I am not one for drama. I like schedules and plans and planned 'winging it' time. I do not like when mother nature throws a wrench into life, and that is exactly what happened as we were getting ready to head on our week long NYC road trip.
I spent the day before our planned departure for our girls road trip to NYC packing and doing some last minute planning and baking. I knew it needed to be done before bed that night as I had to be out the door shortly after 7am the next morning. I spent all day getting ready. Then the rain started. It was just before I started to get ready for soccer that the rain started coming down hard. I went to soccer only to sit in the car and wait for it to be officially cancelled. That is when I got word from one of the girls going on the trip that her flight home from Calgary that was supposed to land in Toronto and then continue onto London had been re-routed to Ottawa due to the fact that Toronto was FLOODING.
We were optimistic that everything would work out and she would still make it to London (where the vehicle we were taking on the trip was located) and we would be able to still head out bright and early. She was told that they were re-fueling and hopefully on their way to Toronto as originally planned. That however was optimistic. Three hours passed and she was still on the plane at the airport waiting to be let off, but because of there being too many people in the airport, they did not know when that would happen. As they were waiting the pilot reached his maximum shift and if they were to continue on they would need a new pilot.
Oh the luck we were having. It in some ways forecasted the rest of our travelling.
Finally, she was let off the plane and into the airport where they were supposed to get their luggage and be booked on new flights to Toronto. This is where she got lucky and was able to be put on a direct flight to London in the morning. So she got a hotel, got a few hours of sleep and was back at the airport bright and early.
On our end, we then had to figure out a way to get to her in London to save three hours of travel time. Amanda's uncle was able to drop us off (totally an answer to prayer) and we were on route only about 3 hours behind schedule.
Due to the delay we modified out plans slightly. We did a drive by viewing of Niagara Falls for Michelle, the Australian in the group who had never seen them. This consisted of us driving really slow, dropping her off, driving around the block twice and then picking her up after about 10 minutes. And really, 10 minutes is all you need to see water falling off a cliff. Just saying.
We then continued onwards. We got pulled into customs due Michelle being Australian and something about paying an additionally fee for the visa and getting a stamp. I really wanted a stamp too. I have never had one. While waiting almost an hour for said stamp we saw the drug dogs find drugs on some guy, so it was pretty awesome and added a bit of excitement to the waiting room.
We had dinner in Ithica (sadly it was too late to swim under waterfalls as was the original game plan), hit up a grocery store to buy breakfast items and snacks and were on our way to Newark, NJ where we stayed at a Best Western Plus that offered park and fly and shuttles towards the city.
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| Amanda at the London Airport waiting. |
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| Michelle excited to start our journey. |
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| And we have a ton of stuff. (yes I am an over packer, this however is not ALL mine). |
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