July 13 : Home

It is the final day of what has been a fantastic vacation. We’ve been gone for 4 weeks, and I can say there have been very few, if any, disappointments. The exceptions being the travel by air.

I should have realized it was going to be a long day returning home right from the start. At the hotel, I asked the clerk for a printout of my bill. He looked totally bewildered and after viewing the screen for about 5 minutes, finally informed me that the printer was broken but he could email me the bill. I’m not sure if it was my Canadian accent or his inability to understand English, but it took another couple of minutes for him to get my email address correct.

We were staying at a nice hotel near Terminal 4 in Heathrow. What we didn’t imagine was that it is a 30 minute bus ride from Terminal 4 to Terminal 2. With 5 terminals, I just can’t imagine how big this airport truly is.

Once inside the terminal, we got our baggage tags and went to drop off our luggage at the Air Canada counter. While waiting in line, we were accosted by an attendant, who couldn’t speak English well enough for this job. She kept asking what type of passport we had. I told her we had a regular passport as I wasn’t aware of any other type, to which she would again what type of passport we had. Finally, I realized she wanted to know what the nationality of our passport was. I guess there is no Punjab for nationality. She then asked to see our ArriveCan receipt, or at least I think that was what she asked.

Then came the wait as we marched to the security gate. The line twisted around the terminal and it took about 40 minutes to get through security.

As usual, Air Canada has the most inconvenient departure gates of any airline. It was a 15 minute hike to get from the food court to our departure gate. Here we queued up to join another queue to get on the plane.

Our departure was delayed by an hour because some idiots had loaded their luggage onto the plane and then decided not to show up. This meant baggage handlers had to go into the luggage compartment and remove their bags. Hopefully it will takes days for them to get another flight.

We were on the plane for about 8 hours, and I swear it will take days for our bodies to recover from the ordeal. Going through customs and border security was a breeze at Pearson. We were on the highway heading home in about an hour.

All in all, I wouldn’t have missed this vacation for the world.