The Amazing Race! Canada/USA Road Trip July-Aug 2016 - Day 1 (Fly to Toronto)

[neilhd]

For those who don't know me then, as Mick Jagger sang, please allow me to introduce myself; I'm a man of wealth and taste.

Well, I'm a man anyway. Or a child in a grown-up body. Whatever.

I'm Neil, 38, Florida nut and chief holiday planner.
I'm joined by my wife, Eleanor (Ele), 39 , and also a Florida nut.
We're together joined by Joe, 10, yet another Florida nut.

Here we are:



This was taken on the travellator up to the terminal at Gatwick.

Our daughter, Jessica (20) didn’t come with us.

I won't go into the complete, non-abridged version of how it all came to be as that is in the Pre-Trip, but this is the brief version:

Didn't know where to go wanted to go to Florida but couldn't afford it saw some cheap flights for Toronto booked them on a whim thinking 12 days would be plenty turned the holiday into a road trip visiting Toronto, Niagara Falls, New York City, Boston, Ottawa and back to Toronto wished we'd booked longer.

And breathe.

If you're wondering where the Amazing Race bit of the trip title comes from, it helps if you've ever watched the US game show The Amazing Race. It sometimes airs over here on some of the slightly more obscure channels, and it's quite simply the best TV show ever. 12 teams of 2 start off in the US and have to follow clues and do challenges in a race quite literally around the world. Those who finish last at the "Pitstop" at each leg of the race is eliminated. The winning team at the end gets a million dollars.

We all love the show and with about 2 weeks to go before we left, Ele decided it'd be a good idea to turn our trip into a version of the show, as it would be cool for Joe. On the show, at the start of each leg teams are given a clue in a tear-strip envelope. (They also pick up more during the day but we limited ourselves to one per day!) These clues are "Route Info" which means travel instructions, or a "Detour" or a "Roadblock" which means a challenge must be completed. They also get a bit of money for each leg. This was a brilliant idea and shows I married a very clever woman. We found some stuff online that we could buy and download to make our own envelops and clues, so we did that, made up all the clues, printed them on card and also printed envelope covers so they look like the ones in the show, and put a bit of money in for each leg of the race. We didn't tell Joe.

They looked like this:



So on leaving day we got up at about 05:15 as my mum (that's her lurking in the background above) was coming at 06:30 to pick us up and drive us to Gatwick.
When she arrived we gave Joe his first clue. He thought it was brilliant! His first challenge was to find the gate number at the airport. He was given $10 for this leg of the race.



We loaded our lovely new Tripp 4-wheel suitcases into her car and were at Gatwick by about 07:15. Joe checked the boards to find our gate. I'd checked in online of course, but there was no queue at the desk and we went straight up and got a printed boarding pass (we had them on our phones anyway), and dropped our bags. We went to security and were straight through with no wait at all. There was one odd woman who was refusing to do as she was told, and the police had to come and deal with her. Some people are just weird. We didn't hang around to see what was going on because we were starving.

We went upstairs to check out the options and decided on Garfunkel's for a good old-fashioned fry-up. I even took a food pic of it:




The big one is mine (obviously!), the eggs on toast is Joe's. Ele and Joe had some lemonade as well:



That's about the only food pic you're going to get unfortunately! It was delicious and fairly expensive (£45 or so for the 3 of us including coffee and Orange Juice).

Ele wanted to do some shopping for girly things like Makeup, so Joe and I retired to Dixons and had a browse in there. Well, he played on a iPad for a bit while I looked at things that I wasn't going to buy. Eventually Ele emerged and I went and got a Starbucks. With that drunk we went to Boots to stock up on sandwiches, drinks, Pringles and sweets. Flight essentials, in other words.

When we came out of there our flight was showing that it was boarding so we headed over. Of course our gate was miles away. I'm pretty sure it was the same gate we had last year with Norwegian. There was a bit of a queue at the gate, and everyone was going straight on the plane. We were on within about 5 minutes.

We had upgraded our seats to extra legroom ones, and I am VERY glad we did. The other rows looked extremely cramped and would have been very uncomfortable indeed. We were fine though - money well spent. The only annoyance was the absolute idiot who designed the call and light buttons. Rather than putting them out of the way they are in a raised bit on the armrest meaning that it's a) very uncomfortable, and b) very easy to press them with your elbow by mistake. As I was in the right-hand seat of 3 in the middle I had one on each armrest as the middle seat had theirs on the right.



They need to find the guy who thought this was a good idea and fire him. Publicly.

Here's us on the plane:



I look a bit stalker-y and I'm not sure why.

