Flight at 10:40 am; arr YYZ 1:40 pm; Fui Ling had insisted that she wanted to take
us to the airport. We had originally
planned on ordering a taxi. We got up
pretty early in order to get ready to leave the house at 6:45 am to drive to
Gatwick. Fui Ling said the trip should
not take more than 40 minutes if traffic was okay and at that time in the
morning, it should be fine. But we
decided to give ourselves a few extra minutes anyway as we had to get our VAT
rebate forms stamped at Customs before mailing them and checking in. I was the first one downstairs and had to
turn the alarm off. Irene and I had our
usual breakfast and then Irene and Florine went back upstairs to move the
suitcases down. Fui Ling wanted me to
update the Tseu family tree with our information so I did that to the best of
my knowledge. I could not quite remember
Danny and Kenny’s Chinese names though.
After that, we packed the Range Rover and left for the airport. Fui Ling
had to negotiate a very narrow bridge, which left a couple of inches between
the side mirrors and the post when she took a short cut to the main road. There
was a very pretty pub, The Anchor, just past the bridge. Traffic was good, and
we got there with lots of time to spare.
Fui Ling pulled up and helped us unload from the Range Rover. We said our goodbyes, got a couple of
trolleys and headed into the terminal.
Fui Ling took such good care of us during our stay with her and we hope
that we would be able to meet up again in the near future.
We found the Air Transat check in
counter and asked a couple of people manning the line if we should go to
Customs before checking in. One was not
very sure and the other thought we should.
We were in the priority check in line so we asked at the counter and the
woman said we should go to Customs first.
So, off we went to look for the Customs office, which was one floor up
from the check in counter. We only had
to wait a couple of minutes before the Customs officer was available. She was a very nice young woman and we chatted
a little about our trip and the places we had been to while she was going
through our rebate forms. She
recommended we visit the Isles of Scilly if we ever came back to the Cornwall
area. She said she was planning on a
visit to the isle in August. It is known
for its warm weather, bird watching and sub-tropical plant and heavily
dependent on tourism. The islands were
designated as an Area of Outstanding Natural Beauty in 1975. After we all got
our forms stamped, we found the mail box and then went back down to the Air
Transat check in counter. The lady
checked all the bags in and did not say anything about being overweight –
perhaps our 6 suitcases were within the limit when taken together. After checking in, we found seats in a lounge
to wait for our flight gate to be posted.
I went into a duty free whiskey store and bought a sampler pack of
Tomintoul whiskies. When our gate was posted, we made our way over to it and
then sat down and waited for the boarding call.
We did not have to wait very long for them to board the Option Plus
passengers. We were midway in the plane,
just in front of the wings on the right side.
I managed to watch 3.5 movies on the flight back to Toronto. It was daytime and I was more awake than
during the overnight flight out to London.
I watched Guilt Trip, This is 40, Happiness Never Comes Alone (in French
with English subtitles) and about the first half of Parental Guidance. The food
was boring – beef stroganoff with maybe one piece of beef. We got our bottle of sparkling wine after
take off, a snack, gin and tonic and then red wind with lunch. We also got a slice of pizza before
landing. We had Captain Picard again,
and he landed the plane ever so gently.
The man is good.
After we landed, we had to show our
passports to a couple of CBSA agents just outside the ramp from the plane. We
were not sure who he was looking for, but they seemed to be questioning younger
men more closely. From there, we went into the customs hall where we had a
choice of using the automated machines or talking to a live agent. Irene and I opted for the machines just for
the experience while Florine went to line up for a live agent. She had goods to
follow and needed advice and a form.
Irene and I had to see a live agent after we got a copy of our customs
form back from the machine.. The agent
wanted to know what food we had brought back with us – we had a few bottles of
mustard, candy and cookies. We were not
asked how much alcohol we had with us, which was disappointing as I had
calculated that between the 2 of us, we had 2.25 litres of whiskey and assorted
little bottles that we did not drink in the plane and about 30 cl for
Florine. The agent made a note of our
food items and then we were free to go.
We handed in our customs card and went to the luggage claim area.
We met up with Florine and went to get
our suitcases, which did not take long to appear. We loaded them onto 2 trolleys and went
outside to wait for Dureen. I tried to
call her but could not get service under all the concrete. I was finally able to call and got her voice
mail. I then sent her a text message.
Then Dureen comes out from the airport.
Apparently, we had just missed each other – I guess she was going into
the arrival’s lounge while we were making our way out. I had scanned the crowd when we came out of
Customs but did not see her. We went
over to the parking garage, loaded up the Journey and went home. I think I might have put my journal on one of
the suitcases when I dug my cell phone out and then forgot about it. It has probably been reduced to pulp by now
on the pickup lane at terminal 3. If I
did not lose it at terminal 3, then I probably lost in outside the whiskey
store in Gatwick. Oh well.
No comments:
Post a Comment