Today is our big travel day, from rural Rivière-Ouelle back home to Oakland. After breakfast and a final cleanup, we go downstairs to the shop to give the owner the keys. I bought a nice pair of earrings for Madeleine, headed down the river road. It was about 90 minutes to Quebec-Ville, with a few drops of rain now and then. We found a nice spot on the river walk for a picnic lunch and watched some boats going by. It was a quiet peaceful spot yet only 20 minutes from downtown. On the way to dro to off the car, we found a little post office in a pharmacy so w could mail the postcards to family in the US. The return of the car went very smoothly … quite different than when the Hilton was the media center for the Pope’s visit a few days before, when it was filled with media and security.
We walked to the #11 bus and took it to the train station. We had plenty of time, and boarded the train for Montreal, and again there was some rain. At the Montreal station, our friend Matt picked us up with his partner Jacqueline. They had scoped out a restaurant near our budget airport hotel where we’d be for a grand total of of12 hours. The Italian restaurant was decent, great, but most important was having the time to talk and also to meet Jacqueline. It turned out that he knew the fellow with the beautiful dog who we met in Kamouraska, through public policy work … truly a small world. Back to the el, which was fill3 with kids staying there during a soccer tournament. For some reason, there was a security guard on the second floor at all hours, near the door …a little unusual. I tried to check in online, got Barney his seat but then the section was full and I could. Get a seat. After 30 minutes on some sort of chat with a person who kept saying she could not do anything and refused to get me to a supervisor, I called and got the same run around, except this time the person at least said I could fix it at the airport.
We rose early, had a simple breakfast downstairs (standard budget hotel style) and got a cab to the airport. We gave him a nice tip, and Barney pulled all the Canadian coins from his pocket and gave him those as well. Check-in was fine and security was smooth, but we were told we could not get my seat there, we had to do it in Newark. Grrr. We went through customs there, and we were so lucky to have the Global Entry cards. We went right through and on to our gate. The hundreds of other folks were in an hours-long line, about 100 per line and it snaked back and forth at least 12 times. I’ve never seen so many people running for their flights, it must have been a terrible backup. Relatively small plane, there was a bird strike so a bit of delay, otherwise fine, and we headed right for the United Club. The one in that part of the terminal was huge .. you could walk for five minutes end to end. We found a table, had some late lunch, and found some nice chairs to relax while we had a 4-hour layover.
Exactly 90 minutes before the flight we left the club for the gate to get my seat. 15 minutes later the agent showed up, I explained to him that when the flight time was changed my prior reserved seats were removed, and now my husband had a seat and I did not. He almost moved us to business class but instead moved someone else and we were back together in Premium economy or whatever it is called. It was a backed flight and they were offering cash to folks to take a later flight, we were already getting home late so did not want to delay further. The flight was fine (we stayed masked on both flights) arrived early, we got our stuff and got a Bart train home. Walking home in the dark we were both tired … it was more like 12:30am since we adjusted to East coast time. And it was a little sad walk in the door, no sweet doggies to greet us. We are still so sad thinking about the loss of Bucky and Anna. Tomorrow we are back to work, then unpack and do laundry. We are fortunate to have had the chance to take this wonderful trip, and stay healthy while traveling.
No comments:
Post a Comment