We were there with our friends Dave and Jemma and their cute little dog Megan.

It was lovely. We spent the first night collecting firewood and hanging out on the beach. We climbed up Corfe Castle and had a look around the village as well.

Once back at the campsite, we got a nice fire going and had a feast. We even toasted marshmallows! As the fire slowly died down, we entertained ourselves by painting with light.

Chris added that third leg to Dave’s silhouette… Classy, right?

We woke up early and packed up in a rush to beat the rain, then headed to Lulworth cove for a look around.

Somehow, after this, Chris convinced me to walk up a really steep hill. I normally detest walking up big hills, but the view from the top was gorgeous. Next time I should not attempt this without my puffer handy!

The weekend following our camping weekend was spent relaxing. We did go and wander around Great Chalfield Manor, where they filmed The Other Boleyn Girl in 2008. It wasn’t as impressive as I’d hoped. I think I’m a tourist snob now!

My old college housemate, Ally, came to visit as well. I took her on a whirlwind tour of London which began with changing of the guards. From there we went literally everywhere I’ve ever been to in London, apart from Harrods. I’ve also decided that Trafalgar Square is my favourite bit of London.

While she was here, Ally taught me how to make Ukrainian perogies from scratch! I’ve yet to attempt it on my own, though.

The day before she left, we went to Stonehenge and Salisbury.

And I think that pretty much brings us to the present. As you can tell, I’ve certainly been making good use of my National Trust card lately!

1. Figuring out when to buy your ticket and with whom.

   It’s so frustrating to buy a flight only to find that one week later it’s 1/3 of the price. Or buying a cheap airline ticket only to find that your airline carrier has gone bankrupt. Here’s the method I have developed.

   • Pick a date range for your travel, but be flexible. Keep in mind that it’s more expensive to fly on weekends and queues for customs will be infinitely longer then anyways.
   • Search for flights on all of the following sites: kayak, expedia.com, Air Canada, British Airways, and Air Transat. Compare these prices daily for at least a week to see if ticket prices will go up or down
   • Before booking, check Retailmenot for coupons. This once saved me $75
   • Buy the insurance with your ticket!
   • Get travel health insurance for the dates you’ve selected. No excuses!

2. Baggage allowances (or lack thereof)

   I’ve learned that sometimes it’s better to upgrade your flight to premium economy if you have a lot of baggage rather than paying for your extra kilos at the airport.

   Also, if you are a woman with a laptop, make sure your handbag / purse can fit inside your laptop bag. Sometimes airlines that are jerks make you do this, but since you normally have to take your laptop out of the bag when it’s going through the scanner, take it out first and then shove your purse inside the laptop bag. This only happens rarely, but best to be prepared!

3. Killing time at the airport

   • Take time to walk around, because you won’t be walking at all for 8 hours on the flight.
   • Get a proper meal or some snacks to keep you going in case the airline food sucks.
   • Watch people and eavesdrop by turning your iPod off but leaving your headphones in and sit next to someone interesting.
   • Find three seats together and have a nap (use your laptop bag as a makeshift pillow).
   • Drink a glass of red wine so that you’ll be sleepy on the plane.

4. Germs

   Chris calls me a germaphobe, but I swear this is just common sense. All that recycled air makes you a bit more likely to catch a bug from the air in the cabin, so here are some precautions you can take:

   • Take a multi-vitamin and an Echinacea before you go. My mom swears by Echinacea.
   • Bring anti-bacterial hand sanitizer and hand cream.
   • Eat healthy prior to your flight and have a nap! You want your immune system in top shape

5. Delays

   It’s always unfortunate when a flight delay affects your schedule, but if you anticipate them you won’t freak out as much. Here are pre-emptive solutions you can try:

   • Travel insurance is your friend.
   • Give yourself lots of time between your flight and airport transfer. That way if you’re not delayed, you can try to sweet-talk the company into letting you on an earlier bus.
   • If someone is picking you up, make sure they have your flight number. They can track your flight on FlightStats.com

Right then. Happy travels!

Now, I’m not sure who exactly is to blame, but either Air Canada Cargo didn’t provide DEFRA with all of my phone numbers, or DEFRA only chose to call my UK mobile number, which didn’t make any sense considering I was in Canada at the time and flying with the pet, which they must have been aware of. If I hadn’t gotten Chris to call the James Cargo in London, I wouldn’t have had entry clearance forms

The one thing nobody mentioned was that Air Canada Cargo isn’t a part of the airport. I don’t exactly export things on a regular basis, so you think someone might have explained where I was to go. Even though the baggage and cargo compartments are essentially the exact same, pets are forbidden to fly to the UK through baggage because of the paperwork and handling of the animals. That much I knew.

So I showed up at the airport after a 2 hour car ride with Gravy meowing all the way. I was 4 hours early with my reference number and all kinds of paperwork — Rabies certificate, tick & tapeworm vaccination receipts, expensive blood test results, etc. All my paperwork certified by the CFIA (Canadian government agency).

The chick at the booking desk didn’t refer me to AC Cargo when I said I booked it through them. She said it showed up on her screen as $270 and I said “No, it’s supposed to be $900 because of the paperwork involved.” So upon my request she checked with her boss (who gave her the okay) and we processed the $270 – I figured I’d be billed the rest in the UK.

I went through security and to my gate only to find that I had my mom’s car keys, so I had to go back through security to courier them to her for $40, then go back through security to the gate.

