So we have gone to and returned from Canada safe and sound (almost a week ago now, as I write this). Before I tell the story, however, let's go down the list of things I mentioned in part I that I wanted to accomplish while there, and see what I was actually able to do:
- Visit a Canadian Tire and purchase something there, doesn't really matter what
We did visit a Canadian Tire, but we didn't purchase anything there. Daisy almost bought a cowboy hat, though. - Find a Tim Hortons that sells merch and obtain a Tim Hortons t-shirt
Tim Hortons doesn't sell any real "merch," per se, at least not in the Nova Scotia locations we (frequently) visited. I know because I specifically asked. The barista(s) there didn't know which, if any locations nearby, sold anything of this sort. - Obtain as many of the Canada-exclusive candy bars as I can, diabetes be damned because I cannot get them here in the states
I did purchase a large number of Big Turk candy bars (five of which I brought home), plus a few other odds-and-ends like "buttered popcorn" flavored Kit Kats. Canada has really stepped up its Kit Kat game. - Return to Giant Tiger and Dollarama for shopping purposes
We visited two different Giant Tigers and purchased hundreds of dollars worth of stuff. However, we went to Dollarama once and didn't find a whole lot there, sadly. I think we only spent about $50 or so on various odds and ends and were relatively disappointed. - Obtain not only Habs stuff, but Toronto Blue Jays/Maple Leafs stuff too -- shirts, mugs, hats, etc.
On the last day I was there before flying out, I found an (ill-fitting, falling-apart-after-two-washes) Toronto Blue Jays tank top and a pair of Habs socks in the Giant Tiger in New Glasgow, NS. But that's it. For a country whose clothing is VERY fat-people-friendly across the board for the most part, any other Jays/Habs stuff I found in stores, or even Leafs stuff, was WAY too small for me -- like size XL at best in most places, sometimes only kids' sizes, etc. - Find the elusive pair of sandals that I was looking for last summer but could not find in my size (I wear a 13, and the largest size the store had in stock was 11)
They still eluded me. The lady running the store said they were "on order" in size 13 but couldn't tell me when the order would arrive or in what shipment, or even on what day of the week. - Eat as many truck stop poutines as I can (you may laugh at this, but the local truck stop there in town has the best poutine I've ever had, and it's relatively cheap)
I had ONE truck stop poutine while I was there, and yes, it was as good as expected. - Take Daisy's aunt and uncle out to dinner at said truck stop
We did this; it was even on their anniversary, so it was like an anniversary present for them. - Visit surrounding small cities and towns I haven't been to before, in search of groceries and other souvenir items
We did a LOT of this. We hit up two exclusive souvenir shops, and went to muliple grocery stores, Walmarts, and drugstores all around the province. I visited multiple small cities and towns I'd never been to before on previous trips. - Get some real Diet Pepsi, since Canada still uses the original formula
Canada still uses the original formula in fountain machines only, which we did get some of. Bottled Diet Pepsi in Canada is the same as the states, we found. - Get some Fruitopia, as it is still available/sold in Canada
I did not get any, but we did go to a grocery store where they sold FOUR different flavors of it in cartons, and I did get a picture. Based on our lodging situation while we were there, we would not have had enough room in the fridge for a carton of it, nor did I want to give myself that sugar bomb when I would already be eating like an asshole for most of the trip. - Have at least one dinner at the fancy restaurant in the hotel we stayed in the last time we were there -- we were there for over a week and I didn't so much as walk down the hallway to the restaurant while I was there
We did not do this. - Catch a bunch of Nova Scotia Pokemon in Pokemon Go and see how many gyms I can rule for the time we're there
I did do this. Community Day was the Saturday we arrived, and I caught a shiny Fennekin in Antigonish, NS, fully evolved it and named it Antigonish, and it ruled several gyms for a few days while we were there -- along with multiple other Pokemon I caught in the area ruling other various gyms in airports or any parks I was close enough to. - Do some sort of wilderness activity with Daisy, whether that's going to a national park/hiking area up there or going to some sort of monument or historic place
The weather was fairly shitty while we were there with the exception of about two days, but we did go to two different beaches and drive up through a significant portion of Cape Breton Island wilderness along the coast, and I think that should count. - Go whale-watching or dolphin-watching at the Bay of Fundy
We did not do this. There was not really time for it and the weather was, again, shitty for us to have made such a trip. I did, however, see what could have been a shark fin or a whale out in the water off Cape Breton Island, though. It was too far out to accurately ascertain what it could have been. - Visit several tourist shops (yeah, there are some good ones in Nova Scotia)
Yes, as mentioned above, we did this. - See a goddamn lighthouse in person
I still did not do this. We'd had roughly planned a trip to Sydney, NS for one of the middle days of the week, but we didn't end up going for one reason or another -- I can't remember why. - See a goddamn moose that's not just on the side of the road in New Brunswick, but actually in the wild somewhere
I did NOT see another moose, but I did purchase a big metal "moose crossing" sign that is currently hanging in my office.
