I’m terrible at writing blog posts etc but I was just reading through my email the other day and found a “Trip debrief” that I had sent to my travel agent and I thought, hang on, I could mold this into a blog post fairly easily. So here it is :-).
Warning: this is quite long.
For the past decade or so I’ve gone on a trip somewhere once per year, additional to the done since year dot Christmas trip to Tekapo. The first ones were with my parents to somewhere in New Zealand. In 2011 I did my first Contiki. Since the whole idea of going off on a holiday with a group of strangers all by myself was somewhat terrifying I’d never really looked into their tours before. But I was at a travel expo with my parents and Contiki had a booth and we noticed they were advertising New Zealand trips. With a bit of umming and ahhing I came to the conclusion that I would probably survive doing their Christchurch to Christchurch tour. So I did. I really enjoyed it. So I did another one that year, the rest of their New Zealand tour, the North Island. And even before that tour had started I had booked another one, this time overseas, a Canadian Rockies one for September 2012 (my parents went over with me and went on the Rocky Mountaineer train while I was on the Contiki). Between 2011 and 2015 I ended up doing 10 Contiki tours all up, from every region they serviced, except Asia. But anyway, enough background, on to the topic of this post.
In 2016 work sent me to Frankfurt, Germany for a few days to go to the IFFA trade show. From there it was just a quick hop across the Atlantic to start my holiday, my first Topdeck tour, their USA & Canada Adventure tour, the 10th of May 2016 departure. It kind of fitted in with the work trip. It could have done with starting a day or so later so I could have had more time at the trade show, and a tour in Europe would have been closer, but it worked out OK.
My transfer in Frankfurt was a bit late (I think it ended up being about 15mins), he did call the hotel and the front desk person came and told me. Nice newish merc, got me to the airport in time though (I could see the speedo up to the 120km/h mark but I couldn’t see the needle quite a bit of the time ). Frankfurt airport seemed to be in the middle of some reconstruction so was a bit confusing. Like after passport control coming in we seemed to re-join the people heading to security to go to gates and then exit out into the land side before re-entering an area (with little security) to get to baggage claim which was rather weird for an international flight. At security make sure you say something in English so they know to speak English to you then it’ll go a bit more smoothly .
Getting into the USA there were so many different lines you could take, I eventually settled on the returning ESTA(/I think USA citizen) one where I used one of their machines to read my passport, take my finger prints and photo (use the big bar to move the machine/camera to line your face up in the area on the screen). Won’t be able to use that next time as I’ll probably have a new passport by then so will have a new ESTA.
I forgot about the ground transportation desk bit on getting the transfer in New York, but after I remembered that it was fairly easy to get the pickup sorted. But it took forever. The flight arrived on time (actually early but we had to wait for a gate) but it was about 3pm (having landed around 11am) by the time I was finally dropped off at my hotel and the majority of that was waiting for the shuttle and waiting for everybody else to be dropped off. Private transfer probably would have been the way to go.
The Marrakech was, interesting. The lobby wasn’t at or even close to ground level, it was up some fairly narrow and small stairs. There were people available to carry your suitcase up the stairs if you wished though. Once in the lobby it wasn’t too bad, neither was my room, but the hallways and stairs (no lifts) were in very stark contrast to the hotel I’d just come from in Frankfurt (although that one was a 5 star). The hallway and stair areas were probably the worst of the whole trip. They couldn’t make up their minds whether they wanted a credit card for incidentals or not as I was only staying one night and the room was prepaid. Lots of people stayed at other hotels (and hostels, there’s one (HI) only a block or so away), esp after a the trip. Only 3 of us stayed at the Marrakech after the trip. Our tour manager helped people get taxis to get to their other hotels etc.
The tour, there were 21 of us on the tour. 2 kiwis (including me), 2 girls from the Netherlands and the rest were Aussies. 5 guys (including me). The tour manager was American and the driver was originally from Canada (Ottawa area) but now lives in the US. It was run like a Top Deck tour, but it was run on behalf of Top Deck, the tour manager and driver didn’t work for Top Deck. And the bus only had a small Top Deck logo on each side (on the luggage doors). Just like Contiki none/not all of the emergency contact etc information provided before hand had made it to the tour manager etc. Other than no day song and a few terminology differences the tour was just like a Contiki. A lot less rules and stuff listed at the start though.
The dutch girls were 18/19, the other kiwi was ~20, there were a few around the 30/31 or so mark, there was me at 36, and all the rest were in their 20s, probably mostly in the younger half.
It was all hotels. “Washington, DC” was a bit more with fridge+freezer, sink, cook top, microwave, plates, glasses, cutlery, and dishwasher. Our tour manager did his best to sort out washing options without much success. A couple of the hotels had washer/dryers but there didn’t seem to be any service washes (where you can just drop off a big bag of washing and get it back all washed that night/next morning) available (unlike Cusco, Peru where you had half a dozen within a few minutes walk from the hotel + the hotel itself).
Used the metros/undergrounds/subways in a few different cities.
