Didn't we have a lovely day, the day we went to ...

Didn’t we have a lovely day the day we went to …

Over the weekend, we drove down to Edmonton so that we could have our airfreight released and hopefully get some things like bikes which will greatly enhance the range of things that the kids have to do whilst they are on holidays here in Fort Mac.

We spoke to a number of people, booked accommodation and set off, ready for a chance to see something different.

Four and a half hours later, we arrived at Air Canada at Edmonton International airport and picked up the paper work that we needed to then take to customs. It was about 15:50 and I was feeling quite relaxed about things, especially given that I had thought I was about to face one of those, “We don’t’ seem to have any paperwork here for you,” kind of moments when someone said, “Was that name Temby? I have your paperwork right here for you.”

So I took the paperwork and we made our way over to customs. We arrived there at about 15:55 and by the time I approached the counter after the previous customer had been served, it must have been 15:59.

As I explained why I was there, I was informed that they close at 16:00 and so when I had to get some paperwork from the car, she asked that I hurry as, “People are waiting to go home.” I can only assume she meant that she in particular was waiting to go home. First mis-step … no one had told us that they closed at 4pm.

So I grabbed the stuff from the car and was asked, “Is this the only freight that you’re bringing in?” To which I replied we had some sea freight coming later.

“Then I’ll need the inventory for that too.”

Right. Second problem and that was that we didn’t know we would need all our inventories, we thought that we only needed the one for the air freight as that was all we were releasing … something else that people had neglected to tell us. I considered my options and tried the path of letting her know that we’d just driven down from Fort McMurray to do this and that it was a long way with kids and we didn’t have the extra and was told, “You’ll have to come back, you only get one chance to declare stuff and it all has to be done at once.”

I’d heard stories about customer service in Canada from the other Aussies that are here and given this was about our ability to smoothly get our goods into the country, I didn’t want to push things too far. I wanted to shout and scream and throw the woman across the room, but I calmly walked out to inform Caroline how things had gone.

At which point she took the paperwork for me and stepped into the role of Superwife, to emerge a few minutes later having convinced the woman to process what we had with the promise that we’d fax down the remaining inventory when we returned to Fort Mac. What a marvel.

So after a brief moment of de-stressing, we made our way to our hotel, happy that we’d managed to at least partly achieve purpose number one of our trip.

When we went to check in though, we were informed that the room type that we’d booked (all of about 20 hours previously) was no longer available.

“We have something here in the smoking …” was about as far as we got before Caroline and I both interrupted and advised her just how unacceptable that option would be too us. So we ended up with the ‘Presidential Suite.”

Sounds grand doesn’t it? But when you’ve managed to get bargain basement pricing for your hotel, there’s usually a reason behind it. As it turned out, the presidential suite left a few things to be desired. Like the fact that despite there being 6 of us, there was only one king size bed and one queen size sofa bed.

Not to worry, we organized two portable singe beds for the remaining children. It was during the process of setting these up that we noticed that despite the amazing expanse of space that we had in this room … there were no blinds in the main part of the suite. Which simply does not work when you want children to sleep there and there’s about 19 hours of daylight every day!

So we moved again. And were settled in two adjoining rooms which were perfect.

Now if only the air conditioning had worked. After all, we are seeing temperatures that the Canadians aren’t used to and when its hitting 32C and the hotel AC isn’t working right it simply isn’t comfortable. Rather it sucks utterly.

So tired and sleepless, we tackled the West Edmonton Mall. Boy did that have some trying moments. But we survived and even made our way home again, all the way back to Fort McMurray, which as it was described on the radio this morning, “Is a great place to live … if you can find somewhere to live!”