0230. What does the 0 stand for? Especially when you don't have to get up 'til much near 0300. Which is also way to early.
Arrived at the bus stop right on time for the coach and dozed gently for a short while. Luckily the firmware upgrade to the GPS hadn't wiped the waypoint I'd defined for the house. Hopefully I'll be able to do sad things like work out the distance between the house in Oxford and Sharon's parents place.
At Gatwick, went straight to the check-in desk. Which was a bit premature since we hadn't attached our baggage tags (I hadn't even filled mine in) and I didn't get a chance to put more than one cable tie on my ruck sack. Still, it's insured. Well, I have an email saying it is anyway...
A couple of hours were killed with minimal expenditure. For reasons unknown the gents toilet was full of flies. Bizarre.
Contary to (Sharon's) expectations, the Leatherman made it through security without any problems although this time I managed to take my wallet through so all my cards have probably had their mag stripes wiped now.
As well as the memory stick Walkman which I'd eyed with a certain degree of lustfulness on a recent trip through Heathrow, Dixons also had another similar Sony device which was about £40 cheaper - couldn't see the box clearly, it might only have RAM in rather than being mem stick based.
The plane is an A-330-200, two asiles in a 2-4-2 layout with us on a side.
Take-off was delayed for about 20 minutes whilst supposedly waiting for a passenger. It didn't look like they showed up but while we were waiting one person got off. We left when the kiddies fun packs arrived. A curious co-incidence... We had to queue for a bit so we could use the runway then WHOOSH!
Being an Airbus, it has monitors that drop out of the ceiling although they're not as cute as the flat screens in the A320. The movies were announced as being "Gone in 60 Seconds" and "Erin Brokovitch"(sp?) so I decided to invest a whole £2 to get an Air Transat "travel kit" comprising ear phones, socks and eye shade. Still considering inflatable pillow thing, will have to see how the neck is later. Right, it doesn't look like they're going to serve anything just yet so I think a snooze is in order... Wrong, they're about to start dishing out breakfast...
...which wasn't anything to email home about - omlette with bits of peppers in and potato croquete things, a bit of gingerbread cake, some fruit salad and orange juice. Not nearly as good as British Midland.
One thing I'd forgotten, or perhaps I've been on quieter planes, is quiet how noisy it is. Tinitus here we come. Might invest in some headphones if I see any good ones.
Gone in 60 Seconds. To classical music. Yup, they forgot to patch the soundtrack through. A rewind and presumably some prodding later... we get classical music again. And they turned the air con off. 3rd & 4th attempt - still classical. Then they gave up and offered a refund on the travel kits.
In future, save up, pay the extra and get a seat where you don't get the person in front in your lap when they recline their seat. Or at least you get free drinks and a loo sharded between fewer people.
New games to play with small children, requiring only the addition of a small mirror. Simply watch for the kid running down the aisle and extend the elbow at the right moment. Fun!
Gadjets! Just fired the GPS up - we're at just over 38000ft, doing 460mph at N50deg45', W71deg49' to within 73ft!
£1=$2.11 apparently.
There are a lot of tress in Canada. And Lakes. Lake Ontario is wider than the English channel and you can't see from one side to the other.
On the way back from the Airport I got my first experience of Tim Horton's. Whereas England has pubs, Canada (presumably in part due to their strict "liquor" laws and partly because of the amount of driving people do) has coffee shops and other road-side eateries with Tim Horton's being one of, if not the, major chain. Had hot chocolate and a bagel with herb and garlic cream cheese which were both very good although apparently the coffee wasn't amongst their best.
The waterfront of the White Swan Cottages is at N44deg32', W78deg33', elevation 249m (or thereabouts). And very nice it is too.
Immediate things to notice. They drive on the wrong side of the road. Even if you're not driving this is kind of important to ensure you don't get in the wrong side of the car, get hit by something coming from the wrong way or whatever. The roads are generally wide with big verges so there's somewhere to put the snow.
Also, wood features very heavily as a construction material.
On Saturday we went in to Bobcaygeon for a walk round the town which didn't take long but was pleasant enough. My Switch card worked in the ABM so clearly all is right with the world.
On the way back Kim was parked outside of Alison's house so we all went to Tim Horton's instead of straight back to Sharon's. The coffee was much better at this one apparently.
Later in the afternoon we went for a drive round, past Burleigh Falls (and Lovesick Lake) and stopping off at Young's Lock. There was also a shop with some nice gloves which I wasn't allowed to buy because at nearly $30 they were "too expensive". We were too late to go to the Mall so went home for a bit of supper before going to see Kerry at the Lindsay Recreation Complex.
On Sunday we were taken out for a drive round the countryside (nearly 400 km of it in fact). We had lunch (and bought the Thanksgiving turkey) in Dorset, climbed the tower which is on the site of what was previously a fire observation tower. Now they look for fires by plane instead. Also on the way round we drove through a small town called Cardiff.
There are a lot of trees. And at the moment they are a huge variety of colours from the autumnal palette - brown, orange, yellow, red with a few evergreens thrown in for good measure. This is probably the best time to see them, before the snow arrives. (We had some as we were driving around - it isn't supposed to snow this early in October...)
Toronto is good: Clean, quiet, pop 2.25 million or so. Good bookshops. Although, for some reason, many books seem to be more expensive in Canada than in the UK and by quite a margin in some cases.
Top tip for the CN Tower - have lunch in the restaurant - since it includes the lift you get lunch for about $9...
Niagra is Blackpool for the geographically challenged.
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There are some very good bits - good value, picturesque - and some complete tat. A classic example is the casino. Niagra has a perfectly good tower. You can go up it, take pictures from it (like those of the falls here) then come down again. It has escalators and a lift so it's not even difficult, once you've negotiated all the arcade games which were in the hall below. Splendid.
Then there's the casino tower, soley there as a means to advertise the place and be lit up at night. Although at first glance it looks like a proper tower, it isn't, it's just bits of scaffolding and wood assembled to make it look like it's a proper tower. Even the windows at the top are fake. Yuk.
Still, Niagra has to appeal to Americans as well so that might explain some of it.
Just a picture so far, until I get round to finding out more about it.
After that, I got too relaxed to make any more notes. :-)