My wife and I had been planning a cruise to Alaska since we got married, and after saving a bit of money, and doing some extensive planning it was time to go. Luckily, we had plenty of miles saved up. Me from years of saving, and her from her Business flights to London. After an exhausting process that i will spare the details on, we ended up with round-trip first class seats from CLE to YVR with connection in IAH. These were the most reasonable flights as far as travel time.
CO1654
CLE-IAH
Depart 6:12am
Arrive 7:54am
Boeing 737-900.
We spent the night at my wife's parents house, because they live about 10 minutes from CLE. This meant we didn't have to get up at 3:00am to make the hour drive to CLE ourselves. We got our ride over to the airport at about 5:15am and were surprised to see how many people where there for such an early hour. We headed for the First Class line and got our bags checked in and printed our boarding passes.
We grabbed a bagel at the new food court area at CLE which is very nice and then headed to the gate. Just as we arrived they began calling first class passengers and on we headed.
But not before i grabbed a snap of our ride to Houston.
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Legroom is not exactly generous for a first class flight...but that is the state of domestic travel in the USA.
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Our gate neighbor.
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This flight was equipped with direct-tv and it was complimentary to the first class passengers. After a little bit of waiting on the taxi-way we headed off to IAH.
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This was a fairly dull flight. Breakfast was offered, but both my wife and I declined as it was still very early, we had just eaten bagels, and we knew breakfast was the meal to be served on the next flight.
We arrived in IAH on-time and got out right by the jamba juice.
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We only had about an hour in IAH, and the lounge seemed awfully crowded, so we just grabbed a quick pretzel from auntie annes and waited for boarding. The gate agents checked tickets and then they called for first class passengers.
Again, i stop to grab a shot of our ride.
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CO261
IAH-YVR
Depart 9:10am
Arrive 11:55am
Boeing 737-800
Plenty of United tails, and yes, they cleared the zone.
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big texas sky
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Caught this Cathay Cargo 747 pulling in while we were waiting to taxi out.
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This time i did get some breakfast. They offered an omelet or ceral and fruit and yogurt. I chose the latter and it was a nice little bit to keep me going.
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Headed west into mountain territories.
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Love the circular irrigation patterns
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this flight did not have direct TV but they did offer some movies and tv shows. I watched austin powers the spy who shagged me...which i hadn't seen in some time.
near the end of the flight the smell of cookies filled the cabin...
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It is a shame they only give you one...
After landing, we ended up in a fairly long immigration line in Vancouver. There was a China Airlines 747 and a Korean Air 777 i believe that had landed around the same time as us. We spent about a half an hour in the line, made it through immigration and headed to pick up our bags. We then headed for the train to take us downtown.
After a day in Vancouver we boarded the Celebrity Century for our Alaskan cruise. the highlight of which may have been these.
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If you would like some other pictures from the cruise, let me know and i will post some.
After a week, the cruise was over and we were ready to head home. We got to spend Sunday in Vancouver, and left early Monday morning to come back to Cleveland. A nice cab ride from downtown to the airport took about 20 minutes in the light traffic at 5:30am.
We checked in, handed off our bags to security and then headed to a Canadian immigration checkpoint, a Canadian customs checkpoint, and then a US immigration and customs agent. As much as this seems like a lot, it is very nice to get this taken care of in YVR and not have to worry about it later.
After grabbing a quick coffee we headed to the maple leaf lounge which was only a short walk from our gate. Here there was cereal, pastries, and coffee available, along with the most complicated coffee machine i have ever seen.
here is a vew from our spot in the lounge.
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After an hour or so it was time to board, so we headed down the elevator to our gate, where again, first had just been called.
CO1898
YVR-IAH
Depart 7:40am
Arrive 2:05pm
Boeing 737-800.
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west jet special livery next door.
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Again this flight was very uneventful. Fairly long takeoff roll and off we went
leaving mountain country.
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Nice to get an actual glass for my drink...but they still wont give you the whole can.
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I didn't get any breakfast, but my wife got the cheerios and fruit. I did have one of the blueberry biscuits, which was great.
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This flight had DirectTV and i watched some episodes of TopGear while my wife caught up on an old season of Project Runway that they were showing. TV really is a great way to pass a flight...sometimes a movie, if it isn't good enough will bore you just as much as a flight.
After 3.5 hour we landed in houston. We were treated just like a domestic flight, since we had done all of our immigration in YVR which was nice. We stopped and got a bite to eat, because we were unsure of what would be served on our next flight. We then went to the president's club to pass a little time.
We headed to the gate a bit early, and again got to bypass the crowds and board early.
This time we took a star alliance painted plane.
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CO1445
Depart 3:45pm
Arrive 7:37pm
Boeing 737-900
Boarding was normal except for one of the weirdest exchanges i have ever seen. A lady was sitting across the aisle from us, when a man came up and said "yes i have 2C" to which the lady said "oh, i'm sitting here now, is that ok? take my seat" and she pointed to an empty first class seat in the last row...
a flight attendant came up to see what was going on, but the man was kind enough to go back there...this lady is lucky she didn't try this with me, because i choose every seat for a reason, and i'm not afraid to make you pack your stuff and go...it is amazing that people think they are alone in the universe...
CO 757 next door.
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view of the field after a loooong bank turn
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This flight had directtv, which again was a great way to pass the time, and after a bit of time, dinner was served. I got the shortribs, and they were really good.
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the cobbler was a bit strange
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the best part was MLB network had decided to show my Indians take on the dreaded Yankees and i got to watch that for the last hour or so of the flight.
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(when we got back to my in-laws house i got there just in time to see the Indians get a walk-off home-run!)
This was a great trip all around, it was nice to fly in first...but after seeing the domestic first offered by a lot of foreign carriers it makes me wish that the USA domestics could step their game up...
