A Hiccup on the Second Half

Day 002:  We were initially pleased when our Air Transat flight pushed back from the gate at Toronto Pearson a solid ten minutes ahead of its scheduled 9:35 PM departure yesterday. Once off the blocks, however, forward progress ground to a halt. We sat stranded on the apron while the minutes steadily accumulated.

Eventually, the captain came over the intercom with the sort of news every passenger dreads: an engine monitoring parameter had flagged an error that refused to clear. Technicians were summoned, the aircraft doors swung back open, and maintenance crews filed into the cockpit to run diagnostics. With an entirely full cabin and overhead bins crammed to capacity, the prospect of an outright deplaning felt agonizing. For a while, a wholesale evacuation seemed imminent. Relief finally came when the captain announced that the fault had cleared and fresh flight plans were being filed. By the time the engines spun up and we finally took off for England, we had spent over an hour and a half pinned to our seats.

The seven-hour transatlantic crossing proved largely unremarkable, aside from our row companion. Jay and I were seated next to a gentleman with mental disabilities. He was a bit erratic, and he did offer some initial resistance when we first tried to squeeze past him to get into our seats.  Just free entertainment, I guess.

 

We touched down at London Gatwick an hour and a half behind schedule. Despite the lost time, a quick check confirmed we could catch a direct rail connection down to Hampshire and pull up to the ibis Southampton Centre right around standard check-in.

The Gatwick station staff directed us to the coastal run requiring a single transfer in a town called Havant. The transit could not have been smoother. An initial leg of about an hour and a half brought us to Havant, where we had roughly twenty minutes to wait on the platform without needing to drag bags up and over any footbridges. The connecting train arrived on the same track and carried us the remaining half hour into Southampton Central. Both carriages were clean, spacious, and delightfully uncrowded. The tickets came to about $42 Canadian, with the British pound currently trading at roughly two of our dollars.

From the station, the hotel was a mere 200 metres away, though spotting the direct walkway was not immediately obvious and we wound up hauling our luggage the long way round. Still, we reached the desk and checked into the ibis at 3:35 PM. With a five-night stay ahead before boarding our cruise, we were able to unpack our suitcases completely and pull out our proper cold-weather layers.

The wind off the water carries a vicious edge, making a mockery of the official 10 degrees Celsius reading on the thermometer. Darkness falls swiftly by 5:00 PM at these latitudes, so we stepped out into the night to track down food. We settled on the nearest venue, a TGI Fridays. The menu prices deliver a brisk shock once mentally converted to Canadian currency, but the meal hit the spot.

Bed will be around 8:30 PM as terminal fatigue is about to win out.