Cruising is an incredibly relaxing way to travel. It’s why we like it so much. You’re pampered as much as you want in the evenings, and most days you’re off seeing new sights in new countries, safely transported from one location to another with nothing to worry about. Getting to the cruise ship, though, comes with the additional baggage of stress, and we had a fair bit of it ahead of our 2023 cruise to Alaska with Holland America Line.
We can’t avoid feeling stressed right up until we’re on the ship – that’s just our nature – and some of the stress for this trip was our own doing, but a necessity. With limited annual leave and the need to make the most of it if we want to travel as much as possible we’d booked this week’s cruise primarily because we’d be able to fly out on the Saturday morning, board the ship in the afternoon, and fly back the following week, arriving on the Sunday. That would just use up the five weekdays of leave, but there wasn’t any wiggle room for delays, and you never can tell if there will be delays.
So, with about a month to go the plan was that we’d drive to London on the Friday night to stay in a hotel, park and get the shuttle bus to the airport in the morning, then hop on our direct flight on Air Canada to Vancouver. But then we received an email. That direct flight had been cancelled. As we’d booked it through Holland America Line we were able to give them a quick call to see what our options were and we were already preparing for the possibility of having to cancel the cruise entirely at short notice and seeing what that would mean with getting refunds.
Our first option offered was to fly the day before instead. To reduce stress, definitely a good idea, but I had no more time off I could book and didn’t want to see what work would say with me taking an unpaid day off. They’d probably have been okay, to be fair, but not something I wanted to test out. However, the second option was doable, but not pleasant. We could get the first flight out of London to Paris and fly from there to Vancouver instead on Air France. A very early flight. A short transfer window. A connecting flight. On Air France. We remembered flying with Air France before. It had been terrible.
And so we took a short hop to Paris Charles de Gaulle airport after a stupidly early alarm woke us up on the Saturday morning. More stress when we were told at the Air France check-in desk that we needed to check in our hand luggage too (except for my camera backpack) which we didn’t like because if both the main luggage and hand luggage didn’t make it all the way to Canada then we were going to be stuffed for clothes. This meant we also accidentally put lithium ion batteries in the hold which you’re not supposed to do. An oversight then because we didn’t think of it, but one we now make sure to tell airline operators in a bid to stop them taking our hand luggage on purpose.
At Paris we then had to transfer to another terminal. This process was fairly smooth but ate up time in our already short window to get to the next plane. Then we hit security which insisted on me taking out every single lens and other piece of camera equipment to check it all, despite it just having gone through scanners in London with no issue. We arrived at our gate to find it already in the middle of boarding so headed straight onto the plane with reservations that our luggage would make it to Canada with us.
We’d barely stopped moving since getting off the first plane and it was a relief to sit down. My wife and I were not sat together. I had been given a window seat on one side of the plane and she had been given a window seat on the other side, exactly opposite. As it turned out, we were right at the back near the toilets, and were both in just a two-seater configuration. I asked the man who was sitting next to me if he wanted a window seat because if so then he could swap with my wife, and that’s what he ended up doing. Sitting together on a flight isn’t important because we’ll both be reading, watching movies, or trying to get some sleep, but it was nice to do it.
The Air France we remembered from flying to Buenos Aires had been with the most uncomfortable seats known to mankind. Pillows and blankets could not soften the thin, hard base numbing our backsides. The food had been revolting with impossible-to-determine items triggering gag reflexes in both of us. My in-flight entertainment screen hadn’t worked properly. That had been a long, horrible flight.
This Air France flight from Paris, France to Vancouver, Canada, however, was actually very good. We had comfortable seats in a handy location for the loos, the entertainment was good, the food wasn’t awful (for airline food), and we got talking to the stewardesses stationed near us.
The flight path from Paris to Vancouver took us over Greenland and the views of the snow-covered terrain from underneath the plane to the curve of the horizon was absolutely spectacular. You can see for yourself just how incredible the pristine white landscape of Greenland is for yourself below. Because everyone on the starboard side of the plane was suddenly and very obviously mesmerised by the views we were being treated to, everyone in the middle seats and on the port side wanted to come across and look too, and because we only had two seats with a gap behind us we became the main spot for a load of fellow flyers to come and queue for a peer out of the windows. We were happy enough to oblige them leaning over to look and take photos. No point getting pissy about people wanting to admire nature.
After Greenland, of course, we flew over Canada. Thick, untouched snow gave way to jagged ridges of mountain ranges and lakes.
I’m not averse to sharing some information that almost nobody cares about in these travelogues – the opening several paragraphs of this post demonstrate that – and here’s some more.
The wingtip device on our plane – to reduce vortices forming and improve efficiency on longer flights – was the smooth-curved form known as a “sharklet” design. That wasn’t what I was interested in but now you know if you didn’t before. I was interested in the winged horse with a fishtail livery on it which didn’t seem to fit in with Air France, not that I knew much about Air France. This actually comes from one of the five air operators who merged to form Air France in 1933. The winged seahorse was the emblem of Air Orient, incorporating Pegasus the winged horse with the tail of the dragon of Annam, the symbol of the Vietnamese imperial family. The symbolism was meant to show mastery of both air and sea.
A good flight after the stress ahead of it came to an end as we descended into Vancouver.
I’m pleased to say that all our luggage made it to Vancouver with us. We found the Holland America Line representative after clearing passport control and were soon on a bus to the cruise port.
In the next post in this cruise travelogue series we’ll enjoy some partying on the aft deck as our ship, Koningsdam, sails out of Vancouver to start a week exploring Alaska.