Day 322, Saturday May 10th
Our last day in Toronto is today. There are not any new houses to look at so we
relax getting our day going. Dawson and
Kevin head out for some exercise and Julie chats on the phone to friends and
her mom, wishing everyone a happy mothers day.
By 11:00 we check out of the hotel and head toward the Eaton’s
centre to purchase a few items we need.
Our ultimate destination is Marcene and Rick’s new house just NE of the
Eaton Centre. As we are walking along we
realize we have not eaten yet so stop in at a Subway restaurant. They are done serving breakfast, but we can
still get a BLT sub. We continue on and
Dawson gets a new battery for his watch, Julie shops for graduation gift ideas, and Kevin picks
up a few last minute items for his travels.
It is now 12:30 and we are scheduled to be at the Howse’s
new place where Marcus will pick us up and shuttle us to the Toronto airport to
catch our evening flight. We have a
lovely visit, but sadly forget a pair of sunglasses and Kevin’s new water
bottle. Marcene and Rick will keep them safe until our return.
At the airport we are happy to find out we can use the Air
Canada lounge (although after will are admitted the attendant realizes Dawson’s
points are expired). She still lets us
in though. We have a couple hours to
squander here as the customs lineups were non existent. There is a new automated system that seems to
be streamlining services. Often you can
take up to 2 hours to get through customs and security. It is much nicer relaxing in the lounge
instead of standing in line.
We head down to our gate and find out the flight is an hour
delayed. Bummer as we can’t get back
into the lounge now, but worse, we are going to miss our connection. We try to get some information, but can’t
find an US airways desk. We ask the Air
Canada staff at the gate we are supposed to be at and she is most
unhelpful. As we leave there we see
phones we can use and dial to US Airways.
You would think she could have told us that.... the phones had direct
lines to all the airlines and were right across from the gate. We each call
the help line and are put on hold. After
about 40 minutes on hold we can see that there is a US airway sign at our gate
with a US airways employee (who by the way was always at the gate and standing
right beside the Air Canada employee we had asked about how to locate US
airways assistance). Julie takes the
other phone line and Dawson proceeds over to the counter to chat up the US airways
employee. The US airways employee is confident we might make
our connection so sees no need to book us onto a later flight. He has assured us the existing flight to
Charlotte will leave by 18:00 and they will put the pedal to the medal and
recapture some lost time. We hang up the
help lines, never having been helped in almost an hour, and having to listen to
advertisements the whole time while waiting.
 |
| Julie on hold with 2 phone lines |
Our flight is boarded and we take off shortly after 18:00. Our next flight is scheduled for 20:09, and
it is supposed to be a 2 hour flight. We
are seated at the very back of the plane right beside the only toilet so Dawson
becomes the toilet manager, advising people if the washroom is free, of in use,
and assisting with how to operate the door.
What a nice guy!
We land shortly after 20:00 and it takes 15 minutes to get
off the plane. The stewardess has asked
those without a connection to please let the others off first, but hardly anyone
listens. Julie dashes forward while
Dawson grabs our skycheck, but there are no monitor screens announcing gates, and we
don’t have boarding passes as Toronto only issued the first flights boarding
passes, so Julie does not know where to go.
She approaches the service desk that we had used on the trip north (when
our flight had been cancelled), but there were about 60 people in line so she
heads back to find Dawson. Together they
go stand in the service line, but now there are about 80 people in it. As we are standing there we see them announce
that our flight that we thought we had missed is delayed until 21:45, so we realize we did not miss it. We just need boarding passes now. Hmmm.
Julie heads back to the gate that we had noticed had New Bern on it, and
there is no line up and is able to get our boarding passes. Wonderful, the 2nd delay works in
our favour. We are only about 90 minutes
behind our original schedule. We no
longer have a ride from New Bern back to our boat in Oriental, however we are
confident it will all come together.
It is not long until we are once again boarding the plane,
and again we are in the very back seats, but the toilet is behind us at least
instead of beside us. Once landed we
easily find a shuttle and are back on our boat in an hour (after a slight
detour for the cab driver due to a car accident).
Cheers
Julie and Dawson
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