Thirty or so minutes before my flight I got called to the boarding desk. The first thing they said to me was “Your cat can’t fly. Can someone come and pick him up?”

I BURST out in tears immediately. “What do you mean?” I said. “I’ve done everything right. I have all the paperwork here. This is so not my fault!” The employees were shocked at my reaction and tried to calm me down. I apologized and said I was just worried about my cat since he’d been stuck in a cage for 8 hours and he was really stressed. Tears just kept coming.

The one employee at the desk said he used to work at Cargo and explained that he’d put me on a later flight. I had to go back through security to baggage, pick up Gravy then take a $41 taxi (it was supposed to be $31 but the taxi driver stiffed me on my change) to Air Canada Cargo since the only access to it is around the airport.

It took about an hour at Cargo for the paperwork and by that time I hadn’t eaten in 7 hours. I taxi’d back (another $20) to the airport (still sobbing uncontrollably all the while), went to baggage and sorted out my bags. Then I went back to the Air Canada desk and figured out my tickets while unloading some emotional baggage on the woman at the desk.

Finally I made it to my gate after grabbing a quick pint of beer to fill my empty stomach, since by that point all the restaurants had closed.

At the boarding desk, the woman checking my passport frowned at the screen for a second before scribbling on my ticket. I noticed shortly after that she had changed my seat and as I sat down I realized I must have been bumped me up to premium economy.

I had just made myself at home in my seat, glad that nobody was going to sit beside me, when a flight attendant announced I was in the wrong seat. I sighed, looked at my ticket and he handed me a new one and stated, “You’re supposed to be in seat number 5. It’s up here at the front.”

Seat number five happened to be first class with a sleeper seat, champagne, personal TV and a meal cooked by a real chef. I couldn’t REALLY enjoy it though. I felt too guilty to enjoy it because Gravy was below stressing in the cabin. I nearly had an anxiety attack during takeoff while thinking about how scared he must have been.

To top it all off, my vet used a flea treatment that doesn’t have “marketing authorization for cats” in Canada (again not my fault – how was I to know?), so Gravy had to stay 24 hours in quarantine upon arrival and we had to make another trip to London to pick him up the next evening.

NEVER will I ever fly with a pet again.

Better in Canada

Better in England

• Peanut Butter: okay, I know, I’m a peanut butter snob
• Roads: While Canada has wider roads, larger shoulders, less curves, no hedges or stone walls to crash into, we do have bigger pot holes and bumpy surfaces. I still prefer driving in Canada, though!
• Restaurant prices: give me Swiss Chalet anyday! $15 gets you a huge rotisserie chicken meal and a drink (including taxes and tip!)
• How bars & clubs operate: I prefer the tipping system because it motivates bar staff to work harder and ensures you’ll be served quicker if you tip better.
• Subway: Choose from three types of cheese and yellow mustard. How I miss yellow mustard.
• Public Toilets: I much prefer American toilets. The water levels are so low in the UK / Europe that more often than not the entire bowl smells like pee
• Recycling: You wouldn’t believe how bad the recycling system is in Bath & North East Somerset… Plus I have a feeling it all ends up in the dump anyhow. There should be a bottle deposit on alcohol cans and recycling bins beside public trash cans…
• Central heating: I prefer vents to radiators, and in Canada we keep our houses warmer, generally.
• Television: namely Comedy… I don’t ‘get’ British comedy
• Coffee: You know I love my Tim Horton’s!

• Dairy products: Skim milk is actually delicious and cheese is incredible
• Cider: There are are so many different kinds – my favourite is Pear
• Checkout queues: aside from Lloyds bank, they keep the queues moving faster here
• Fashion: always a step ahead of Canada, but prices are double (or more)
• Traffic intersections: traffic circles make so much more sense than traffic lights or four-way stops.
• Window shopping: I love having everything on a ‘High Street’ where all the shops are terraced and all the good shops are crammed together with nice window displays.
• Public transportation: trains, in general. They run so often and are much cheaper.
• Houses: gotta love the Georgian architecture in Bath!!!
• Fireplaces: there’s one in each room here, including the bathroom!
• Accents: you know all us North Americans are suckers for the accents…
• Slang: Not only is everyone familiar with American slang, but they have a whole set of slang
• Design: signage, menus, magazines, etc are much nicer here, on average
• Pub cleanliness: well, the ones I’ve been to anyways…

* okay, you can find it but it’s much more expensive and usually comes in teeeeeeeeny containers

Chris and I just booked an all-inclusive vacation to Sharm El Sheikh, Egypt! We’re staying in a 5-star hotel with its own private beach.

How did we afford this?  We used www.lastminute.com coupled with www.tripadvisor.com and www.vibeagent.com to read reviews and check prices. We used www.kayak.com to see if we could get a cheaper flight than the deal offered.

The last-minute deal was £499 each, which was quite a steal but we decided to sleep on it and make sure we really wanted to go. The next morning we woke to find that an extra £100 each had been knocked off the price. We booked right away!

Soon after, we got a phone call from the travel agent saying that there were no more available seats in Standard Economy so we had to upgrade if we wanted the holiday (an extra £69 each — ouch, but still less than the original trip price).

We went ahead with this and we leave on Sunday!  That, my friends is how you score a sweet sweet deal.  Now look at these photos and weep:

Our deal includes:

• meals, drinks, snacks, the mini-bar fridge in our room
• sauna
• jacuzzi
• anti-stress massage
• tennis court
• fitness centre
• beach volley
• 4 pools
• 4 restaurants
• dive centre