North America 2022 : Tuesday September 6 Day 8 Flying North

With the convention over so was our time in the US and we were due to head north into Canada. Our original plan was to take the train from Chicago to Detroit, cross over into Canada at Windsor, stay the night there and then pick up a car. But a couple of problems faced us: how do we get from Detroit to Windsor, and why are car rentals out of Windsor so expensive?

The first of these looked like a simple problem to fix, and would have been easy in pre-COVID times. A bus regularly drove from one city centre to the other, back then; not any more. And the car rental looked like being around $600 more expensive out of Windsor than from Toronto. The numbers didn’t make any sense, and the actual mechanics of it all didn’t seem to work, so we just decided to catch a flight to Toronto instead.

Porter Airlines is a small airline that only covers eastern Canada and a few places in the US but did fly from Chicago Midway, which was much closer to the convention hotel than O’Hare, and flew into Billy Bishop International Airport in Toronto, a few blocks from where we were staying there. We left the hotel early, catching an Uber at around 7:45am for a 10:10am flight. It looked good.

When I had booked the flight a few months previously I hadn’t discovered any opinion in the booking process to be able to add in any checked-in baggage. I figured I’d have to work that out when I got there. According to their website, which was quite happy to inform you of the prices they were about to charge, I was looking at around $A100 for the privilege. We didn’t have a choice. We had moved as much as we could between cases to even up the weights, and taken out as much of the heavy stuff as we could and moved that into our carry-ons. Fingers crossed.

In addition we had to download the ArriveCAN app onto our phones, add in all of our travel info – vaccination status and proof, passport info, travel times etc – and have that ready for inspection. All done, just.

So we get to the airport, go up to the check-in (couldn’t use the online check-in as we weren’t either US or Canadian passport holders) and asked to check in two bags. First one goes on – mine – and that came in at about 22.5 kg. All good. Then Rob’s goes on the scale. “I can’t take this,” the woman says. I stare at her thinking she’s going to tell me that we can only check one bag in. “It’s too heavy.” Ah, so some rather indelicate shuffling of heavy items from Rob’s suitcase into my carry-on and check. No, needed some more moved. Another shuffle and we were through.

And we had our boarding passes. And our ArriveCAN apps had not been looked at. They were probably all keyed off our passport numbers, but I would have liked someone to have given them at least a glance given all the work I had to do to make sure we were locked and loaded. I have a feeling they might be needed later on in this trip when we return from Alaska. Though what they are going to do with us if we don’t have it all lined up I have no idea. They can’t really turn us around and send us back out on the boat. Maybe they could deport us back to Australia. It might even be on the same flight we’re currently aiming to catch. Lots of fun things to look forward to.

I hadn’t expected the Porter plane to be a twin-engined prop. Not that it mattered, other than it was a bit noisier at take-off.

We landed, cleared customs, got our luggage and decided to drop into the car rental office. We had a car booked for a week out of Toronto, but the car was scheduled to be picked up from Pearson International Airport rather than Billy Bishop. And that was some way out of town. A quick check and, yes, it would be okay to swap the pickup point to Billy Bishop. The two Hertz franchises were run by the same people and Billy Bishop had a spare car in the same category as our booking.

Another Uber and ten minutes later we were in our hotel apartment. Robyn had booked this place specifically because the apartment had laundry facilities. After a week with only a few things being rinsed in the Chicago hotel sink we needed a few loads washed and dried. It’s the worst thing about travel, laundry. Hotel laundry prices are ridiculous and trying to find a coin-operated one somewhere in a city wasting massive amounts of time. We’ve found it better to find an apartment with a washing machine once a week and then wash everything and dry it overnight. It works for us.

One load done, and another underway and we headed out for a wander around. First around the Old Town area, over to the St Lawrence market for a look around at what meat, fruit and veg was for sale, and then on to the Distillery District where we stopped for a late afternoon drink in the Mill Street brewery. It was an excellent afternoon in beautiful weather topped off by a Guinness and a meal in an Irish Pub.

But I still didn’t sleep properly that night.