shaub xmas in montreal 08
Originally uploaded by bluepupae. every year, it's the same frantic mad rush for last minute gifts, wrapping, mix cd production, cooking, traveling. the soup swap nearly killed me, although it was a lot of fun, and i have plenty of soup to eat for a few weeks. knowing myself all too well, i didn't bother making any gifts this year aside from the mix cd. there was no need to turn knitting into a stressful activity. i don't think i would make it through the holidays if i didn't have the extra days off to slow down just a little.
we barely finished packing on the morning of the 17th before flying to montreal. i had picked out a new small knitting project for the flight which turned out to be slow and somewhat painful due to it being covered in bobbles. this was my first time knitting bobbles. a few aren't too bad--a little awkward--, but this hat is covered with them. i am persevering because it's small and totally cute.
with no incidents and only a one hour delay in our flight, we made it to montreal, where the high was 9 F. several feet of snow blanketing the landscape brings on the holiday spirit though. while in montreal, i had ample opportunities to get to know caroline, mike's almost one year old niece, cook for mike's family, play a little in the snow, visit a craft fair and enjoy a few nice meals out, including savoring some quintessential canadian and quebecois foods.
the trip itself was great. it was the return that seemed plague with problems. on the 23rd, we were packed and made it to the airport in plenty of time only to learn that our flight was delayed two hours, and we wouldn't make our connection in cincinnati. the guy at the delta counter was completely nonchalant in letting us know that there were no other flights that day, and none until after xmas. so much for my plans for getting back in time to celebrate xmas with my own family.
after some back and forth, and more searching, we suggested to the delta guy to look up flights going through canadian cities, and he found a flight the next day via toronto, booked us on that and comped us hotel night stay, dinner and breakfast. according to him, the hotel was really nice. we later found it out that was a matter of opinion.
out in the cold montreal weather, we waited in for an hour before being picked up. after the first 40 min, we went back inside and called the hotel, and it was after that that they finally showed up. when we arrived at the hotel, which was one of those hotels that at one time may have been nice but remained lost in the vacuum of the 80s, we found out that they needed to book us two rooms in order for us to use the comped meals (1 meal per room). In spite of this, the woman still put down the same room number for all the meal tickets. we didn't care how many rooms we got, as long as we had a place to stay. luckily, we did get two rooms because the thermostat was broken in one, and the heater wouldn't turn on. dark and somewhat depressing, it was also directly across from the elevator where you could hear all the sounds of people coming and going.
it was a little after 1pm, so we were starving. the woman at the front desk had indicated we had until 2pm before they stopped serving lunch. we also realized that we would only have a half hour to eat breakfast the next morning due to our early morning flight, so we tried to use our breakfast meal tickets, but they wouldn't allow us to do that.
the next morning we were waiting at 6am in front of the cafe, ready for breakfast. then we find out the front desk clerk was again wrong about the cafe hours, which if we had known about we could have maybe done something about it sooner. when we tried to talk to the manager about it, he was a complete asshole, and said "do you believe in human error?" then proceeded to do nothing about it, and refused to discuss our options.
at that point, i was more than ready to be home. our stressful return trip didn't end there. we made it to toronto, where we had a seven hour layover, which turns out was a good thing since we waited for three hours for our luggage, which we had to pick up, supposedly tagged and pulled by air canada and forwarded to a special baggage claim area, then check in to american airlines. during the whole wait for baggage, we received little information on our luggage. first, they said it typically takes about an hour to get the luggage, then they said some people wait two hours or even longer and still don't get their luggage. when we spoke to air canada, they told us it had already been sent on. we decided to check in at american airlines, and they told us they hadn't received it but would take care of our luggage. finally, someone was taking some responsibility.
in the end, we found the luggage, but then almost didn't make the flight back. the woman at the front counter said she couldn't get us seats together, and if we waited until we got to the gate, we would be more likely to get seats together. at the gate, they told us the flight was overbooked, and delta never should have booked us on the flight, and that since we were coming from another airline, we were basically, at the bottom, in terms of priority for seating, and that we may not make it onto the flight unless someone didn't make the flight. it was a grueling 45 min of waiting and wondering through all boarding and being the last people there before we found out that we could finally go home.
with the airlines cutting back on flights, the weather, and the increased number of travelers, flying during the holidays turned out to be somewhat of a nightmare. the consensus seemed to be that it was common for flights to and from canada to be delayed, yet there were no plans in place to deal with those situations, and much of the customer service was ignorant and/or didn't care.
mike & i are ready for a staycation now. we were pretty lucky to have made it back, and not get charged for any luggage as we ended up flying through air canada on the way out and on the first leg back. mike noticed that american airlines charges $25 for the first bag, $50 for the second one, and the prices go up from there. most of the domestic airlines were charging. that is in addition to the charges to have any food and some beverages on the plane.
