So, I’m back from my trip to Canada and here is the first part of my “trip report”. We departed the UK on time (thankfully – I was getting increasingly bored at the airport). The flight was more or less uneventful. The only exception to that was when the child behind me decided to through a temper tantrum over not getting a toy that was being sold on the Duty Free trolley. This wouldn’t have been so bad had it just been screaming and crying as I could have blocked that out with music/in flight movie. However, as part of her extended temper tantrum she decided to repeatedly kick the back of my chair for over 40 minutes! This was very annoying and the mother refused to do anything about it. Her only response was “what do you expect me to do about it?” I though (and felt like telling her) that maybe a good place to start would be to keep control of her children, but I thought better of it and let the cabin crew deal with it.
We arrived in Toronto 50 minutes early, which was a nice surprise. I cleared immigration without a hitch, which was good. However, I didn’t have the same luck with Customs. I was taken for additional Customs screening (randomly allegedly, but I am sceptical). They asked me loads of questions (repeating the same questions to ensure I gave the same answer) and searched my baggage. I suspect that the fact I am a 20 year old student, travelling alone on a brand new passport might have had something to do with my “random selection”.
So after a trans-Atlantic flight lasting six and a half hours, a very long walk to immigration/customs and the delay at customs; I eventually made it to the arrivals hall where I met my grandparents and we headed off on the three hour journey to their house.
By the time we got to their place it was 21:15 (local time). However, my body was screaming at me trying to tell me to get it bed because it was 02:45. I struggled to stay up for another hour or so to chat to my grandparents, but I had to give in at this point and allow my body to win.
The next few days were not all that interesting. We visited a few small towns along the edges of the lake and I was
constantly battling against my body clock and the horrible jet lag that I was suffering. I’ve been over to Canada several times, but I never remember suffering from jet lag that extreme!
The weather was fairly good over the first few days. There were some spectacular thunder and lightning storms during the later part of the evening of the Tuesday and Wednesday. However, during the day it was worm and sunny – it only hit around 20 Celsius, but that’s a comfortable temperature.
That’s all on my trip just now. The rest will come in subsequent parts over the next week or so. There will also be some photographs for you all to look at as well – just as soon as I get a chance to work my way through the 223 photographs that I’ve taken during my short trip and work out exactly which ones to share with you!
prout de jure 