Trip Reports - A Thousand Islands, a thousand beverages...




islandcub
Jun 6, 00, 3:57 pm
Well, I exaggerate a little.

Friday June 2, 2000

The alarm goes off at 5:00 am. In my groggy state, I turn it off and go back to bed.

Aaaaah! I woke up at 5:30 and realized my flight is leaving in 45 minutes. I ran through the shower, got dressed (thank heavens I'd picked out my clothes for the next day while packing my suitcase and laptop case!), called for the taxi while pulling on my shoes, and ran to the lobby of the apartment building.

No taxi. At least I had time for a little "aromatherapy". Unfortunately, even by the time I finished the therapy, no taxi. I contemplated calling back, and knew that with my luck, the driver would show up, wait less than the 5 minutes he's supposed to, and leave, so I lit another therapy stick, which did the trick. Off to the airport!

AC8838 YYG-YHZ 0615-0655 seat 8B Dash 8-300

I got to the airport at, oh, 6:00. I checked in and asked to be put on the upgrade list for YHZ-YOW, then went through security and straight out to the plane. There were still stragglers who were too busy chatting in the departures area to get on on time, so I was saved from the glares of other passengers. The flight was half-full and not particularly noteworthy.

On arrival in Halifax I invited a co-worker who was also on the flight in with me to the Maple Leaf Lounge, where I chugged a large orange juice. I also checked about my upgrade; hmm, seems the request wasn't in the computer system. Oh, well, I chalked it up to the early hour, got my upgrade confirmed, and headed back downstairs for another cigarette.

AC613 HFX-YOW 0800-0842 seat 2D DC-9

Up, up, and away! Business was full, and the back probably 3/4 full. Breakfast was a choice of mushroom omelet with diced ham, hash browns, a roll, fruit, and juice or the "continental" breakfast of cereal, yogourt, fruit, and juice. Everybody I could see had the hot breakfast since everything in the cold one was available in the MLL, which made me wonder why they offered it at all. There was a cold white roll on my plate, but I took a chocolate croissant from the proffered basket instead, ignoring the raisin scones. Mmm, chocolate for breakfast! If they'd had Cocoa Frosted Flakes in the cold breakfast, I'd have had it instead.

The flight was a little late leaving, but arrived on time. However, the bags took forever to come out, so I didn't leave the airport until after 9 am. Into a taxi, and I asked the driver to take me to our new downtown office. He asked me how I wanted to get there, and I told him whichever way was the fastest. For some reason, he went to the corner down the one-way street from the office and said I should walk, rather than going down the cross-street ahead of the office and turning. *sigh*

Work was swell, it was great, I had lots of things on my plate...uh, ignore that. We went to Festival Japan for lunch (somewhere downtown Ottawa, in the business hotel district). Somebody had booked us a tatami room, but the 9 of us were very packed into there. There was seating for 10 people, but I honestly think that even 10 typically Asian-sized people would have felt cramped. And hot. Nevertheless, the food was good (I had the tempura udon noodle soup).

We were done work by 4pm, but I was unable to contact my ride out to the country for a group weekend getaway (I'd given him our fax number instead of our phone number; he had disconnected his answering machine), so I went shopping and then got back to the office at 5pm, at which time I finally reached him and arranged for pickup. He pulled up 20 minutes later and I was off to live the life of a country squire in Rockport, Ontario.

More tomorrow!


islandcub
Jun 7, 00, 10:44 am
Friday June 2, continued

We picked up another friend and headed out of Ottawa and down the highway, catching up on, goss...uh, news along the way. This was Al's second trip to Rockport today; he'd originally driven down with two other people (there was some confusion about who was carpooling with whom and departure times and whatnot). As it turned out, this was a good thing, because when he pulled up to pick up Dan, Dan was waiting with his kayak, which he had not bothered to tell anybody about. Luckily, Al was driving a sport utility vehicle, and not the car he had originally planned.

We passed the time telling our favourite and not-so-favourite Dan stories and eventually arrived in Rockport.

