Day 1 (November 10, 2022): And we’re off!

For the last dozen or so years, our annual Remembrance Day weekend jaunt south has been something we’ve looked forward - both as a mid-Fall break amidst the madness of work, and also as an opp to take a deep breath before the Christmas madness kicks in. When I booked this trip last New Year’s Eve, it seemed like an eternity away. And given the uncertainty of Covid, we didn’t know if it would even come to fruition. But alas, departure day is here!

We were up waaaay before dawn this morning. I did a 6AM > 2PM work day and then left to pick Pam up at school. It was her school choir’s premier today, at the school’s Remembrance Day ceremony. So when she got in the car at 2:30, we looked at each other and both did a huge sigh of relief that the work day was behind us. By 3PM we were at the airport, through security, and sitting in the Maple Leaf Lounge for a bite of lunch - neither of us had eaten all day, so we were famished. 

The flight to Toronto was packed, but it was quite comfortable. (Check out the legroom in the picture below!)  The only problem is that the flight was half an hour late.  Our scheduled connection only included an hour in Toronto to get through US security and customs, so chop half an hour off that window, and you can only imagine the mad scramble. We ran like we were only 20 years old, but our 55 year-old bodies did NOT appreciate it, let me tell you. We don’t know how we did it, but we somehow made it through all the stages of security and customs and got to the United Airlines gate with seconds to spare, both of us on the verge of cardiac arrest. (And both thinking, “We are getting too old for this!”). 

The flight to Newark was quick, early and uneventful, and before too long we were at the Fairfield Inn near Newark Liberty Airport. We fell into bed not long after  arriving and went right to sleep. Two flight legs down, one to go tomorrow morning. 

Air Canada Airbus A321, which is a stretch version of the more common Airbus A320, painted in the Star Alliance livery.

About to take off from Halifax after a long day with a very early start.


Seat 30A, behind the emergency exit row on the Airbus A321: an insane amount of legroom!

Sunset, somewhere over New Brunswick. 

The night-lit towers of North York - Toronto’s second central business district.  Ever since I was a kid and took my first flight though Toronto, flying over the GTA has always amazed me: the flatness of it and the expensiveness of it - it just goes on forever.  We have avoided Toronto like the plague in 2022, given all the issues related to Pearson Airport. So it was with some fear and trepidation that we did a connection here today.  Fortunately, it worked well.