The day of departue

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Untitled This is the first day of our adventure….and what do you know we start with a flight delay. All good though, because it gave us more time for sushi and to hang out with the family. Sushi was excellent and we made it back to the airport for about 8:20, and we were told to go through security at 8:30. Well I’m kinda paranoid about missing flights, so I go and check the flight on the big screens, and there is no sign of a flight delay so the flight is on time and still leaving at 8:35. My stomach drops, and of course I run back to James in a frantic state…..its 8:30! So we clear customs and I bust running to the gate….I kinda left James at security too.  Of course we get to the gate and there’s a ton of people still waiting there, so the flight was still delayed after all. So we ended up working off a lot of the sushi we had just eaten…and a good adrenaline rush!

The plane was delayed a good couple of hours, but we had a great pilot, and made up time in the air, and only landed in London an hour late. The next challenge was to see if James was going to be allowed to enter the country. We had made a ferry booking to go to France, and a travel itinerary to show that we were not staying in the UK for that long, but I was still nervous when we got to the passport checking booth. Of course James was flagged so he had to explain his story and we gave them all the info we had, and then the made us wait…..Last time James had to wait 2 hours, but this time we only had to wait 15 minutes and they let us through. I think it was because of my travel itinerary 

So then we made our way to pick up our rental car, to go on our first driving adventure to pick up “Ernie” the campervan. We had our brand new, never been driven rental car, and our trusty Lee (Lee is the GPS….can you see a trend that we like to name our toys!) Let me just tell you, that Lee was the best thing that we could have brought on this trip. Getting out of London Heathrow to get onto the highway was crazy! It’s a good thing James has been here before, and I’ve been exposed to driving on the left side and all the roundabouts in Australia…..because it would have been an even crazier experience than the one we had. But we made it out and onto the highway with only 1 wrong turn. Traffic was pretty crazy on the highway…not even close to Vancouver traffic!

We drove about 5hrs to Darlington, which is north of Leeds, to find Ernie! He’s a big boy! Very tall…but very nice inside. The bed is a little small….we have to sleep on a diagonal to stretch out our feet. Its going to be a cozy 3 months in Ernie, but it will be great! You can take a look at our pictures. The features are a toilet, a sink and a microwave!

So I think that’s it for now! I’ve been awake since about 4am, and James is still fast asleep. I wanted to catch the canucks game, but couldn’t get any live feed on my computer. I just found out we lost anyways…booooo! No Stanley cup for us! I have to admit though, as much as I want the Canucks to win, I’m glad they are not in the Stanley Cup Finals while I’m in Europe! They’ll have to do it next year when James and I are back home! BTW…don’t worry the blogs won’t be this long all the time…I’m just killing time waiting for James to wake up….he needs his beauty sleep!

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Photos

In the airport
Checking in the bags and Annette!

James driving to Darlington
James driving the rental Peugot to Northern England, Darlington to pick up Ernie.

Sunset in England
Sunset while driving in Northern England...somewhere around Leeds.