Adventures to Start One Day Early

For those of you who have been following the weather forecasts, you'll know that Ottawa is anticipating a big dump of snow on Sunday, December 21st -- which was of course the date we were originally scheduled to depart for Saudi Arabia. Our original plans also only gave us a little over 1.5 hours in London's Heathrow Airport to change terminals and make our connections, meaning even the most minor of delays would cause us to miss our flight to Riyadh.

I have to say that Air Canada did something very decent this year that I cannot recall them doing in the past. Due to the high volume of holiday travellers and the heavy snow experienced or anticipated in Ottawa, Toronto and Montreal (and Vancouver a bit earlier on), the airline was allowing passengers to move up or postpone flights that were scheduled to depart or land in these cities on or before December 22nd without penalty -- provided there was actually room on other flights.

I heard this reported on the news, but it took me awhile to realize that there might be other options for us to explore. At first, Steve did not want to change flights but it didn't take him too long to be convinced that this was our best bet. The question was whether Air Canada would actually change the flights as we were booked to fly with bmi (a Star Alliance member), even though the flight was operated by Air Canada.

After spending 1.5 hours on hold, we spoke with a very helpful agent named Patricia. When I first called, the website was showing 34 empty seats on the Saturday flight we were hoping to book. Patricia worked her magic and managed to secure us two of the last seats on the flight. A big THANK YOU to Patricia and Air Canada for making this happen.

So, what now? We are scrambling to get ourselves organized to leave 24 hours earlier than originally anticipated. The kennel was able to take Jonah a day early, and we are slowly working our way through an enormous pile of laundry. I think we'll be ready to go (we don't really have a choice!) but it may be a challenging to get to that point.

I've never actually been to London before, and am looking forward to a whirlwind tour of a few sights and enjoying my first pint in a British pub. Steve found a great hotel deal through Priceline.com in a central London location, which should make this pretty easy. The weather forecast for London is cloudy and +13C, which is pretty decent for us tacky tourists!