So, at about 1:30 pm I finally got my flight to Chicago… due to arrive sometime around 8:30pm, which meant it was quite likely I’d miss my 3:30pm connecting flight.

It turned out we spent a lot of time on the Vancouver tarmac de-icing the plane and waiting in the line for us to get shunted through the snow to the runway. The flight was fine…flying above the storm was nice, as was the sunset. In chicago as we came in, you could see the blinking of the christmas lights in the suburbs. Unfortunately, the plane that was sitting in our docking bay couldn’t leave on time so we had to sit on the tarmac for a while here too. It tunrd out that the surface was so icy that the machine pushing the plane out couldn’t get any grip, and couldn’t move the plane.

So, after ascertaining that my connecting flight had indeed left, I was left to spend another night in an airport, and catch a 6:03am flight. Oh well. O’Hare is not that nice of an airport, in my opinion…certainly less comfortable to spend a night in. The super freaky spacy travelator thing was pretty fun… kind of like a sound/motion/light art project.

This is where my christmas morning was spent. Until 6am, anyway. The nice lady looking after us got into the christmas spirit.

The flight down to Norfolk was quite and nice - over the appalachian mountains - to the amazingly 70’s looking Norfolk Airport.

Now delayed a further 1hr 20min, etd 1:35pm

Current supplies:
1/2 loaf of bread
2 bananas
5 Ferrero Rocher chocolates
1 orange
1 ‘Canadian Maple’ Tim Horton’s Donut (about the be eaten)

well this is gonna be exciting….

My flight is delayed 4 hours, which means I miss my connecting flight to Norfolk…. but they’re saying that all flights out of Chicago are also delayed by at least 4 hours… so I might make it after all… but if not I have to wait there for 12 hours till the next flight…. but they also can’t say which flight my bag will arrive on.

it’s 4:45am, and I’m just rousing myself to get ready to check in at 5:15am…. but look like the flight has been delayed until 1245pm….

*sigh*

It was especially beautiful this morning, which is my last full day here. On the right you can see the solid ice in front of the Empress Hotel. People are throwing snowballs onto it just to watch them float.

Here’s the view out the window this morning:

This is our street. Last night we had to dig Andrea’s truck out of the snow -it got a bit stuck. What more of a Canadian experiance could you ask for!

I call this ‘field of dying snowmen’

Some people are very fussy about their edges.

This is Christina (who I’m staying with) & Andrea on our way out to have dinner in chinatown. You can’t realy see it but it’s snowing quite a lot.

I’m getting quite behind with my pics, so I’ll just add them all from the last few days….. they all blur into one, anyway. There have been some quite spectacular days following snowfall, and then more cold grey days where more snow falls.

Went back to the cemetary. It was eerily beautiful in the snow:

The bay was also spectacular.

They do fish & chops here (though not at nz prices!), which I haven’t seen anywhere else…. yet another sign that this place is more ‘english’ than other places.

And this is my spot in the library:

It’s nice and warm, but you can see outside into all the wintery goodness.

Note: There’s lots of pictures coming up, of pretty much the same thing: snow in Victoria. It’s hard to take any other pictures at the moment…. so feel free to skip ahead

This is the view outside the front door in the morning. I’m staying in the flat above the cycle shop.

St Anne’s Academy - looks like something out of Harry Potter:

The inner city was beautiful, particularly the heratage buildings:

You can see in this one the harbour starting to freeze.

Beacon Hill Park was also pretty special.

It started snowing about 8pm…. here’s me at 10pm: