The Big Day Has Finally Arrived!!
The preparations have mostly been prepared. Our neighbour will be taking Tulip and Ollie for the two weeks we’ll be away. They love him, and he loves them – a real win-win. The dogs will be having a holiday of their own while we’re away.
After dropping the fur babies off we finished packing and basically got the condo ready for our departure (i.e. shut off all water, servers powered down, garbage taken out, unplugged anything rechargeable, etc.).
Our car from Toronto Airport Limousine was arriving at 4:30PM, so we went downstairs at 4:20. The driver was there waiting for us (by default, these folks always arrive earlier than the booking). The driver recognized me immediately, as did I him, and we all shared a laugh – he was the driver who brought us home last year from our Portugal trip. That time, he had to wait for us so long at Pearson while Air Canada tried to track our lost luggage.
The driver loaded up our bags and we were off! Down Jarvis Street we went, and on to the Gardiner Expressway. We reached Pearson International Airport (aka the worst airport in the world) at 5:00PM. We bid farewell to our driver as he unloaded our bags, and we went into the terminal. Locating the Air Canada self-serve kiosks, we checked in and got our boarding pass and bag tags printed – what a fiasco!! It didn’t go well and there was no Air Canada employee anywhere to help us (this is Pearson after all). I finally found a semi-helpful woman who got us sorted out. Pearson… what a nightmare (more on that much later in the blog).
We checked our bags and reached Security. It was another nightmare there – so crowded and EXCEPTIONALLY disorganized. It was a great stress inducer, not a calming influence, for the journey ahead. We finally got though Security, but my bag was pulled for further inspection for some reason never explained to me, so Security had to pull my bags apart and paw through them.
We found our Air Canada boarding gate – E69 – where we sat for a while, recovering from the stress . I used this time to text and call friends and family to bid them farewell. Also, while waiting at the boarding gate, I approached one of the Air Canada agents to get our boarding passes reprinted – when we initially checked in, the gate agents told us our printed boarding passes were “invalid”, but they let us through anyway. The reason our boarding passes were “invalid” was my fault (through ignorance, I admit): when I printed the passes at home I should have printed out the Air Canada attachments (PDF files) on the email, not the Gmail email. Oh well, it was eventually put right anyway.
As we waited for our boarding announcement, we noticed that most of the boarding area was flooded with seniors (younger seniors, mind you), from a group called Senior Discovery Tours. Strangely, they kind of all looked the same – all they were missing were little Hello, my name is… badges – PAR-TAY!!!
Our flight was Air Canada flight #856, and – as a treat – I had booked us seats in Premium Economy, which is always a pleasure. The flight was scheduled to depart Toronto at 8:30, but there was a delay. An Air Canada agent came on the PA system to tell us the plane had not yet arrived due to some maintenance issues, and the flight time was to be delayed. The plane arrived shortly after that, and boarding commenced. We pushed back at 9:10PM.
It was generally a good flight – it was very smooth on the way over, and the meals were quite good for airline food.
Music Break
As usual, I had amassed a lot of music for the Atlantic crossing; as anyone who reads my “travel blogs” knows, I usually write briefly about the albums/music I listen to on a flight, so here we go. Among other things, what I carefully listened to this time was Donna Summer’s VH1 Presents: Live and More Encore TV special (yes, Donna Summer… we all have our guilty pleasures). What a great album this is!! Recorded live in 1999, Donna’s voice was still at the peak of its powers. You can tell by listening carefully to the album, that here is a professional entertainer completely in control of her concert, audience, performance and environment.
Anyhooo…. time continues to pass as we fly on through the dark night with the ocean below us…
Today’s step count: 2,421
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