Flying out of Newcastle
2:15am!!!!! what sort of time is that to wake up! Well needs must so up we get, pack the final little bits, lock up the house (using my patented house locking checklist, which is vital if we are ever to actualy leave) and head round to meet Kathryn and Steve.
They are waiting for us outside their house, then we all get to wait for the taxi which not only is 5 minutes late but is also smaller than the people carrier that we'd asked for knowing we had 4 big cases and hand luggage to take. Well somehow the taxi driver manages to fit all 4 cases in the back of the 406 and takes us to the airport.
We get to the airport, tip the driver 10p (clearly i'm not feeling generous today) and check in. We get 2 scones, 1 croisant, 2 teas and coffee and a coke all for the bargain price of £12!!
After some delay while we waited 15 minutes on the bus to take us to the plane we board the plane. Then we have another short delay the pilot appologises telling us they've had a "technical problem".. but doesn't say what... not very inspiring.. When we do eventualy take off the plane shudders as it accelerates down the runway, making it feel like it has a buckled wheel... i'm even less convinced i'm now even less confident :(.
Schiphol
Its p'ing it down in Amsterdam and we have a crap bus driver to the terminal who is clearly going for the "number of passengers who nearly fell over due to excessive braking" record.. I suspect he got very close if he didn't actualy get it! We go to the transfer desk to find out if we can get seats next to each other on the plane to Toronto only to be told the plane is full and that we could have pre-booked our seats up to 30 hours before the flight at www.klm.com. So it looks like we are stuck with the two middle seats in the middle four seats on an 8 hour 747 flight to Toronto.. wonderful! We thank Dawson and Sanderson for telling us about the site and go for something to eat.
Brekky consists of McMuffins... which do little to make me feel less hungry, but I have contributed to making some rich americans that little bit richer so it's not all bad! Steve discovers hit T-mobile GPRS internet connection works so we send a few emails which helps pass a little more time as we're not going into Amsterdam as i'd hoped :(.
Em and I get some 9x9 and 4x4 Su Doku puzzles done before we go to the gate. At the gate we see to our horror that some women is taking on a little hand bag dog onto the plane.. in her bag!!!! What on earth will she do when the dog has to do what a dog has to do?? Idiot!
Flight to Toronto
Kathryn and Emma are horror struck to find that the plane is an older one where you don't get your own personal TV in the back of the seat in front and you have to watch a public screen hanging from the ceiling, but by this time we're all a little knacked so we all fall asleep.
We wake up to discover we've only been aslee for less than an hour.. so it's time for more Su Doku and then lunch (Uncle Ben's sweat and sour chicken according to the packaging) and then it happened.. Somehow (as always happens to me) I ended up talking to the guy next to me. It starts off all very nice, he was a pleasant Texan chap who'd been working in Iraq for a while helping them with water treatment plants and was on his way to meet his family for a holiday in Winnipeg. But after a while and for the rest of the flight, as he got more tired (he'd already been travelling for about 30 hours) his views gradualy got more extreme and dare I say it, a little red-neck-ish!
He started off with house prices and how good a speaker Tony Blair is.. Then went on about how the middle eastern states aren't going to be good at democracy as they've only known a system where the strongest rule. The conversation then passed through the british royal family (he like Diana and William, but not Charles), visited a comparison of nurses pay in the US and UK, then got back to his pet subject.. the Middle east via a chat about tanks. To cut a long (trust me.. it seemed very long indeed) story short, he wanted "white caucasians" to go to the middle east (mainly those states with oil), take over the states, claim the oil, impose christian values and rules and kick out anyone who did not want to live by them... I didn't have the heart to tell him we'd tried this before (the crusades) and it hadn't worked then and probably wouldnt work (or be very popular) if we tried it now.
Needless to say I was relieved when it was time to land... or at least I was till i heard the noise the wheels made along with a tangiable knocking sensation as we met the ground and rumbled to a stop... I'm beginning to wonder how effective KLM's maintenance program is!
Toronto Airport
After a long walk from the plane we get to imigration where the humourless guy quizzes us about where we're going, how much money do we have, what is the purpose of our visit.. all the usual rubbish before letting us go get our bags. We get the bags (and some dirty looks off some guy who is annoyed that I nudged him slightly to get my bag off) and head off to get the car.
The girl at Avis joins my table favourite Canadians when I'm asked for ID to prove i'm over 25, and then gets promoted to my all time favourite Canadians table when we get a free upgrage to a Chevy Tahoe. The Tahoe is an enormous white 5.7l beast (it seems wrong to simply call it a car or a truck) and neither Steve or I can wipe the smiles off our faces.. My spirits are temporarily dampened while I do battle with the automatic gear box lever sticking out the side of the steering column (somehow managing not to launch the beast backwards straight into the wall in the process) but they came straight back up when i discovered the switched for the fully electric seats which you can adjust in 64 million different ways each with a pleasing whir of a motor.. cool! All this and we hadn't even left the parking space yet.
Niagara
The Tahoe is just tooooo much fun to drive, which is a bad thing 'cos i should be looking at the signs, fortunately Steve is so we do end up on the Q.E.W. to Niagara and not some other road leading directly to into the Canadian wilderness and certain death by angry beavers! We quickly find one problem with the car, the CD player won't play CDs so we're stuck listening to dodgy Canandian radio for a while.. till it gets just too annoying even for me and it gets turned off!
We arrive at the hotel, and after walking round it for a second or third time we eventualy found the "lobby", its the big place with a desk in it under the sign saying lobby where in an english hotel we'd have the "reception" and right next to where we'd parked. Doh!
We have a quick shower (though not quick enough to see the guy who cable walked from one hotel to another for some reason) and head out for dinner. We stop at a place called "Co Co's" for a pizza, however it turns out they don't sell pizza which threw a small spanner in the works of that idea, so we opt for steak instead (a potentialy disasterous situation skillfully avioded if you ask me!)
After dinner we walk down to the falls (its dark by this time) and well..... I'm distinctly underwelmed.... its very pretty and the falls are lit up all different colours.... but they just dont seem as big as I'd expected... we get lots of nice pics with them in the background then stroll back up to the hotel, via a gift shop and got some Mini Reese's Pieces which saved the night for me, well they're little crispy coated packets of peanut butter loviliness... who could be less than joyess with that??. We're greeted by some fat american kid who is playing in the lift.. the little shi..... darling presses a button as soon as the door opens, causing it to start closing before we can get in... the speedy intervention of an arm in the door stops it closing and we get in and all glare at the mini american porker, but he seems to be oblivious (probably day dreaming about McDonalds or something) so we get out on our floor, head to the rooms and hit the sack.
A panoramic view with the US falls on the left and the Canadian on the right.