Flyin' High

First, welcome to my followers! I feel so special now ;)

So it turns out that things CAN move fast when it comes to Holland America (hereafter shortened to the more finger friendly HAL). I got a phone call about 3 this afternoon from my secondary contact at HAL, the one I mentioned in yesterday's post. He apologized all over the place for the fact that Tracy, my primary contact, had not informed me that she had found a new job elsewhere and happily moved on. He had assumed I would have known from her. Either way, he was super nice and looked up my flight info for me.

His first words: This is the WORST itinerary I have EVER seen. (his emphasis not mine, although I agreed wholeheartedly). He then proceeded to rattle it off - I didn't catch all of it but suffice to say it required THREE layovers to get from my local airport to Vancouver (Albany to Philly to Indianapolis to somewhere to Vancouver) which he found totally unacceptable. He then explained that they have a computer system that does it for them but he would immediately pass that along to the physical human being in charge of getting people to my ship.

I just checked my gmail and already have a much, much better itinerary. Now I'm flying from Albany (at the reasonable time of 11am) to Toronto then onward to Vancouver, arriving there at 4pm local time. The hotel is in the actual airport too. Then I have that evening and I meet the car/bus/transport at 6:30am the next morning for my transfer to the boat, which is not nearly as painful as it sounds since that's 9:30am EST.

Dan also reminded me something I'd almost forgotten: I get two whole weeks with the outgoing librarian to learn the ropes, which is a big relief - won't mean I won't probably screw up but it does mean the learning curve should be softened.

That's all for now! More when I have more to report :)