As a kid I always
had the crazy idea that one day I would go to the airport buy a ticket and fly
to my destination, well that’s what has happened with this Vancouver trip.
On Saturday January
28 I had dinner with my dad and he told me about the business trip he was going
to take to Vancouver and that he had only one day of work over there so he was
planning to go skiing during the weekend. And I instantly said I want to go
with you, he said ok if you arrange for a ticket yourself. So the next couple
of days I was checking all the different ticket sites like a little maniac. When
I was 13 years old I was watching a travel show about Vancouver and I said to my mom,
one day I will live there, she was like yeah right…. Ten years later in the
summer of 2009 I finally took my first trip to Canada and also visited
Vancouver. We spent 4 days in Vancouver and I had a very good feeling about
this city, sort of like I was home, I said to my mom I want to come back here
and stay for a longer period to study or do an internship and she said yeah you
should do that. So when this opportunity came a long I felt like I had to grab
it, that it would be a good thing to do and just go, also to cross skiing in
Canada from my bucket list. I packed my ski’s and clothes and went to the airport
bought a ticket e-mailed the university of British Columbia to set up an
appointment for the next day to talk about my possibility’s for summer school,
but well it was the middle of the night in Canada.
We had a connection
in London and this turned out to be my lucky day because I got an upgrade to business
class for the flight from London to Vancouver, this was extremely comfortable.
We arrived in
Vancouver at 6.30pm to an hotel room with the best view ever.
After a much interrupted
by jetlag first night I woke up early, I had this day by myself and it felt
good to spend a day alone in Vancouver. I went to the UBC campus to talk about
summer school, this wasn’t very helpful but it was good to feel the atmosphere
of the campus.
That afternoon I
went to Cypress Mountain to ski, while I walked downtown Vancouver, with
my ski’s on my way to the sea bus, I saw 2 little boys walking in their ski
boots, completely dressed and ready to ski. I took the sea bus to Vancouver north
and the shuttle to Cypress. At cypress mountain you have an amazing view
over the city and the sea, words and pictures don’t do justice to what it’s
like.
At cypress you
can ski till 10 pm because they light up almost every run. The view you get at twilight
is the one of the most special things I have ever seen, you can see the city light
up, you can see Vancouver Island, the sea and even the white peaks in the USA.
One of the other
things I noticed is that everybody is so friendly and nice, I talked to
everyone I shared a chair lift with, a lot of people turned out to be originally
Dutch.
The next day (Saturday
February 4) my dad and I went to Whistler, we had to get up really early to
catch the 6.30 am bus, which wasn’t a problem because of the jetlag. The bus
driver was another Dutchie from origin and he was funny, he told us about the
trip he was planning to take, kayaking from Vancouver to Hawaii, crazy right,
well you have to love kayaking…
We skied in
Whistler the full day until we both where too tired to even stand up, it was
great and another amazing beautiful day.
On Sunday we
stayed in the city because our flight home was that night. We took a long walk in Stanley parc and I took a lot of pictures (see this link for the entire
album http://s1001.photobucket.com/albums/af140/AnnikaMeer/Vancouver%20februari%202012/ ).
That afternoon we
went shopping, but my credit card wasn’t working, which probably was a good
thing…
The flight home
was an adventure to say. I sat next to a Canadian girl my age who is going to
study in the Netherlands for a year. Well it turned out she had all the
information I need for an internship in Vancouver, she told me where to live,
which visa to get, where to go out, she had friends who do research in the
Children hospital and they can inform me about the research opportunity’s over
there, this is great since I’m planning to do my research internship in
Vancouver. And I told her about the Netherlands. This was just the thing I need
to get me started, well some things are mend to be, maybe that’s why I had the
feeling I had to take this trip….. Well anyway she is such a nice girl and we
had a good time.
The flight from
Vancouver to London was delayed and we touched down in London 30 minutes before
our flight to Amsterdam left, we tried but missed the connection. The line at
custom services where we had to change our boarding pass was long, really long
and slow we wouldn’t have made the next flight in that line. Another Dutch passenger
came with the idea to go through the UK boarder and switch the boarding passes
at departures, we didn’t know anything about the lines there but we had to do
something. So the four of us; me, my dad, the Dutch guy and the Canadian girl
walked to the boarder, there was no line at EU passports but a long line at the
international passports my dad convinced the guy to take the Canadian girl at
the EU passports. Then we came in the departure hall and there were a lot of
people there, long lines again. We asked someone what was going on, well it
turned out that London got 3 centimeters of snow the other day (which was all
gone by now) but Heathrow had cancelled almost all flights the day before and
all those people where still there…
At this rage
we weren’t going to make the flight and my leg was swollen really bad (because
of the long flight), I was limping worse than ever and my leg hurted a lot. I
normally don’t do this but I went to the airport personal told I was disabled
and in pain and we got to cut one line, still waited for another 30 minutes but
that was doable. We got in the next flight to Amsterdam (3 hours after the
original flight) which was delayed….again. At 10 pm Monday night I was home, I left the hotel room in Vancouver at 5.30 pm Sunday night. After 19 hours in
planes and at airports I was glad to be home, off course I set off every alarm at
the security checks so I had body scans (which was funny actually, they saw my
leg brace and the metal plate in my leg) but didn’t have to take off my pants
like a couple of weeks ago in Austria. My luggage hadn’t made the connection in
London and got delivered the next day.
Well I spend 3
days at home still have a bad case of jetlag, fall asleep all the time in the
morning but wake up in the afternoon and at night. Today I got fitted for my
new orthosis and I had to pack my bags again because I leave for Chamonix, France
tomorrow, time for another couple of races.
