2021.10 Vancouver (Part 1)
In 2021 airfare, even Canadian domestic fares, were very low. It became so low that I couldn’t pass up the chance to visit Vancouver. We chose to go in the fall to avoid large crowds and hope that the we would have excellent weather. After all, we were only going for a long weekend.
Airport & Maple Leaf Lounge
Our drive to Pearson international airport was uneventful and I quickly found parking. I joked to Little Miss that finding parking, and getting through the terminal effortlessly was an unintentional upside of the pandemic.
Like our flight to Alberta in September, security lanes were back to pre-pandemic approach. Fortunately it wasn’t busy and we were through into the terminal in a reasonable amount of time. I think from parking the car to walking to the domestic Maple Leaf Lounge was in the neighbourhood of 20 minutes, including checking luggage.
Upon arrival to the domestic Maple Leaf Lounge in Toronto we lucked out as we didn’t have to wait to enter the lounge due to reduced capacity restrictions. This situation changed as when we left for our flight, there was a line of 10-15 people waiting to be admitted. This resulted in the area around the elevators to be rather busy.
FOOD
QR codes at each table would pull up a menu with 4-5 main items, 1 children’s item, and a dessert item to select. Even though the presentation isn’t great, the quality was good. Little Miss enjoyed the soup, and I made sure to order the child’s option, a pizza.
From the pictures below are, taco, child’s pizza, and pasta.
MLL Toronto – Taco
MLL Toronto – Pizza
MLL Toronto – Pasta
Views
The ability to watch all of the activity on the apron is hampered by the layout of the roof. It was quite obvious that a significant quantity of furniture was removed throughout the lounge to provide additional space between seats. I noticed that the seats around the business centre had all disappeared.
MLL Toronto – View
MLL Toronto
MLL Toronto
With a decent amount of food in our bellies we navigated the line waiting to enter the lounge to take the elevators down to the departure level.
Flight
I swear this picture is not a copy from last month’s flight! I feel that most of our flights in the past year used gate D41, and we were boarding an Air Canada Boeing 787.
Boarding occurred largely on time and without issue.
Our hope to have a free middle seat between us was quickly dashed as the plane was full.
After Steve, the captain did his welcome message we pushed back on time and headed to the north end of the airport and took off to the west.
With it being an evening flight, we chased the sun trying to delay its eventual sunset. We cruised at 40,000ft, and somewhere around the Rocky Mountains did the sun finally set.
We descended and landed without delay into Vancouver airport. After landing I grabbed another picture of the plane while we made our way towards arrivals and onward to the car rental desk.
After a bit of delay (due to being short-staffed), we picked up our rental car (a Kia Forte) and made the short drive to our hotel for a few nights.
Explore other parts of this trip:
Part 1 – Maple Leaf Lounge, Toronto and Flight to Vancouver (this post!)
Part 2 – Hampton Inn by Hilton Vancouver-Airport/Richmond