the first bookings
I think it's taking Shobhit a while to acclimate to being back in the Western Hemisphere. The thing is, in India, you can hardly have a more severe shift in time zone differences: when it's noon U.S. Pacific Time -- during Daylight Saving, anyway -- it's 1:30 a.m. in India. He was there three and a half weeks, which was probably only barely enough time to get used to a fully half-day shift in when it's day versus night; and then suddenly he's back again. Every night so far this week he has zonked out pretty early in the evening, and also pretty much every night he has been wide awake super early in the morning, although he winds up going back to sleep again.
Anyway he was asleep at about 7 pm last night. We had eaten leftovers with chickpea flour tortillas I had as samples from work for dinner, and we caught up on the last three episodes of Modern Family -- the last one of which I found particularly sweet, actually. Then I attempted to get started on season five of Cheers, and he fell asleep. (It's kind of just as well; we should still hold off on Cheers. I keep forgetting the new season of Catastrophe is available on Amazon Prime Video.)
As I said to Shobhit, I needed to call Danielle anyway. I called her and she was on her way to pick up the girls from Patrick's place. She said she'd call me back in a few minutes. She did, and we wound up on the phone for about eighty minutes, nailing down our flight itineraries for late May and early June and actually booking them. I was sitting at the computer and Shobhit came and crawled into bed while I was talking to her.
Honestly the process got a little frustrating after a while, but I handled it, and succeeded in not showing my frustration to Danielle, I think. She was just all about exploring all options, which including multiple attempts at booking at a particular price that was pretty clear early on would not work -- a particular price initially listed for a direct flight to Toronto that left at 7 a.m., but would change as soon as booking was attempted.
In the end, finally -- as in, after well over an hour -- I booked our itinerary from Seattle to Toronto on Tuesday, May 28; and Danielle booked our itinerary from Syracuse to Seattle on Sunday, June 2. Seattle to Toronto is on Air Canada, which had extra fees for choosing any seat while booking. So there was one price listed as the airfare, and then $11 each for our seats for the flight from Seattle to Vancouver; then $20 for one seat and $25 for the other -- no two $20 seats were next to each other -- for the flight from Vancouver to Toronto. What the hell is that shit? The receipt even has a line item: $67 for seats. But, you know, whatever; we still had to put it into perspective: that was a total of $549.04 for two, one-way to Toronto -- and although it was only one way, that works out to $274.52 per person. That's actually very reasonable.
The flights back were a fair amount more expensive: $758 listed price, which is $379 per person -- so, roughly, for both directions $654 per person.
So anyway. We do have one layover each direction. On Tuesday, May 28, we leave SeaTac Airport at 10:05 am and are scheduled to land in Vancouver, B.C. at 11:00 am (basically the same amount of time it typically takes to fly to Spokane, which is actually nearly twice the distance, so this first plane must be quite the puddle-jumper); there is a ninety minute layover; then the flight from Vancouver leaves at 12:30, and is scheduled to land in Toronto at 8:05 pm (5:05 Pacific, so it's a 4 hour and 35 minute flight).
This 10:05 am departure is far more ideal than that 7am direct flight we had tried to book, which would have necessitating taking a ride share to get there by no later than 6am, and thus we'd have to wake up at like 4am at the latest, probably. Now I can get up that day at like 6 or 7. I may go stay the night at Danielle's the night before regardless, though; May 27 is Memorial Day so I don't even work that day either anyway. (Danielle does.)
And then, on Sunday, June 2, the itinerary is actually pretty similar, just starting later in the day. We fly out of Syracuse at 1:40 pm (10:40 am Pacific), for a scheduled landing barely more than an hour later in Philadelphia, at 2:52 (11:52 am Pacific). Scheduled layover there is about half an hour tighter, only 58 minutes; flight leaves Philadelphia then at 3:50 (12:50 Pacific), for a landing in Seattle at 6:51 pm, making that second flight six hours long.
In my experience with many flights between Seattle and New York City, though, these cross country flights often land earlier than scheduled, at least compared to actual takeoff.
What we have to do next is book a rental car we can pick up in Toronto and leave in Syracuse (this will run us probably around five hundred dollars); and also book three different hotels: two nights in Toronto; one night in Niagara Falls; and two nights in Syracuse. The drive from Toronto to Niagara Falls, Ontario is about an hour and a half; the drive from Niagara Falls, New York to Syracus is about two and a half hours. Splitting those legs up into different days makes them both quite manageable, even with possible wait time at the border (which, so far as I have found online, is apparently little to none, as opposed to the often hour-or-more wait from Washington State on the way to Vancouver).
[posted 12:23 pm]