One of the hardest things we did over the summer was take a six-week trip with our kids. Our 7-year old has always been easy to travel with as she enjoys long flights and would fall asleep practically the moment she landed in a car seat. Unfortunately for our 22 month-old twin boys, flying is really cool, but only for the first hour and then they want to go for a walk outside. They would also only sleep for an hour or so in the car, and rarely at the same time. These are just a couple of things that made traveling during our “holiday” challenging.
Our biggest concern flying back to Beijing was that to catch our connecting flight out of Vancouver, Canada, we needed to take a 7AM flight out of Portland, Oregon. That would mean stumbling out of bed at 4AM and arriving in Beijing completely haggard the next day.
Since our flight out of Vancouver wasn’t until Thursday at noon, we opted to take a Wednesday afternoon flight from Portland and booked a room at the Fairmount Hotel inside the Vancouver airport. Although we got to bed a bit late, we were able to get a decent night’s sleep before grabbing breakfast and heading for departures. It was one of the most brilliant things we have ever done to smooth out a flight and will probably extend it for an additional night next time just so the kids can have more time watching the planes taking off and landing at the airport. Heck, we might even use the pool.
Photo: Christopher Lay
