We are back in Canada

Well that was a long day! But overall, everything happened according to plan and we are back at Ruth's father's old house in the village of Galetta near Canada's capital city of Ottawa.

Last we left you, we were at Frankfurt airport waiting to board our flight to Toronto. What a circus that was!

The airports all go on about social distancing and wearing masks. And everybody was wearing a mask which is probably a good thing since it was impossible to practice social distancing. But the funny thing is that they have signs everywhere telling you to stay 1.5 meters away from anyone else, but it's literally impossible to do that. 

We have flown a lot, but we have never seen anything so unorganized as the check in area for this Air Canada flight at Frankfurt airport. Whoever was in charge should be fired. Just mass confusion. Partly because of the requirement to check and double check everybody's preboarding negative Covid test as per Canada's entry requirements. Despite the fact that everybody would have already had to upload their results (in English or French only) to the mandatory ArriveCan app.

We got our tests checked and then went and stood as far away as possible from the zoo while still being able to hear boarding announcements. Air Canada boards by zones, and your boarding pass has your zone number on it. Ruth and I had seats side by side, but her zone number was 3 and mine was 6. Don't try and figure this stuff out, it'll drive you crazy. We both boarded when they called zone 3 and no questions were asked. It turns out you can board whenever you want, which is what many people do as they crowd around the boarding area. It's almost like people think their seats will be given away.

When we arrived at our seats, we had a pleasant surprise. We were seated in the front row of the section with a space of about 1 meter (3 feet) to a wall in front of us. With my long legs, being able to stretch them out on an 8 hour flight made me feel almost like I was in first class!

The flight itself was uneventful. The meals were below average, which is what we have come to expect from Air Canada. But at least wine or beer was included with both our lunch meal ad our snack meal. Also, they do have a really good entertainment system, so we give them extra points for that. 

Arriving in Toronto at 12:30pm, we had an hour and a half to make it through border control and connect to our scheduled 2:00pm flight to Ottawa. I had read about the long lines and delays so we were expecting to miss our scheduled flight and have to take a later one. We had a bit of a bonus though because our scheduled flight was showing on the screen as being delayed by 15 minutes.

But, things went better than we expected. They had a separate line for people with connecting flights so we got through faster than the general crowd. I had everything arranged for our border officer... officially translated vaccination certificates, PCR tests, and ArriveCan app receipt. Fortunately, the border officer didn't notice that Ruth's vaccination certificate is in her maiden name (as things are done in Netherlands and a few other European countries), but we were ready with our marriage certificate just in case there were questions.

It was about a 15 minute walk to our next gate and we had to exit the secured area and go back through security again (which is totally ridiculous) but fortunately it wasn't that busy. 

Made it with a few minutes to spare! Despite all the headaches of flying in this day and age, we still love it. We don't get upset with delays and the stupidity... we find it all kind of entertaining. Weird, huh?

The flight from Toronto to Ottawa is only 40 minutes. You just make it up to 27,000' and you start coming down again.

We had to wait 45 minutes or so for our Turo car to show up. This is the first time we've used Turo. The original booking was for an older car at a cheap price which I would have been fine with. But a few weeks ago the booking was cancelled when the owner said the car had broken down and couldn't be repaired. The best I could find as a replacement was a fully loaded 2018 Honda Civic with only 13,000 kms (8,000 miles) on it. It's a beautiful little car... a big change from the 1994 Honda Civic we had many years ago.

But, it comes with a $50 CAD ($40 USD) a day price tag for the ten days we have it. Yikes.

It was Friday afternoon at 4:30pm  and we were going to have to drive west through rush hour traffic. Instead, we drove south out of the city to our daughter's place to surprise the grandkids. We knew that daughter Lindsey would be working at the nearby pub where she has been for several years. When we got there, grandson Cameron was at a friend's place, but granddaughter Sadie greeted us with a big smile! We said hello to son in law Justin and his workmate for a few minutes

Then we went to the pub to surprise Lindsey. She wears many hats at this pub and she might be waitressing or cooking or bartending on any given night. This time, she was cooking but she did come out to say hello to us. We figured we might as well stay for dinner. What the heck... we're on vacation!

We each had the steak salad.

And I had a small beer and Ruth had a glass of wine. The bill, including tax and tip was $68 CAD ($54 USD, €46) which is why we don't eat out in Canada very often. It was good though... exactly what our tired bodies (and minds) needed.

Then, we had to do some grocery shopping and the forty five minute drive out to Galetta.

By 9:00pm local time we had been up for almost 24 hours except for the little bit of snoozing on the various planes. We were exhausted and hit the sack. 

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Good deal on a 50' Heated RV Drinking Water Hose. Winter is coming.

And in Canada...

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