Going Home

Taxi was right on time, too early for breakfast at the hostel and we were off.  We arrived the required 3 hours prior to our scheduled flight to find out as we checked in that our flight was already delayed by an hour.  Just by chance it was mentioned to me that our wait in Toronto would only be 4 hours now instead of 5.  This set off alarm bells as our original layover was 2 1/2 hours.  Checking things out, all 5 of us had been put on a later flight from T.O. but Ken and Janet were still on the earlier flight.  The ladies checking us in work for the airport, not the airline and so they said we couldn't do anything about it until we arrived in Toronto.  Just another adventure!

With hungry bellies and nothing we could do about it we headed to our gate and breakfast.  Had we known we were delayed, we could have enjoyed breakfast at the hostel, as it was we paid dearly for a meagre helping of sausage and hashbrowns - but we were fed.

Even though our plane was sitting outside the window since 7am, as 11am approached (our new departure time), we learned that it was being delayed again to 11:45.   Long story short, the plane outside the window was not the originally scheduled one, this was a 777 and much bigger than what was planned.  As such, the original crew was not qualified to fly this plane and pilots were being flown from London.  In the end we finally took off at 12:30 and had a good flight - with complimentary bevies!

Once in Toronto we tried unsuccessfully to get Ken & Janet on the same flight as us at 5:30pm, but were told it was full and stand-by already had 4 people on a waiting list.  They had missed their connection and were now scheduled to fly out at 6:30ish.  Our flight was on time and so the 5 of us headed off.  As it turned out, if Ken and Janet had their suitcases with them, they would have made our flight stand-by - there were a number of empty seats.  Those of us who'd been on the Dublin flight were singled out and got complimentary food and drink on this flight.  We landed on time at 7:30pm only to learn that Ken and Janet's flight was yet again delayed and would not arrive until 10:40pm.  We found someone to complain to, got some more free food and a piece of floor to try to sleep on while we waited.

It was near 11 when we met up again and waited patiently for luggage to arrive (they had not received the same service we did and did not even get so much as a pretzel on their flight).  Sadly, Janet's arrived and Ken's did not and so back we went to let them know how happy we were.  Ken's suitcase had been put on a later flight - which led us to wonder why they couldn't have flown on our flight if their luggage wasn't with them anyway?  
It was midnight and we had been up for 25 hours by the time we were on our way home which meant we didn't get to bed until 3am, but we were HOME!

Ken's suitcase finally met up with him about 2 1/2 days later.

Overall we had an AMAZING adventure - and up to this point luck had been on our side, so we weren't complaining too loudly.