Sandman Hotel Suites & Spa Calgary Airport

... wasn't supposed to happen – plans kept falling through, and it just didn’t seem like it was meant to be. The summer was slowly slipping away, and I had resigned myself to skipping the usual summer trip, but hopefully still making the annual Xmas one. Usually, these trips are planned months in advance, because the anticipation is one of the best parts of travel, and what better way is there to prolong that feeling, than to plan everything months ...

Well, we have finally made it to Canada. We left Livingston, Montana at 5.30 am (yes, you can believe that time really). We were woken by a very loud train whilstle going off across the road at 5.00 am, so thought what the hell, we may as well hit the road, as there was 8 hours driving ahead of us if we were to do the trip in a day.

So, left in daylight, but lightly snowing conditions. Snow had not settled overnight - had finished ...

... which should be a blast - we love them to bits and it should be fun to share this with them. They have two kids (4 and 1 1/2), so Sydney will have some entertainment :) Then, instead of going to Greece for John's sister's 30th bday, we will be going to Oz for her wedding! We'll be there for about 3 weeks and will be celebrating Sydney's first birthday there, which just ...

... and it never stopped me before ... Argentina and Uruguay are considered the most European of the South American countries, and let's not forget that the reason Spanish is spoken in South America is because it was brought there by Spanish colonies. Hopefully, this means that the women will also have that certain je ne sais quoi that the Spanish senoritas have! And failing that, Argentina and Uruguay supposedly get quite a few Spanish ...

... open until 10am or 11am. Luckily, a coffee vendor (we're addicted after Seattle) served piping hot coffee and the mini-donut-with-plenty-of-cinnamon-suga r stand was open and we were all set. Plus, we chatted to a few Canadian army troops who let us climb into a Leopard C2 tank. Thursday afternoon was the rodeo - incredibly exciting! I didn't think I'd be the type to really get into it (I was content ...

Finished our packing this morning, said good-bye to the girls and arrived at the Edmonton airport at 1:30 pm. I had done online check-in so there wasn't much to do except drop our bags and sit and wait! We were on Air Canada Jazz for our short (45 min.) flight to Calgary at 4 pm and then changed to a big Boeing 767 Air Canada plane for the Calgary to Frankfurt leg. Since we had a Lufthansa flight no. I thought we would be on one of their planes, so ...

... of those times is: After I had been in Belize for a while exploring around the bush. I was drawn at the far end of the property leaning against a particular cohune tree. I said to myself: "you know, this place is going to be the same wild place for a thousand years." Within one year following, my neighbor had pushed a road along our common survey line to that same cohune tree and began clearing the adjacent property in the river valley for citrus and cocoa production ...

... site that recommended a garage for repairs near Calgary. We contacted them but they couldn't book us in for the work until Thursday. We ended up stranded at the campsite for two days! However I must commend the service offered by Shiraz and Din at the "Allmakes Auto Repairs". We took toad in (noisily) and Din set off to test drive, returning to confirm the diagnosis. However we were just one in a line of vehicles to be looked at that day ...

We went to Spruce Meadows and to watch some show jumping. My sister would have been so so jealous. We got into the stand as they started the last event of the day. They were doing the derby along with the bank. We were right next to the bank with an excellent view. Afterwards we came back to the house and the children played with my cousin's daughter. A great new friendship is developing there.... Except for when Dave flooded the sand pit!

Tam showed up at my house, where we waited for Rodney to give us a ride to the airport. Rodney dropped off some of Dorianne's Christmas cookies - mmm mmm ... food for the long journey that we had ahead of us! Got to the airport and encountered a huge line-up to check in (almost 1.5 hours). The flight was delayed 2.5 hours so there was tons of re-booking happening. We got screwed - we're going to miss our Phoenix-Las Vegas connection, which will probably cause us ...