To be fair and balanced, let's go over Daisy's list too:
- Go back to her favorite beach, regardless of weather
We did indeed do this, even though it was 45 degrees and so windy I had sand in my hair and in my pockets when we left -- and another beachgoer banged the hell out of the door of our rental car with their own - Possibly get her hair cut, short, for the summer
Daisy did do this, and it's the cutest haircut I've ever seen on her in the eleven years we've been together - Cook and clean for her grandmother as much as we're able
Cooking, yes. Some light cleaning and dishes, yes. Most everything else her grandmother wouldn't really let us do and/or it was covered by her once-a-week visiting caregiver/cleaning lady. - Possibly spend a day or two in Prince Edward Island (she's been there before, and it's expensive, but I've never seen it and this will be my third trip to Canada)
We did not do this, primarily because of time, money, and weather. - Spend a day in Halifax doing Halifax things -- seeing the harbor, going to eat at the local vegan places, etc.
We planned on this, but then the wildfires started up around Halifax and people started getting evacuated, and many places started closing down/shutting down, etc. We spent the day in New Glasgow instead and spent $300 at Giant Tiger.
So.
The night we left (in the overnight hours of Friday, May 19) I scheduled an Uber to pick us up and take us to the airport. I scheduled it for 3:15am, as our flight out was supposed to lift off at 6:20-something. Our flights would take us from Omaha to Denver, Denver to Toronto, and Toronto to Halifax. Aside from Omaha, I'd never been in any of the other airports, so I didn't know what to expect. We'd driven the loop around Halifax's airport last summer when we'd picked up Daisy's sister when she flew in for her grandfather's funeral, but that's about it.
The Uber arrived at around 2:50 -- early -- and said to take our time, he'd wait for us. That made all of our last-minute stuff that much more stressful than expected (or wanted), as I hadn't slept at all since the previous afternoon and Daisy hadn't slept enough to be completely functional, so we were frazzled and tired. The cats didn't know what to make of us and didn't understand why we were awake and running around in the middle of the night when I was usually working or in my office and Daisy was normally asleep. The cats can usually sense when we're leaving, but even as I gave them extra food and water they seemed strangely aloof and mostly unaware. I wasn't greatly concerned as we'd set up our cameras all over the interior of the house to keep an eye on them, and we knew the parents would be coming over every day or two in order to check on them, clean the pans, refill the food and water bowls, etc. Our cats are pretty chill and self-sustaining in their old ages, so while a decade ago they would've all been howling with anxiety and would have known the instant we were planning to leave on any sort of trip, this time around they were pretty quiet about it. It was as if they were like "Oh, you're going somewhere again. Whatever, we know you'll be back eventually."
We locked up the house and loaded our stuff into the giant Toyota SUV our Uber driver was driving. As I got into the backseat, I smashed my big toe of my left foot, hard, into the sliding seat rails of the cabin seat in front of me. It hurt a lot, and thankfully I'd been wearing shoes and not sandals or it would have been worse (Daisy later directly stepped on that toe in the airport, and the pain returned for a while). It was not until we were on the ground and in the hotel in Halifax that I was able to take off said shoe and see that I had ripped a big chunk of the nail off my toe and that it had been bleeding in my shoe for a decent amount of time. It is still healing now, almost two weeks later, but it is much better.
But I'm getting ahead of myself. Anyway.
