Here we go, the last day which is just exclusively a travel day. So we finished the last second packing of toiletries and such to depart the apartment for a 7:30 bus to Syntagama station to get the 8:18 train to the airport. This would put us to the airport an unheard of 3 hours early (I don’t think that I have ever arrived that early for a flight by choice in my life). But it definitely made sense given what we have seen of Greek airports in general and Liam’s experience the other day.
We did manage to squeeze in one last changing of the guards. Having revived Jordan’s camera after its unfortunate incident with the ground at the Minoan Palace, she was excited to capture one last Greek experience before we went. With the final funny walk viewed, we successfully got the (very busy) train to the airport. Kieran successfully helped us evade the fare checking people as Emily got waved through when she pointed at me holding the ticket.
As expected, the departures hall was absolutely insane. The Air Canada bag dropoff extended out of their area and down several spaces which created a very fun intersection with Turkish Airways who were experiencing a similar problem. Much confusion. Fortunately, thanks to the Stephen Wilkinson aura of his passed Aeroplan 35k, we were able to bypass this and go to the priority check in where there was only one family in front of us. Thank goodness, because that other line was moving very slowly and would easily have been over an hour.
Outgoing passport control (what a concept) had a similarly long queue for the All Passports line, but we were able to skate through on the strength of Emily’s Irish passport. We did have to stand in the security line, but eventually hat went pretty quickly as they had many lanes open and the families in front of us actually seemed like they had been to an airport before and managed to act like regular humans putting their things on the belt. Madness!
All told, we navigated through the triple gauntlet of bag drop, passport control and security in just 45 minutes. Wow! Very pleased with that result and I don’t know it could have gone any faster. This did leave us with an awkwardly large amount of time before boarding, but I’ll definitely take that over the alternative. Plus, plenty of time to weigh up the Duty Free Scotch options! The rest of the airport experience was pretty mundane, which is about all you can ask for. The little air Canada gate area did get very cramped though, with Emily and I both bashing our knees on Kieran’s stroller while we played Go Fish (Jordan taking both games with me in a distant third place).
We were lucky enough to all have bulkhead and exit row seats with oodles of leg room. However, this was probably the coldest or second coldest flight I have ever been on. There was a draft coming through the door, or we were right near the full-cabin fans or something. But even I spent the whole flight under the provided blanket. Once in the air, they did set up the bassinet for Kieran, though he mostly refused to use it. He kept getting distracted by Jordan and all of the comings and goings around, since our extra legroom seats also came with the space in front of the lavatory. This included the 2-ish year old Jeffrey who was very intrigued by Kieran while I had him. Ultimately, he got a couple of small naps and then a big one near the end of the flight (which Emily was able to join him in).
The stroller did take a long time to arrive to us in Montreal, but this was no issue for us because we have a staggering 4 hour and 45 minute layover before our 8pm flight to Ottawa. Ouch, but at least we weren’t feeling rushed about the stroller, unlike the other family of Jeffrey who had a 45 minute connection to Calgary to make. I wonder if they made that flight, especially since everything in Montreal airport is such a walk.
I write this final blog post from the Montreal Lounge (again, thank you to Stephen Wilkinson for the single greatest use of a guest pass ever) with two hours to go on the layover. Emily was thrilled to see vegetables for what seems like the first time in weeks and I clocked the hot sauce (and Scotch) right away. Barring some disaster, we should be back in Ottawa soon and praying to the Jet Lag Gods (Sam, Adam and Ben) that we can beat the worst of it. From my time in Belgium coming back for summers, I generally found it easier to adjust coming this way than going to Europe, so we will see if that still holds true.
While this is the last regular post, I have it in my mind to do some thematic roundups of things like our costs, apartment choosing strategy, public transit, travelling with kids and all sorts of other half-formed ideas. I will post them in the Eurotrip roundup post. Until then, I hope you have enjoyed my crazy daily ramblings and felt like you were on the adventure with us. I will also find a way to share some select pictures and will maybe go back and edit them into the posts themselves to liven things up.
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