Departing Ottawa

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Well, if a day of travel, making my way to the UAE, were ever to go wrong, this was going to be that day!

Aside from the good start to the day -- made it to the airport early -- nothing subsequent to this appeared as if was going to work in my favour.

My Ottawa-Montreal leg was delayed for starters because of maintenance problems. Very well! Air Canada put me on another flight but the Montreal flight to Munich was also delayed. To make matters worse, we couldn't fly into Munich in any case because the whole airport, arrivals and departures, were cancelled because of freezing rain. We were diverted to Stuttgart goodness knows to what end exactly. Would we be forced to then fly to our final destinations from there or did we still have to go through Munich. Nonetheless, we re-fueled -- it took ages, more than 1 hour sitting in our hot, uncomfortable seats, happy for the bit of water we were given to help clear the parched dry taste in our mouths -- I hadn't even brushed my teeth. Tried to make another landing at Munich, for sure later than 2:30 pm and nowhere near 10:30 am as we were scheduled.

I have to admit though that Lufthansa puts on a pretty good spread. Were wined (double-scotch and dined (seafood). All this to say that any plans I had to head into downtown were looking questionable. I was now tired and not in very good humour. I had resolved myself to pretty much relaxing and reading to while away the remaining afternoon and evening.

My niece in UAE, Kimberly was going to be sending me an electronic copy of my visa and it was indeed in my email. Downloaded it and put it on my iPhone also just in case; loaded a copy on to a USB stick as well.

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Photos

UAE Visa
Electronic visa, eventually printed form obtained on arrival