Transit Day - Getting there

 

Feb. 9

We left Toronto just before a snowstorm was expected (not the BIG one) and so were quite pleased with ourselves about our timing.  We sat with a charming woman from Kerala who surprisingly had a special meal delivered marked “bland”.  You’d think that was the default setting for airplane food, but you can request it to be even blander.  To be fair , the biryani on the first leg of the trip was quite good. We figured that with the airport being so close to Brampton that they might have gotten in touch with some decent Indian caterers.

We had screens with a good selection of movies and talked with some of our fellow passengers by the bathroom as we stretched our legs every few hours.  It was about as painless as a 14 hour flight can be.

We were warned that the Abu Dhabi airport was confusing with gates set very far apart but we got to ours quickly and enjoyed cleaner and more spacious washrooms than any plane could offer.

The next 4 hour flight was more problematic.  The Etihad website showed that our seats were bulkhead, meaning more legroom, but it was all a terrible lie.  Add a lack of entertainment centres and meh food to the mix and one gets an unsatisfactory 4 hour flight.

We were warned to have extra copies of our Sri Lankan visas as well as copies of our COVID histories available but they weren’t necessary.  As part of he visa process, I had to upload passport images that had a readable barcode so customs had all of our info on their screens as soon as they scanned our passports.  After a quick confirmation of our existences we were inside the arrivals terminal.

We were worried about our pick up for a short time as our driver was sitting down with his sign with our names on it partially obscured, but we tracked him down.  This was at about 8:30pm local time and the hour drive from the airport to Colombo was smooth and fast.

Our hotel appeared to be up a dark alley but our room was large and clean with filtered drinking water and a firm mattress.  Everywhere we ended up staying over the three weeks had a good mattress, not sure why but it was very welcome.  We had a 10 1/2 hour time difference to deal with so it was lucky that we were exhausted after our trip and it was about 10:30 pm local time when we got sorted and were able to fall into bed.