The Big Trip East: Day 11 & The Long Road Home

Do you remember the old Andreas Bocelli/Sarah Brightman song, Time to Say Goodbye?

Good, then we both have it stuck in our heads now.

It was the last day. Time to head back to BC and regular life. We always leave with mixed feelings. It's so nice to get home to our own beds and our own routines. But it's sad knowing that Andrew's family is so far away and we don't really know when we'll see them again.

Even so, I wanted an early start on the road. Traveling makes me anxious and I like to leave with lots of time.

We made good time, so we stopped at the shopping mall in Vaughan. It's huge, and I've only been once. We wanted to visit the Bass Pro shop again.

 Though once we'd gotten our photo ops, we really didn't have any reason to stay.

 We split up. David and I headed straight to the Lego store/Discovery Centre.

We had a few moments to play with the props.

 Some of us were more into it than others.

Then we had time for a quick lunch before heading to the airport.

Let me tell you. The Toronto Airport is hell to find. I don't know if it's because Andrew tries to avoid the toll roads, or what. But we always seem to have trouble finding our way there. We cut it pretty close this time.

And then. Oy. They wouldn't let me see a human to check in. Usually I'm okay with that, in fact, I usually print everything before we leave and avoid the people entirely. But there had been some problems with our tickets on the way out, and the agent in Vancouver had warned me we might experience some trouble on the way home too. So I asked if we couldn't please go through a peopled check in. So they sent us to the computers with a person.

Which should have been fine, except that way your checked luggage doesn't get weighed. And then, when we went to check in our ONE BAG, the automated bag checker kept saying our bag was 20 lbs overweight. Considering it wasn't packed with anymore than when we came, I argued that was impossible.

Let's just say it wasn't a pleasant experience. Andrew finally came looking for me and told the lady that we weren't going to use that scale anymore, and to let us use a different one. She directed us to the broken scale (as in, lights not working, out of order sign) and then ignored us. So we waited for one of the other machines and hey. My suitcase passed on that scale perfectly. By this time I was dripping in sweat, completely frustrated and not a little ticked off. Still, I tried to be human. I touched the woman's arm and said, I think your scale is broken. She shrugged me off and turned her back.

*sigh*

Aside from that experience, Toronto is a great airport. I quite like flying through there.

WestJet is removing their seat back screens. I do not like having to use my iPhone to watch movies (and the app didn't work on Lizzie's tablet, an we couldn't test it to see if it did until we were in the air and unable to do anything about it), but I do LOVE the extra legroom. So I think I can tolerate bringing a book.

I really love my home.