Arrived (eventually)

The flight to Newark left the gate a couple of minutes early and was in the air 5 minutes later. The journey was quick, with an early arrival too. The menu seems unchanged from last year - so I had the salad, the braised beef and ice cream for dinner, although it was a little weird having dinner at 11am!

I bought some new Bose QuietComfort 15 headphones at Heathrow, as that was the model that people on Amazon all seemed to recommend. I though that they'd better be good at the price they were (£250). They are really good. Even just putting them on cuts out some of the noise, and when you switch them on, the engine noise almost entirely disappears - it's almost unbelievable. So they are completely worth it - and unlike my old ones, they also deal with propeller noise too. When I connect them to my music player, I can have the volume down and hear it very well, instead of needing it really high.

Even though I was only in transit, I still had to clear US immigration, baggage claim and customs before giving them the baggage right back again and going off to wait for the next flight in the United Club, which I was entitled to use as I had another international flight to come, but didn't eat anything as I wasn't hungry, although this turned out to be a mistake.

The same plane seems to fly back and forth between Newark and Toronto. It had been delayed a bit in Toronto for maintenance, but my flight was due to be only half an hour late by that time, originally supposed to be at 3.29pm. After 3 gate changes, and over an hour, it eventually arrived over an hour after we were supposed to have left. The first attempt at leaving thus came just after 5pm and after 20 minutes of taxiing about, queueing to take off, we were diverted to a second taxiway and after some time, told that air traffic control had said the skies were too busy and they'd stopped all flights going in our direction. So we sat there, engines running, watching a steady stream of other aircraft going past and taking off, for about an hour. The pilot then reported that he'd been negotiating an alternate route which would take longer but that we could actually go, but the only route ATC were offering was too long and we didn't have enough fuel. In the end, after another half hour, the pilot said that he'd got an agreed route, but because we'd been sitting there for a couple of hours burning fuel ... we didn't have enough fuel for the new route, so we'd have to return to the gate to get some more. At least once we got back to the gate, we were given a glass of water each and a tiny bag of pretzels. We had another go at leaving at 7.45pm, finally leaving the ground at 8.20pm. We saw a spectacular thunderstorm from above just after we left, lots of lightning. I suspect that this was the primary cause of the airspace closure. We finally arrived in Toronto just after 9.30pm. Since I just wanted to get to the hotel by this point, I opted for a limo to the hotel for CA$60, instead of messing around getting the subway.

Unfortunately, my stay here was booked in three parts, because I was only intending to be here two nights originally, then had to add another two nights before and one night after onto the stay and I couldn't modify the original without paying an awful lot more for the room than the special rate I'd got. With three reservations, two of which are pre-paid, it was complicated. However, the lady on check-in has sorted it all out so that I can stay in the same room without moving.

All the restaurants were shut well before 11pm, so I went out and found a McDonald's almost right outside, so was able to have something to eat before falling asleep.

I'm not going to do very much today before going to the game this evening, which has two good starters with Mark Buehrle going up against Ervin Santana as the Blue Jays host the Kansas City Royals.