We arrived at the airport in Omaha with no issues, and aside from an Asian family with what had to be 30 giant boxes they were taking/shipping to Vietnam with them, we were the first folks at the United counter, well before they opened up shop for the day.
United? Yes, well...Air Canada does not have a designated terminal in Omaha anymore. All of their flights with a US domestic leg to them operate through United as their carrier, as they're both part of the "Star Alliance" network (think of the Federation, but for airplanes). Therefore, some of our flights, especially the US domestic ones, were all through United.
I have not had a great experience with United over the years, but I've not had a truly bad experience with them either that I can recall. There are several airlines I never want or need to fly on again, ever, and I don't even know how many of them still exist. American Airlines does, and they're horrible -- we'll never fly American Airlines ever again if we can possibly avoid it. Frontier too. US Airways was just as bad, but I think they got absorbed by some other company at some point. Anyway, I didn't have anything but mediocre experiences with United and never really thought much of them one way or the other.
Now, before I get into this story further, I'll note that a few weeks before we left, we got an email that said that one of our flight numbers had changed and that the arrival/departure time was slightly different (I believe it was our flight from Denver into Toronto). It didn't affect our overall travel times or anything like that, it was just something to make a note of and information provided to us for our own benefit as a heads up. Similarly, we didn't think much about it.
When the check-in counter opened at the Omaha airport, we tried to check in.
We were denied.
We tried again. We were denied again.
We talked to the lady at the counter, who said there was something wrong with the way our flights were booked and that she'd have to call Air Canada, which she did and was immediately put on hold. Meanwhile, we were shuffled off to the side while everyone else who arrived well after us scanned their passes, checked in, checked their luggage and had it weighed and whisked away on the belt, and we waited.
For over an hour.
Me there with my busted foot (that Daisy stepped on during this process) on no sleep, Daisy there on very little sleep and nauseous because of it on the phone with Priceline -- who we'd booked the tickets through -- trying to get some clarification as to what the issue was, with the clock ticking in the middle of a very busy crowded entry point to the airport.
The very helpful counter lady had her supervisor and another associate check into it, but they weren't able to figure out why we couldn't check in either. Priceline told Daisy via phone that our confirmation number was correct, but it wouldn't pull up in United's systems (because it was an Air Canada confirmation number, not United). The counter lady came back and told us that we had about half an hour left before they couldn't check our bags and we wouldn't be able to board that flight, but if necessary she would attempt to re-book us and make sure we had seats -- when the Air Canada people finally picked up the phone after an hour's hold time.
Whatever they told the United people seemed to work, and we were immediately brought back to the counter where we were issued boarding passes and our luggage was weighed and checked. My suitcase was 28ish pounds, and Daisy's was 32. The max is 50. Remember this as it'll become more important later.
Our boarding passes did not have seats listed on them and we were told to go through security and the same lady who helped us would be upstairs at the gate counter shortly to make sure we got in and on the plane. At this point there was about 40 minutes before the plane would lift off.
Throughout the entire process I was far calmer than I expected myself to be. I had long decided that "what will be will be," and whatever was necessary to be done would be done. It wasn't as if we were gonna have to turn around and would be back in our house in Omaha -- we would get to Nova Scotia eventually, this was vacation time and my sights were set on the end goal, the big picture.
We basically ran through the terminal to get to the security line, which was....quite possibly the longest security line I've ever seen in an airport. Before 6am, at that. It stretched back through the airport way past the coffee shops and souvenir shops for probably 200 yards total. We had 30 minutes to get through it and get on the plane before wheels up. By the time we were in the line they were already beginning to board our flight.
Surprisingly, the line moved relatively quickly, and we were completely through security without a hitch, with a blink of the eye, and were headed to our gate -- where we met up with the same United lady at the counter.
"I can get you two seats," she said, "but they won't be together."
"Go for it," we said. At this point it didn't matter if the seats were together or not, we'd still get to where we were going and that was what was important.
She printed out our boarding passes with seats that were a few rows apart -- and printed out the boarding passes for our other flights as well -- handed them to us, and off we went. We were some of the very last people to board this flight to Denver before the doors were shut, and got two of the very last seats on this very full plane. The seats were surprisingly comfortable and I probably had six inches of legroom in front of me between me and the next seat.
It would be the only comfortable flight I was on for the entire trip.
