Italy, here we come!

July 10/11, 2017

Yesterday (July 9th), we dropped our youngest daughter, Samantha, off at camp. We then rushed home to finalize our packing. Myself, being the carry-on King, had everything in one carry-on suitecase and a small backpack. However, my lovely wife convinced me to take a larger suitecase. I managed to fit everything into one side of that suitecase and was quite pleased with myself. I then thought, what the heck, and took some stuff out of my small backpack and put it into this suitecase with all the extra room to spare. My wife Sheryl then convinced me to add an extra pair of shoes. A few more suggestions later (some were mine) and my large suitecase was full (as was my backpack), well so much for efficiency.

I was quite excited about our flight as we were using points to fly business class on a new Air Canada 787 (The Dreamliner). And what a fantastic plane it was. The business class pods boasted large TV screens, comfortable lie flat seats and some privacy.

Orange juice for my sweetheart and some sparkling wine for me.

And the service was fantastic. To be honest, I've had issues in the past with Air Canada but over the past year (maybe 2) I have found it improving significantly. Our Steward, Johnathan, treated us like royalty and seemed to actually enjoy his job. The flight was very relaxing and I managed to sleep for almost 6 hours (never been able to do that before).

Another reason I like our Steward, Johnathan, he convinced Sheryl to try some Port and Bailey's (he promised it would help her sleep)

So after a 10 hour flight, a 4 hour layover and another 1 1/2 hour flight, we arrived in Florence, Italy. The luggage arrived very quickly (go figure) so we made it to our hotel, the NH Florence, 1/2 hour later. The math works like this. We left Vancouver at 12:30 pm and arrived at our hotel at 1:30 pm a day later.

We did walk around Florence for a while but decided to forego dinner and hit the sack around 6:00 pm. Tomorrow we should wake up well rested.