>\n
The Vancouver airport is impressive – with a waterfall in the immigration hall. It was eerily quiet in the first corridors and it wasn’t until we got to immigration that we saw any other people – then there suddenly hundreds! Immigration was mostly painless and bags arrived fairly quickly. A bit of a wait for the airport shuttle but here we are. Tired but looking forward to celebrating Canada’s birthday tomorrow.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
So stayed at Gatwick airport last night, up early to head into the terminal and to our WestJet flight to Vancouver. I booked the holiday ages ago, but only just realised that tomorrow Canada celebrates it’s 150th birthday. So this should be interesting . . . Had breakfast at Jamie’s Italian, which was very nice. […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"ngg_post_thumbnail":0,"jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_is_tweetstorm":false,"jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","enabled":false}}},"categories":[4],"tags":[],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p4T97-12k","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack-related-posts":[{"id":359,"url":"https:\/\/www.purple-penguin.org\/blog\/2010\/01\/10\/waiting\/","url_meta":{"origin":3988,"position":0},"title":"Waiting","date":"Sunday, 10 January 2010","format":false,"excerpt":"Waiting for the BA bag drop to open. Virgin is checking people in so we're hopeful there will be a flight. We didn't do much today. Got up, made sure we were all packed, checked out, found the bus (Deuce), and went to Paris. Decided we didn't like any of\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Travel"","img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":2965,"url":"https:\/\/www.purple-penguin.org\/blog\/2016\/12\/17\/three-alarm-day\/","url_meta":{"origin":3988,"position":1},"title":"Three alarm day","date":"Saturday, 17 December 2016","format":false,"excerpt":"So, we've had a week of getting ready - warm clothes, seeing people, generally getting stuff done. Then we headed off to stay at Gatwick as our flight was early. As it was we had to get up by 6am to get all checked in and bags dropped off. So\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Frog Blog"","img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":3990,"url":"https:\/\/www.purple-penguin.org\/blog\/2017\/07\/02\/happy-birthday-canada\/","url_meta":{"origin":3988,"position":2},"title":"Happy Birthday Canada!","date":"Sunday, 2 July 2017","format":false,"excerpt":"So 150 years!\u00a0 We woke up far too early. And are tired far too early. Jet lag. Ugh. So awake, so got up and got sorted. Had some coffee. Checked out the hotel breakfast which wasn't much - cereal or toast. So we had more coffee and OJ and did\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Travel"","img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":4220,"url":"https:\/\/www.purple-penguin.org\/blog\/2023\/12\/01\/searching-for-sunshine\/","url_meta":{"origin":3988,"position":3},"title":"Searching for sunshine!","date":"Friday, 1 December 2023","format":false,"excerpt":"When we left home the weather forecast was for colder weather with possible frost and that four letter word (snow). So we've headed south. Flying out of Gatwick (and I did try to get us an overland route but the one I wanted was our full holiday budget for the\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Frog Blog"","img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":4151,"url":"https:\/\/www.purple-penguin.org\/blog\/2019\/12\/14\/holidays-start-well-for-joe\/","url_meta":{"origin":3988,"position":4},"title":"Holidays Start (well for Joe)","date":"Saturday, 14 December 2019","format":false,"excerpt":"Got up washed and out to the terminal. Arrived too early, as usual, but as we were already checked in we just got the bag checked onto the flight and walked around the airport, had breakfast and then on our way to Brisbane. The fight was short with a free\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Travel"","img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":4292,"url":"https:\/\/www.purple-penguin.org\/blog\/2025\/12\/14\/and-were-off-again\/","url_meta":{"origin":3988,"position":5},"title":"And we’re off again","date":"Sunday, 14 December 2025","format":false,"excerpt":"Stayed at Gatwick again as the flight was very very early morning (06:40). We did the twilight bag drop, you can drop your bag between 20:00 and 22:00 if you have a flight before 8:30 which is very helpful. We still had to get up early, but could just go\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Travel"","img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]}],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.purple-penguin.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3988"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.purple-penguin.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.purple-penguin.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.purple-penguin.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.purple-penguin.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3988"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.purple-penguin.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3988\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3989,"href":"https:\/\/www.purple-penguin.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3988\/revisions\/3989"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.purple-penguin.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3988"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.purple-penguin.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3988"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.purple-penguin.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3988"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}