We had the shortest layover in Denver I have ever had for any flight I've ever made, anywhere -- 41 minutes. That meant that if the flight into Denver was delayed, or if there were any complications whatsoever, we'd almost certainly miss the flight to Toronto because we would not be able to board it in time. Luckily, the weather was great and the flight into Denver arrived slightly earlier than expected, though we still had to run to get to the gate and get on the flight to Toronto. As a result, I spent maybe 15 minutes total within the actual Denver airport, didn't pay attention to anything but the gates, and we were again on a plane and into the air -- this time out of the country.
On the flight to Toronto, Daisy pulled up a movie on the screen on the back of the seat in front of her, and with my neck pillow securely on me and around my shoulders, I slept off and on. There's something about airplanes for me -- I don't know if it's the loud drone of the engines or the boredom of not being able to move or really look anywhere but the back of the seat in front of you or what, but on almost every flight now I will sleep for most, if not all of it. Back in the day when I would travel alone, before Daisy, I'd just take my mp3 player and listen to podcasts the entire time (which I would also, generally, fall asleep to as well).
The flight to Toronto was the longest of the entire trip -- something like three hours. I slept for most of it, only vaguely aware of the passage of time, as throughout all of this, time had been relative. We'd gone back an hour flying into Denver, and had gone forward two hours flying from Denver to Toronto. My body clock was still telling me it was time to be asleep, as while we were in relative "time limbo" that didn't make a whole lot of sense based on the actual clocks, our body clocks were still running normally.
When we touched down in Toronto we got off the plane and were immediately locked into the area for international arrivals, which didn't allow access to the outer airport areas until we'd gone through customs. I was surprised by the fact that our plane had been full of people, yet it seemed like us and only a few others were actually in the interior ramps/hallways leading to the customs area -- like less than ten or fifteen people total. Did everyone else go through them before us? Were we slow? Or were they all behind us? We didn't know.
After going through what seemed like endless corridors and hallways, we arrived at the customs room -- a giant auditorium-looking room with what seemed to be hundreds of computer kiosks and two guards at the other end. You scanned your passports at the kiosk (if you have a passport, at the bottom of your ID page there's a bunch of scannable letters/numbers, take a look) and you answer about five or six questions on the touchscreen for each passenger. They're simple questions too, questions that don't really apply to many people -- "are you carrying more than $10,000 in cash?" etc. Then once you're done, you go to the other end of the room and the security guards look at the screen to confirm that yes, it's you who scanned in, and they wave you through.
That's it. That's all customs is in Toronto. We were officially cleared to move about the country in less than five minutes from kiosk to door.
As mentioned previously, I've been told for years by multiple people how terrible of an airport Toronto was, and how difficult it was to move through it to get from point A to point B. I will now tell you that for us, this was wholly inaccurate. Toronto was by far the easiest, smoothest airport to travel through for the entirety of our trip. It was large, gorgeously designed, and everything was clearly marked.
We got to our gate to Halifax and found that with the boarding passes we'd been given waaaay back in Omaha, that Daisy and I would not be sitting together again -- she was seated in the row behind me, directly behind me. Eh. No biggie. I was seated next to a war historian on one side who said he flew in and out of Halifax all the time, and on the other side by a thin, gorgeous blonde girl who curled up into a ball in her window seat and passed out for the entire flight. I again dozed off and on myself for the entire flight.
We finally touched down in Halifax in the late afternoon hours. We'd left the house over twelve hours before (by our body clocks, anyway) but by the clock on the wall, it was more like 16 hours or so. And, of course, we didn't know at that juncture if our luggage would arrive as expected, given the rush we were in to get it checked correctly in Omaha.
As an aside, when I was telling a work colleague, one who had lived in Canada for several years, this whole story earlier this week, she said that the running joke with Air Canada was that if you wanted to dispose of a body, check it as Air Canada luggage because it would never be found again. However, our luggage arrived just as we did, with no issues. We grabbed it from the baggage claim and immediately went to get our rental car.
Remember how I mentioned before we'd left that we'd reserved a "full size car" and that it would possibly end up being a Dodge Charger?
It was not a Dodge Charger.