Rockport Boathouse Country Inn
19 Front St., Rockport Ontario K0E 1V0
(613) 659-2348/1-800-584-2592
rockport@boathouse-heritage.on.ca
http:/www.boathouse-heritage.on.ca

The manager of the inn, Erich, is a friend of ours (his parents own the place), so (1) we got a good deal on the rooms and (2) this cannot be construed as an objective description. Nevertheless, I had a great time. My room, #5, shared a balcony with #4, but this didn't bother me since our group (from Ottawa, Rochester, Utica, and li'l ol' me from Charlottetown) had every single room in the inn. I could also go down the steps from the balcony and feed the koi in the pond.

Supper that night was in the restaurant, where I had the special (green salad, chicken with mushroom cream sauce, rice), linzertorte (did I mention that Erich's family is Austrian?), and shared a bottle of Alsatian Riesling with friends.

The evening was spent drinking, smoking, and socializing, in our rooms, in the bar, and in Erich's apartment. The boys had lugged along a remarkable amount of beer, and I also opened up a bottle Oregon Gewürztraminer. A festive time was had by all, which led to...

Saturday June 3

I got up very late that morning, missing breakfast. By the time I struggled through the shower and such, it was well past noon. Perfect time for a cocktail, so I opened a half-bottle of Veuve Cliquot and revived. Several of us were hungry by then, and decided to drive over to Brockville for lunch and shopping. When we got there, much of King St. was blocked off, seemingly both for road repair and for a sidewalk sale/festival sort of thingy. We passed a number of "Chinese and Canadian Cuisine" restaurants, and finally went into:

New Wave Restaurant
200 King St. W., Brockville Ontario

The restaurant was just about empty. I started talking to the owner, who seated us, in Toisan, a dialect of Chinese, and things went swimmingly from there. The food was standard small-town westernized Chinese food (I had wonton soup and the chicken livers stir-fried with peppers - though it was mostly vegetables other than peppers). When we eventually left, we didn't get bills; the owner charged us $5 each, no matter what we ate (and we all ate more than $5 worth of food). I really must thank my parents for teaching me Toisan!

(The immigration patterns from China to North America are handy to know. The first wave came from Toisan and other areas around Canton, so Toisan is generally spoekn by old-timers here. Cantonese was spoken by the second wave of immigrants, both from the mainland and from Hong Kong. The most recent wave has been dominated by Mandarin speakers, from all over China and Taiwan.)

Shopping consisted of looking at all the tourist-oriented stuff in the various shops on King St. We actually bought stuff at the Army-Navy Surplus Store (although we didn't buy the canned mare's urine, none of us having made plans to go moose hunting), although I was tempted by the Nerf-disk-firing space gun at one shop.

Back to Rockport, where we found the rest of the guys sitting on the patio between the balconies and the koi pond. I popped open a bottle of rosé Côtes-de-Ventoux and we all had a great time watching some of us insist that they weren't getting a sunburn.

Dinner was in the bar that night; I had the house pâté, salad, and blue-rare t-bone steak with baked potato and corn on the cob. I demonstrated to everybody how to eat corn on the cob with a fork. Right after dinner, several people left to go take care of their now obvious-to-even-them sunburns and were not seen for the rest of the night; the rest of us carried on much as we did the night before, with the addition of me and a friend from Utica making fun of each other's supposed lack of macho for not chugging down double bourbon and Cokes. This stopped when he started chugging one down and felt a strong urge to desist (no disaster, mind you!).

Sunday June 4

I was up earlier, since I had to pack. Nevertheless, I barely made it to breakfast, after which goodbyes and such were said and we loaded up the vehicles. I rode back with a friend from Rochester who was heading on to Ottawa. When we got there, I called to see if I could switch my flights to leave that night at 5pm, but no connecting flight to Charlottetown had any seats available, so I stayed with friends who had been in Rockport

As we were all exhausted, we all skipped the beer bust at our favourite bar; instead we guzzled leftover beer and whiskey from the weekend, not to mention a bottle of Sancerre and an Alsatian Gewurztraminer. Eating supper at home was a good idea, since we all felt like sleeping within minutes of putting down our forks.

Rudi
Jun 7, 00, 10:55 am
great report. Thank You.


islandcub
Jun 7, 00, 12:56 pm
You are most welcome, Rudi.

