Vancouver

Every vacation I go on seems to start the same, with an all-nighter cramming on a last minute emergency. So even before we left I was sleep deprived, having had only 1.5 hours of sleep. I figured I'd have lots of time to make it up on our overseas flights, but of course, it's really hard to get a good, deep sleep in a plane seat, at least when you travel in economy class.

Coincidently, my Mother was flying to Toronto to see my brother and his family, and her flight was 20 minutes after us, so my stepfather lucked out and was able to drive us all at the same time. It seemed like such a luxury to actually fly from Vancouver.

Whenever we fly in North America, we usually choose to fly from Bellingham or Seattle since the cost is so much cheaper, but to most of Asia, the rates seem to be better or comparable from Vancouver. This is probably because we have such a large Asian community in Vancouver.

I hadn't worked out in advance how long it would take us until we were on the plane, as if that would save me from the pain: 13 hours to Shanghai, a 6 hour layover, and another 6 hour flight to Singapore, 25 hours altogether. It turned out not as interminable as I first worried, since we both managed to sleep a lot.