We have decided to travel to Vancouver on Christmas day, then to Christchurch on Boxing Day. Why would we stretch our departure over two days? It has to do with two things: wait times in Vancouver, and weather.

We started thinking about the travel needed to get to Vancouver for at least 4pm on boxing day. If we were starting from Saskatoon on Boxing Day we would have to take the 6:20am! flight. Meaning we would have to be up by *at least* 3am to make sure we had enough time to pack up the last minute things in our house that we had to use (beds, some dishes for breakfast, etc). This flight then goes through Calgary where we wait a couple of hours to get the connection to Vancouver where an approximately 9 hour wait in the airport would await us before we finally got on the overnight flight to New Zealand. That sounded like too much. And what happens if there are any problems with weather?

So we opted to fly on Christmas Day in the afternoon. That allows us some wiggle room for any weather issues and we can get a semi-decent night sleep before taking off from Vancouver on a 13-14 hour flight.

Fun huh?