4th – 5th of August – Getting to Winnipeg

Flying out and leaving home was as easy as usual especially after a direct connection between Copenhagen and Toronto had been established. It was surprisingly small plane for the distance; a 1-isle A321 Neo, BC was 1+1 or 2+2. It was absolutely no problem; I was just a bit surprised and expected a larger plane.

Arriving at 1500 I had planned with a friend to meet after settling in at the hotel, so when we were getting close to landing I sent her a mail updating her with the current situation. That jinxed it, of course, because less than 5 minutes later the captain informed us that due to a thunderstorm having passed through the area we were put in a holding pattern above the airport. The plan was to stay there for half an hour and another 15 minutes to get down but it took close to an hour before we managed to land, having been queued up behind numerous planes also waiting for the thunderstorm to pass. 

The original reason for returning to Canada so soon since the last time is because I have been invited to a wedding outside Toronto (and that voucher I won during my last visit). The wedding gift is two bottles of Danish whisky; wrapped in bubble-wrap, a plastic bag thoroughly tied so it’d hopefully keep the bag dry if any of the bottles broke along the way, everything wrapped in a towel before putting it all down among the clothes in my bag. I was fairly confident that they would be fine, but my heart skipped a beat (or more) when I picked up my bag in Toronto and realized that it was wet. It took a lot of internal convincing to make me settle down and acknowledge that everything outside was probably wet due to the thunderstorm, and had it been due to the whisky it would have been able to smell it – which I couldn’t. Safely arrived at the hotel a few minutes later (staying at a hotel located near the terminal train is really convenient) I unwrapped everything and confirmed that everything was in order. Phew!

An hour later I got picked up by my friend and we ended up in a nearby steak restaurant for a delicious meal before returning to the hotel. It was so much fun meeting up again after 6 years. 

The following morning I left all the wedding-related luggage at the hotel before returning to the airport and flying out to Winnipeg to meet up with the travel group the same evening. We started with an early dinner where we were introduced to our guide and a rough introduction of the tour itself before we a couple of hours later boarded a bus looking like a trolley that took us on a 2½ hour tour through Winnipeg. It was quite interesting despite having a historical focus but I found myself nodding off several times – through that was likely just due to the jetlag hitting and not the tour itself.

Our tourbustrolley.

We walked through a back road where an artist had painted northern wildlife on multiple buildings.

Returning to the hotel I prepared myself and my bags for a very early morning and crashed in bed.