Anniversary Trip, Day 1

So, after our moving weekend we had a few days of settling in-- we did a small amount of unpacking and organizing, M took an all-day class that's required for his job, I had my first full day of teaching in my strings summer program, we went to the Discovery Museum with our sweet little cousin...

with a trip to Johnny Rockets afterwards:

...we went to L.L. Bean and bought me new hiking boots, and did laundry and got everybody packed for our separate vacations: M and I were off to the Canadian Rockies for a few days to celebrate our 15th anniversary, and the girls were off to Vermont with Grandma, Grandpa, and all the aunts and uncles on my side of the family.

(last dinner before leaving... tacos on a rubbermaid bin.  lol)

Thursday morning, July 11, we left Grandma and Grandpa with the girls at our new house and departed for the Logan Express parking lot nearby (a 15-minute drive from our house... did I mention that our new house is super convenient to so many things?).  We parked our car and bought our bus tickets to Logan Airport, then boarded the 7:30 AM bus with much excitement!

(My suitcase, decked with tags from all the places I've visited in the past two years-- Disney, Europe, and Colombia!  I feel so lucky!!)

Upon arrival at Logan we checked in and made it through security with plenty of time to spare.  I always get a little nervous not having a paper ticket and just handing over my passport at check-in and hoping that I'm still booked on the flight, but I guess I'm old school like that.  I grew up in the age of much paper.  Anyway, we found our gate just after 9 AM.

M got some coffee since he hadn't really had time to drink his on the way, and we split a glazed cruller while I whipped out my laptop and did some final work I had to do for my summer teaching program (transposing a few pieces into viola clef for my string quartet and emailing them out).  Before we knew it, it was just before 10 AM and time for boarding!

Our first leg from Boston to Toronto was on a propeller plane... a new experience for me!

Boarded!

I expected the ride on the propeller plane to be bumpy and scary, but it totally wasn't.  It was a very smooth flight and we landed in Toronto just after 12 PM.

Going through customs didn't take long at all, and after following a slightly confusing maze of signs for "connections" we were able to find our gate for our connection to Calgary.  It was just after 1:30 and our flight didn't board until 3:15, so we spent some time walking to stretch our legs after sitting all morning.  When we decided we were hungry we snagged a table at Tap and Pour for a late lunch.

I had the most delicious chipotle veggie burger here and a huge salad... M had the Montreal Roast Beef sandwich.  We were both very pleased with our food and were definitely in the Clean Plate Club.  :)  Our waiter there was really friendly (as most Canadians are, we found!) and chatted with us all about our plans.  He told us we would definitely have a great time in Banff but we should really come back and visit Toronto some day.  So, it's on the list!  He definitely said "sohrry" to us several times which was so delightful.  I just love those Canadian accents.  He reminded me a little bit of Raffi, but maybe my mind forced that connection because Raffi is also Canadian.  Who knows?

Anyway, after eating we did a few more laps around the terminal to help our food digest, then boarded our connection to Calgary on a very awesome Boeing 787-9.

The ride on this leg of the flight was really, really nice.  We had video monitors just like an international flight with movie options.  I was able to watch The Aftermath and most of The Favourite on the way, which are two movies I've been wanting to watch for a while!  The Aftermath was good but very sad, so be prepared with a box of tissues if you decide to give it a go.  Also both movies had a few steamy scenes that I had to skip because there were children sitting nearby, lol.  Speaking of children, there was the cutest little baby on this flight in Harry Potter pajamas and his dad kept walking him around and saying "sohrry" when he got in the way, and the baby kept waving and grinning at us, which made it that much more enjoyable!

We landed in Calgary around 6 PM mountain time (8 PM our time) and picked up our luggage.  Our rental car reservation was off the airport campus, but there was a free shuttle.  We made the call and they picked us up right away.  It took about 10 minutes to get to the rental car place and the pickup was smooth, so by about 7 PM we were loading up our Nissan Rogue and hitting the trail out to the mountains!

Leaving Calgary...

The drive from Calgary to our resort in Radium was spectacular beyond describing.

At about 8 PM (it felt like 10 PM eastern to us) I decided I was starrrrrving so we pulled off the highway to a Tim Horton's (already miss that place!!!).  We later discovered that this particular Tim Horton's was on the Stoney Nakoda reservation and a couple of the teenagers who made my turkey melt there definitely looked to be of native ancestry-- soooo cool!  They were very friendly too, similar to practically everyone we met in Canada.  I don't know why, but it just made me really excited to meet some people who are probably descendants of Sioux people about whom I've read so many stories and seen in movies.

We arrived at our resort at around 10:30 PM after a long, winding drive down through a mountain pass by the hot springs and through Sinclair Canyon.  The resort had left our keys out on the desk for us in an envelope (the honor system works well in Canada, I guess!) so we were able to just unlock our room, unload our luggage, and crash.

An amazing first day, and we hadn't even really done anything yet!  Stay tuned for day 2 :)

{Read Day 2 here!}