A frustrating start...(bit of a ramble)

Ahh... Lions Gate bridge and Stanley Park, we're in Vancouver again!

After we got off the plane, we had the usual long walk over to the immigration area and Ritsy stopped quickly to change the diapers of Ken. We had to wait through the long line and managed to pick the slowest line. Anyway, the payoff was that our luggage was ready and waiting for us when we got to the baggage carousel.

I called the car rental company to tell them we were running late and the person calling me ma'am on the phone got my blood boiling a bit. Now, I used to work a phone support job and was very commonly mistaken for a woman on the phone (we usually laugh about this), but probably the long flight, and line and hearing the news the Canucks' season was over got me a little testy.

Next came the taxi station. We asked the man at the station to get us a cab with a baby seat. To my surprise he told me that was impossible! Come on! Don't people with babies ever travel? Would it not be a great PR image for a cab company to be family friendly? They found one cab that had a seat with a built in child seat, but it was not good for Ken, so we had to bite the bullet and just hold him on the way to the car rental place- which was just over the bridge. I wasn't happy about that.

We got to the Car Rental place- and they must have had their B-team working. Really, they were very nice- but the customer service was somewhat lacking. They got our car ready and I casually asked them if the child seat was already installed. This confused them. Apparently, even though the website allowed me to request a child seat, they never saw this request. I patiently explained to them that my child's safety was very important and that I could not drive a car without a baby seat. They went into the shed and pulled out a baby seat that looked like it was made in 1953, it looked like a booster seat with a single bar running across the lap area. My mind boiling, but realizing it was not the staff's fault, I told them that was a ridiculous looking seat and told them they had to do better than that! Don't parents travel? Finally they called up another location and had a chair brought over, they upgraded our car for us, and didn't charge us for the child seat. The seat wasn't state of the art, but it was sufficient. The last little bit of annoyance was that they didn't know how to install it. Ritsy volunteered to install it and we were finally on our way. I had arranged to rent a stroller from a great home-based business in Vancouver called Wee Travel- they were professional, quick to respond and offered a very good product, I should have pre-arranged them to drop off a baby seat too! Check them out-- WEE TRAVEL.

We were staying at Scotty's place so I needed to phone him. Unfortunately, the pay-as-you-go phone I had for use in Vancouver hadn't been used in a year, so I had to reset the phone- which meant about 20 minutes on a payphone, but we were finally able to call Scotty by the time we hit North Vancouver and everything was sailing a little clearer after that.

Yeesh- it was a bit of an aggravating start.

I'm soooo tired!