Okay, the final chapter:

Monday June 5

Up and at 'em! Rush rush rush, everybody get up, get showered, get dressed, we're on a schedule! No, wait, my flight's not until 11:50 am, dang...

So I had a leisurely breakfast, bid my hosts goodbye, played with their bulldog Winston, and eventually called a taxi to take me to the airport. On arrival I tried to check in using the electronic kiosk, until I realized that the kiosk couldn't handle requests for upgrade, so I ended the transaction after selecting better seats for myself.

At the counter I checked in, requested an upgrade from Montreal to Charlottetown, found out that it showed as 606 miles and thus required 2 Canadian Airlines white upgrade stickers, offered to use a blue sticker (one way), and found out that the rules on Air Canada for blue stickers are different from those on Canadian - Air Canada applies the international fare class rules, even if the flight is in North America. *sigh*, never mind, since I've only the one white sticker left.

Next errand: I'd brought one of my hosts' suitcase with me to Air Canada baggage services as it had gotten damaged on his trip to Chicago the previous weekend (serves him right, since I couldn't go!) and he couldn't get to the airport before the 7-day notification period was up. The clerk at the counter said that the tear at the seam was not Air Canada's responsibility since the stitching had given way. *sigh* No dice, so according to my instructions I tossed the suitcase. It was an ugly colour, anyway.

I chatted with three CP concierges and headed to the Empress Lounge, which was nice and quiet, where I had a bowl of chicken noodle soup and read the newspapers before heading to my flight.

AC8872 YOW-YUL 1150-1225 5B Dash 8-100

I'd had an empty seat beside me when I checked in, but by boarding time somebody had taken or been assigned 5A. I also checked the previous flight to Montreal, which had been delayed, but since the aircraft was th4 same type and the plane wasn't in yet, I saw no reason to change.

Regular service, just like Charlottetown-Halifax. We arrived at one end of the old terminal at Dorval, which I have always hated and will always hate. I had an hour layover, but it would take at least 10 minutes to go to the junction, take the escalator downstairs, take the moving sidewalk to the new terminal, go back upstairs, and go into either airline's lounge, so I didn't bother, instead going to the snack bar with the smoking area (one of the only benefits of the old terminal, smoking areas everywhere, has, er, gone up in smoke, but having every smoker crowded around the snack bar which is right at the top of the escalator everybody smoker or non, comes up is not the solution!).

AC8878 YUL-YYG 1330-1605 9C BAe 146-200

No pre-boarding; apparently since nobody was in business class they decided to ignore elite status. Miracle of miracles, 9A stayed empty. Of course I forgot that rows 7, 8, and 9 have the smaller overhead bins, but luckily I'd brought my smaller laptop case, having tired of being told it was too big despite the fact that it's smaller than the template. I settled in and read my science fiction novel. Standard snack service but as the plane is larger than a CRJ, we got a choice of something other than mini-juices. The flight was uneventful and on time, and on arrival I hopped in a cab to go to the office for a couple of hours. Surprise! On Friday I'd been told the cab fares had gone up, but on the return the driver told me that coming from the airport cost $2.50 more than going to the airport. Yeah, right, I told him that what I had was what I had, but if he wanted to stop at a banking machine (near a phone) I could check it out and get more money out. The cab driver relented. This is the same driver who rear-ended another car (he was driving too fast and tailgating) last winter while I was in the car. Time for me to make another complaint to the company, I think.

So now that I've finally finished writing this trip report, of course I'm heading out on another trip tomorrow morning. Stay tuned for the next episode of As the Engine Turns!

Travellin_man
Jun 7, 00, 3:38 pm
Islandcub,

I wonder how many times we have sat in the lounges together in YOW?

Interesting report - I am disturbed by your blue sticker comment. Anybody else had this confirmed elsewhere? We CP Golds are really getting the shaft.....

islandcub
Jun 13, 00, 9:41 am
Possibly a zillion times, Travellin_man; obviously I'm going to have to buy some FT luggage tags! In the meantime, I usually post my travel itineraries in the appropriate forum...

As far as the blue stickers: the elite check-in counter showed me a sheet of paper with the rules printed on it. *sigh* But who knows what the rules will be a week from now?



SEO by vBSEO 3.3.2