Tag Archives: Toronto

Day 1 – Leaving Toronto

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Like most of our vacations, our journey to Switzerland began at Pearson Airport in Toronto. We like to take non-stop flights wherever possible, however, there are no non-stop flight options between Toronto and Geneva. While this means that we will unfortunately have the added time of a connecting flight, it does open up more options in the choice of airlines. So instead of flying our usual choice of Air Canada Business Class, we decided to splurge a bit and fly First Class with Lufthansa, connecting in Munich.

The trip began with the usual stop for a late lunch in the Maple Leaf Lounge.

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When it was time to board, a Lufthansa representative came to the lounge to take us to the aircraft. The gate area was very busy and chaotic, but we skipped the familiar zones 1 through 6 boarding lines, and they opened up a special lane and escorted us down the jet bridge and onto the aircraft.

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The First Class cabin was cozy, with only 8 seats. The seats were spacious, with lots of storage space and offered nice views with 4 windows in each suite. Here we are getting settled in for the flight.

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20150829_171430We were given our amenity kits, slippers and pyjamas for the flight, and were offered pre-flight drinks and snacks. Shortly after take-off, the caviar cart made the rounds before they started appetizers. Here’s a photo of one of the menu pages.

Here are the appetizers.

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And finally the dessert cart!

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After dinner, we finished up our movies and then got ready for bed. After returning from the washroom to change and freshen up, the flight attendants had our beds made up.

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We let the flight attendants know that we would be skipping breakfast, in order to get as much sleep as possible. Since we had a 3 hour connection in Munich, there would be lots of time to get a shower and a nice breakfast in the lounge upon arrival. While the bed was comfortable enough, with plenty of leg and elbow room (unlike the Business Class pods on Air Canada which tend to be a little narrow at the feet), it was difficult to get a really great sleep, given the time of day. Our flight left Toronto around 5:45 and arrived in Munich about 8 hours later, which meant we were trying to get to sleep from about 8PM eastern time, which is a little too early.

Day 1 – Leaving Toronto

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Today was such an uneventful day, it probably doesn’t even warrant its own blog entry.

We flew out of Toronto into Zurich on an overnight flight, so after driving to the airport in the afternoon, we checked in for our flight, stopped into the Maple Leaf Lounge for dinner, and boarded our flight.

Here we are arriving at the International Maple Leave Lounge at YYZ.

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And after an hour or so in the lounge, we proceeded to the gate to board the flight.  It was particularly crowded in the gate area, so the lounge was a welcome oasis.

Here is Nadine getting settled in her pod.

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The flight was scheduled to depart at 6:10 PM and arrive in Zurich at 7:50 AM the next morning, which is 7 hours and 40 minutes of travel time.  Therefore, if I was to have any hope of enjoying our first day in Paris, I was going to need almost all of that flight time to get some rest.  Shortly after take-off, I decided to skip dinner and try to get some sleep early.

Day 24 – Long Flight Home

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With the 8-hour time difference between Antananarivo and Toronto, January 8 would turn out to be a 32-hour day.  Our total travel time would total about 30 hours!

On board the Air Madagascar flight from Tana to Paris, they fed us a nice meal, I took a couple of sleeping pills, and tried to get as much sleep as I could.  I think I may have slept for a couple of hours, but I don’t think I slept very soundly.  Next time, I going to have to fly first class, or ask the doctor for a really strong prescription sleep aid.  I just can’t get any sleep on these sardine cans airplanes.  In total, the flight from Tana to Paris was about 12 hours in the air–far too long to sit in one cramped place.  However, as air travel goes, I found Air Madagascar to be a very nice airline, and I would definitely fly with them again.

At long last, we arrived back in Paris at Charles de Gaulle dump toilet airport.  At this point, we were almost half-way through our long travel day.  We got off the plane, and walked along a series of hallways for what seemed forever.  As it turns out, I’m not the only one who thinks this airport resembles a toilet.  One of the other passengers walking along these long hallways, actually went over to the railing and used the airport for one!  I’m so glad the airport lived up to the nickname I gave it when we passed through here a month earlier.

For our next trip back to Madagascar, I’m going to try hard to find a routing that doesn’t take me through this cesspool of an airport.  I’ve seen all I want to see of Charles de Gaulle airport, Paris and France.

After a long walk through the airport hallways, we arrived at immigration.  Since we were meeting a connecting flight to Canada, it would have seemed much simpler if we could have been routed through some sort of International Transit process to bypass this mess, but that’s not how they do things here.  We had to line up to clear French immigration for our 3-hour stay here, claim our baggage, leave the secured area to find the Air Canada check-in desk, and go through the whole airport check-in process again.  French efficiency at it’s best!  I think I may have referred to that in an earlier blog entry when we passed through this crap hole last month?

Anyway, we made it through the check-in process, our flight was slightly delayed, and we still had an hour or two to kill while we waited for our flight to Toronto.  We found a washroom to freshen up in a bit, and then sat down to have a drink and a pastry.  We managed to find a small box of Tropicana orange juice, about 500 mL I think, for the low price of about 7 Euros!

Once on the Air Canada plane to Toronto, I almost felt home again (even though we hadn’t left Paris yet).  We didn’t have the same new plane that took us from Toronto, but it was still a Boeing 767, but this one seemed to be about my age.  But true to the Air Canada I’ve come to know and love, the plane was full of ugly flight attendants with bad attitudes.  At least they fed us OK meals throughout the flight.  I really didn’t sleep at all on this flight; not even for a minute.  My seat bottom actually seemed to be inclined forward, and it was a challenge to sit comfortably.  I made due sitting on a pillow, since we couldn’t move seats as this flight was also completely full.

Once back in Toronto, we arrived to find huge customs lines.  There must have been 20 to 25 lines, each with about 100 people in it.  It was a slow process, but I suppose that’s to be expected when you arrive home just after the Christmas season when everyone has been taking vacations to warmer destinations.

We finally made it through customs and immigration, and made our way to the baggage claim area.  We were also delayed here when the baggage carousel jammed and it took them about 30 minutes to get it going again.  Eventually, we picked up our bags, claimed my model ship from the fragile baggage claim, and found my father waiting for us.

After arriving home, we dropped our bags, had a nice shower, and relaxed for the rest of the evening, as tomorrow we both had to go to work!

Next time, I think I’ll book an extra stopover in the middle of such a long flight (like we did on the outbound flight), and perhaps an extra day to adjust at home before returning to work (if vacation time allows).