A Hard Day's Flight

I am finally back online at home but I am a long way from home right now. I have come to the States to visit my brother and sister in law for Thanksgiving at the end of this week. I flew via Toronto and had found myself a good deal on the interweb. Unfortunately it didn't all go to plan.

I arrived into the dark and dingy gloom of Heathrow on Friday and joined a queue that was almost out of the door. After twenty minutes I was told that I was in the wrong queue and I should join the economy queue. Which was indeed out of the door. An hour and a half later and I was still in the queue and still couldn't actually see the desk that I was due to check in at. The only thing keeping me sane was texting my long suffering sister with my angst.

I hadn't had breakfast or anything. And only remembered after nearly two hours that I had a bag full of food for my brother so helped myself to a bag of Walkers out of the top of the suitcase. Finally made it to the check in desk and it turned out that the computers were down and everything was being hand written. Slowly.

Dashed through immigration and security and made it into the plane five minutes before the plane was due to take off.

And the loos were still locked. The look of anxiety on my face was enough to convince the cabin crew that I should be allowed special access to the facilities ahead of take off. Fortunately because we then sat on the plane for another hour and forty five minutes before going anyway.

Not good when I only had two hours to make my connection in Toronto.

And because the computers were down we had to pick up all of our luggage at Toronto and check in again.

After going through Canadian immigration. I was stamped into the country for the forty minutes that I had between flights and jumped onto my bag at baggage reclaim and dashed off to the US departures lounge.

Where I was told that my flight was an hour late so blissfully I hadn't missed it. I could relax for the first time since leaving my house in London that morning.

No one could understand why I had my bag with me or why I didn't have a boarding card for my connecting flight. THE COMPUTERS WERE DOWN AT HEATHROW!

Anyway, weirdly, I passed through US immigration in Toronto airport and the guy was so chatty that he forgot he had already stamped my passport between taking my fingerprints and getting me to smile for the camera so he stamped me into the US twice.

I relaxed next to the departure gate for a while. And then longer and longer. Finally we got onto the plane nearly three hours late to discover that they hadn't even loaded the bags yet. Grrr!

Tired and confused I landed in Milwaukee a couple of hours late and several years older.

On Saturday things got better when my sister in law took me to the Macy's sale to buy shoes:)

And yesterday we went to the zoo.

Things have got much better and promise to continue to do so for the rest of the week before the Air Canada ordeal again at the end of the week.