The flight itself was fine. There's no seat-back TVs but I knew this, and they stream movies to your iPad on their app which I had installed a few weeks before. The choice wasn't great - a few recent films and lots of old ones, but I found a couple of things to watch (the Steve Jobs movie and The Martian which I'd seen before. Ele and Joe watched Peanuts I think and probably some other things). If you rent their own iPads ($10 each) then they have more up-to-date things pre-loaded onto them. The food was not great - among the worst airline meals I've ever had - but we had snacks. Ultimately, we left 30 minutes late and arrived 15 minutes late but the flight didn't seem too long, so I can't complain too much, especially given the cheap price we paid. If we hadn't had the extra legroom seats you can imagine this trip report containing a lot more swearing! Everyone behind us looked very uncomfortable!

During the flight Joe and I went off to the loo, and as we were doing that they started some food (I think it was the wraps they handed out towards the end). When we got back to our seat, the trolley was just-about in the way. If she moved it back about 6 inches we could get to our seat. But the annoying woman would not do it. 6 inches back was all that was needed, but no. We had to go and stand in the cramped area by the loos for about 20 minutes whilst she made her way down the aisle. I was seriously not impressed with that!

As we came down to land Joe decided he now needed a wee. Of course he hadn't wanted to go when we suggested it a short while earlier. So as soon as the plane landed he ran back to the loo, and when he came out he predictably got stuck there behind everyone standing to get off. So our advantage of being at the front of the plane was completely eroded as we were among the last off.

So we marched off towards immigration, overtaking as many people as possible, and were rewarded with a mercifully short queue. 10 minutes later the hall filled up enormously as I presume another flight or two arrived. So we were just in time. We were processed quickly and went off to get our bags, which took a little while to come. Actually Joe's came immediately, but mine and Ele's took another 10 minutes or so.

We went outside to the limo (slightly nicer taxi) stand and were directed to a taxi that had a boot too small to take our stuff. It was a nice Lexus, but the guy was trying to tell us to sit with a suitcase between us on the back seat. I was more of the opinion that he could get stuffed and I'd just get a taxi that could actually fit the stuff in the boot so I did just that and instead we had a nice comfortable ride in a mini-van. It took about 30 minutes to get to our destination at the Sheraton Centre Hotel.

I paid the taxi and we went inside to check in. The hotel was nice - pretty big. Check in was swift, but we did get told that there was the equivalent of the Notting Hill Carnival going on in Toronto tonight. To that end they gave us wristbands and said that after 9pm we'd only be allowed back in the hotel lobby if we had them on. They also pointed out their noise policy that said any guests making excessive noise during the night will have a charge of $400 added to their room. It was good to hear they were taking these things seriously.

Up to our room (I think we were on the 14th floor) and it was very nice. Here's the view:






I even took some pics of the room, but then completely failed to take any of the other hotels we stayed in, which was stupid of me.




Please excuse the mess!

We were hungry after the rubbish food on the plane so we headed out (it was about 17:30 local time by now) and decided to go into the Eaton Centre as it was very close. There was a food court on the floor below us as we entered that had loads of choice, so Joe and I chose a typically unhealthy place (he had a burger, I had a philly cheesesteak), and Ele tried to be all healthy and had a cajun chicken salad from another place. She didn't like hers as it was too spicy, so had half of mine and I ate her salad as well as I quite liked it, and I have a pathological need to not throw food away that we've bought whilst out.

With that done, we headed back to the hotel and hit the pool for a quick swim. They had forgotten to install pool heating in their outdoor pool so it was quite chilly. Swimming finished, we went back to the room and went to bed. Joe was asleep by about 19:30 and we didn't last much past about 21:00

[Jessika]

Great travel day, looking forward to reading more for tips and ideas.

[Cutiepie]

Good start! Looking forward to reading more as we have booked cheap flights to Toronto next summer

[Melbatb]

What is it with the loo visits on landing

Sounds like the first day went well!

[CrispyA]

Sounds like a good trip - look forward to reading the rest of it

[jocat]

Having been lucky enough to visit New York, Boston, Toronto and Niagara Falls over the last 2 years, I am really looking forward to reading about your road trip - I'm sure it will bring back lots of happy memories.

[neilhd]

Originally Posted by jocat

Having been lucky enough to visit New York, Boston, Toronto and Niagara Falls over the last 2 years, I am really looking forward to reading about your road trip - I'm sure it will bring back lots of happy memories.

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I'm hoping I can meet your standards! Pressure is on now!

[jocat]

Originally Posted by neilhd

I'm hoping I can meet your standards! Pressure is on now!

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Having read your trippies before, I don't think you've got anything to worry about!

[mossyflossy]

Great start Neil. Can't believe how Joe is now all grown up! And you get an A* for your food pic!

[neilhd]

Originally Posted by jocat

Having read your trippies before, I don't think you've got anything to worry about!

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You've just made it worse!