When we got to the rental counter, it was almost a replay of scenes from last summer. They did not have a full size car for us, and the lady at the counter wanted to give us an upgrade to a larger vehicle. Daisy stopped that shit dead in its tracks.
"No," she said. "Give us the next smaller size down if you have it. It only has to fit us and the luggage."
There was a discount for that, because of the price difference between the full size and whatever the size down from that was. Normal? I don't know. We were given an orangey-red, new Hyundai Elantra. This delighted Daisy to an extent because before we'd met, she'd owned a purple Elantra (obviously much older) for several years before it was destroyed in a hailstorm while parked at the airport -- ironically on a trip to Canada much like the one we were currently on. She loved her Elantra when she had it. The equivalent glee would be akin to me renting a car and the rental people giving me a jazzed-up Monte Carlo.
The Elantra was....fine. It wasn't a spectacular vehicle, but it wasn't bad at all. I rather liked it for the most part. Its design cues on the interior left a lot to be desired, though. I liked the seats, but it was much lower to the ground than our car at home, and it was sort of a pain to reach for the console controls, which were also somewhat confusing to learn. We checked it out, made sure it would be adequate for our usage while we were there, and left it there in its parking spot where we knew we'd be able to access it the next morning.
For the night, to avoid a three-hour drive from Halifax to the family homestead, we'd booked a room in the airport hotel, The Alt. The Alt is a fancy, new-ish 15-story hotel physically attached to the airport. Its design is ingenius -- aside from the parking garage itself, and that's only if you have a car in there, you can go directly from your gate to the baggage claim, and from the baggage claim to the hotel lobby/restaurant and up to your room, without having to step outside anywhere. You can do the same if you're flying out, too (we'd find this out again a week later). My guess is that the hotel was constructed this way because of the brutal winters in the Great White North™ -- no need to go outside in that unless you have to.
Anyway.
We checked into the hotel and they asked us if we had a preference for floor or room.
"Not at all," we said. "We're just here for the overnight and there's an elevator."
They put us in a corner room on the 11th floor, a room that had giant windows from floor to ceiling that looked directly out onto the control tower and the runways of the airport -- so we could see all of the flights coming in and taking off maybe 300 yards from us. It was a gorgeous view, a view that looked to what I assumed was the north-northwest, given that the airport is a decent bit north of the city of Halifax proper and all I could see from window to horizon past the airport was wilderness. If we were facing the city, we would likely have seen all of the buildings, lights, and maybe even the ocean on the horizon (given that we were on the 11th floor and pretty high in the air).
The room itself was sparse but adequate. It was much smaller than I expected, but had a high-tech bathroom and a built-in Nespresso coffee maker in a little nook behind the headboard of the bed and to the side. I did not enjoy the styling of the bathroom, and it had a stall shower with no hand-held sprayer. Showers without separate hand-held sprayers are the bane of my existence, and stall showers even more so.
Once we'd gotten into the room and I was finally able to stop running, I took off my shoes and collapsed into the oversized leather lounge chair situated in the corner in front of the windows, and my body physically did not want to move. I tried to move it and it refused.
The lobby restaurant of the hotel had a bar with pizza and other boutique bar foods (cheese sticks, mac and cheese, soups, seafood things, etc) and we'd been told by the car rental checkstand lady that the pizza in that hotel restaurant was to die for. Daisy and I hadn't eaten anything all day, and the kitchen of the restaurant would close in an hour at that point -- the bar would be open for several hours afterwards, but I guess they stopped serving actual food at a certain point. Daisy called down to the restaurant and asked if they had vegan options, or if they could otherwise veganize the normal menu items. They said they could (our first example of seeing, again, how vegan/vegetarian-friendly Canada really is compared to the States).
What we ended up getting was, arguably, the best margherita pizzas we'd ever had and easily the best pizza sauce we've ever had on any pizza from anywhere. With that, a bag of ketchup chips and two bottles of water from the attached hotel shop, it was $80 and worth every single penny.
Returning to the room, we both showered one after another and finally passed out a short while later, at the equivalent of what was like 8pm for our own body clocks but was 10pm Nova Scotia time. We were there, we had arrived safely, we had all of our luggage and rental car, and we had full stomachs. We could finally relax, sleep, and let our vacation begin.
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