Days 14 and 15- Rest and Airports

---

My apologies for putting two days together in the same post again, it’s just that day 14 was incredibly uneventful. It was our last day in Banff, and our first day not skiing in five days, so we had a nice rest day. This consisted of sleeping for most of the day, watching tv, quiet walks, and planning. We went out for dinner at Banff Ave Brewing Company where they had $8 steins, so we took advantage of that. We didn’t realise until we got home that it was almost midnight and we still had to pack, so we were up until about 1am.

Andddd then we had to wake up at 5am to get the two hour bus to Calgary airport, where we ended up being super early for our 11:30am flight to Toronto. We wasted the time away reading, chatting etc, but we were so happy time was finally up when we got to board.

Andddd then the plane sat on the ground for ages. After an hour of not moving, the captain finally let us know that there was a problem with the transponder, and it would either be a 10 minute fix or we’d have to swap planes. 40 minutes later (!!) the captain announced that the plane was now broken, and we would have to head to the WestJet concierge to organise another flight. So, we all packed up our things and left the plane. There was a guy near us who had been asleep the whole time and woke up when everyone was getting off, and he looked at his watch and said, “well that was quick”. The man next to him had to tell him that we hadn’t even left yet, we were nowhere near Toronto. His face was priceless.

So we headed off the plane over to concierge with every single other person on the full flight, and since Adam and I had been sitting right at the very back we ended up at the very back of the line too. I held our place while Adam went to go get us some food, and while he was gone people in the line started leaving. I found out that it was because they’d all received emails from WestJet with the new flight they’d been put on. So when Adam got back we checked his emails and they’d put us on a new flight, which is great, but it was a connecting flight through Edmonton that would get us to Toronto at 12:30am, which is not so great.

Adam then called WestJet to see if there was any other flight we could get on (we’d been so excited for our Friday night out in Toronto!) and they said there was one other flight available, it would still get us there at 12:30 but it was direct instead of connecting. However they also said we needed to talk to concierge to get that fixed.

SO we waited in line, talked to concierge, and they booked us on a 6:30pm flight direct to Toronto. It was currently 1:30pm. They did give us $15 meal vouchers, so I guess that’s a positive.

We spent the day stuck inside the airport. Adam’s phone died and all our chargers were in our checked luggage, so I had to use mine very little so that we could actually find our way to the Airbnb when we got to Toronto, so the day was spent reading, playing sudoku, and walking around aimlessly.

An hour before the flight we went to Chili’s and used our meal vouchers to buy Chili, salad and mango iced tea, and at 6:30pm we were FINALLY on a 3.5 hour flight to Toronto. We couldn’t believe we’d woken up at 5am for a 6:30pm flight.

And it doesn’t stop there, folks. When we got to Toronto it was 12:30am, and our luggage took an especially long time to get out so by the time we got to the train station it was almost 1:30am. There are three train stations for Toronto airport, through which the train goes from one to the other to the other, and then comes back the other way. The final station on the right is the only one that has other trains that go to the city. We did not know this. We got on at the middle station and the train went left, and we then realised at the left stop that it was the last one on the line so we got off. We were then incredibly confused, but some locals told us we had to get back on and go to the right. Soooo we got back on five minutes later, got to the right train station to get a different train to the city, and then discovered that the last train to the city was 12:30am.

We felt totally defeated by this point. We got a taxi and finally made it to the Airbnb at 2:30am, but we weren’t tired. We went to a 24 hour convenience store near the place and got shampoo and ice cream, and eventually went to bed at around 4:30am. Safe to say our first day in Toronto won’t be an early one.

---