Boston – To get out to Harvard and back to the hotel on our free day. You could purchase one-way and return throw-away cardboard tickets from vending machines with a credit card (or cash)
Toronto – To get back to the hotel from the included diner the night we arrived and into and out of the city on the full day (Contiki usually provides the transport to/from including activities, Top Deck doesn’t seem to, at least in this instance). Single ride fare was in the form of metal tokens you could purchase from machines with cash only. Easiest was a $10 note that gave you 3 tokens and some (coin) change. Token purchase by card was available at manned booths, when they were manned, in stations that had them. In the trains they had simple but effective maps with LEDs on them, Red LED = station already been to, Green LED = station yet to go to and Flashing Green = next stop.
Washington DC – to get back to the hotel from the city. The bus dropped us off in the morning, specifically for the people doing the bike or segway tour but you could just use it for a lift into the city if you wanted. Didn’t seem to have a cheap single ride option, at least from the huge big vending machines. USD2 for a multi-use rechargeable card (MiFare Plus). The vending machines took credit card and cash. I just paid USD6 for the card with USD4 of credit on it. They charged by distance travelled and had off vs on peak prices, tap on, tap off. My card still had USD2.40 left on it when I got off at our hotel’s stop. We had a tour manager organised room party on that last night on the tour and after that most of the group went out and took the metro so I gave my card to one of the girls as she’d left her card in her room. The stations were nice and big and open, but a bit dark and there were no announcements as to what the station was and no screens in the trains! You had to peer out the windows hoping to catch a glimpse of a station name and then try and keep track on the static map in the train (if you could see one)/on the google maps directions/paper map. In the city there were multiple lines per line, they just diverged when they got way out of the city so there was a train to our hotel every few minutes as there were 2 or 3 different lines we could take running on the same line between the city and our hotel stop.
Google Maps knew about the subways in all these 3 cities and New York. So it could tell you which train to take to/from which station etc.
There were lots of included activities and meals (other than breakfasts) on the tour. If there wasn’t an included or optional evening meal our tour manager organised a group meal out somewhere together. Optional, but most people went to them. I don’t remember having any real difficulty getting food, even at McDonalds in Montreal where they spoke French by default (and called out the order numbers when they were ready in French). The menu at the little bar place we went to for lunch in Quebec City (our tour manager loved the stew there so told us to go there) had an interesting mix of English, French and Frenlish but the people spoke English fine (and split the 2 bowls of chips that we had between 3 of us onto 3 different bills for us). We were supposed to get breakfast both mornings in Montreal but there was some mix up so we only got it on the day we left, but our tour manager sorted it so we got breakfast both mornings (he tried for one and got both) in Toronto (where we weren’t supposed to get breakfast at all) instead. Very good breakfast in Washington/Arlington (eggs and bacon 🙂 ), pretty basic in Toronto. In Quebec the (quite nice) hotel had a bar on the ground floor that did breakfasts, lots of choices, pretty fast, very yummy, not too badly priced (less/around CAD10, took card, just brought the machine out to you like they do everywhere except the US), both English and French menus.
Included evening meals (that I can remember):
- Boston was a restaurant that had a lot of good and fancy seafood along with other stuff. Our tour managed arranged to just give us USD25 cash each to spend how we wished, so we could get the expensive stuff if we wanted (I had a grilled chicken sandwich, which turned out to be a burger, and a very yummy hot fudge sundae with brownie, which came to USD25.10)
- Quebec City we had a choice of a few different starters and mains with a single desert. You could buy extras like snails and alcoholic drinks. Pretty characterful place.
- Toronto was a fairly normal restaurant, pasta, burgers (just don’t get the vegge burger if you are vegetarian as it still includes the meat patty along with a vegge patty! as one of our vegetarians found out), pizza etc. We could get any meal up to CAD20, soft drinks were free/included and you paid for any alcoholic drinks.
- Niagara Falls was Indian, most of which was way too hot for me so I mostly had rice, lettuce (there was a bowl of salad on the table when we got there) and the bread. They brought out half a dozen or so different dishes so I tried a few of them except for the one or two that the girls used to hot food found hot. Walked down to see the falls being lit up afterwards (bus to the restaurant and from the falls afterwards).
- Washington DC, was Mexican. There was a choice of about half dozen different meals. They all looked like they would be hot and I wasn’t feeling that hungry so I couldn’t be bothered working out what to remove from which of the meals to make it OK for me so I just ate quite a few of the corn chips that were out on the table (I’d had a couple of rather nice chocolate chip cookies (the hotel had free cookie Thursdays! and I’d bought some from an Amish place) before going out which probably didn’t help) and a Sprite.
There didn’t seem to have that many optionals, but there was quite a bit just included and I didn’t have any trouble filling in the time and it wasn’t that long of a trip. The tour manager gave plenty of suggested activities and knew the areas pretty well. The driver was from the area as well so had useful information. When we were leaving Ottawa the driver pointed out areas and gave stories from his youth there.
I have to remember to check the estimated Uber/taxi price in Google Maps as in Montreal there was an interesting place to go see (and one of the girls would liked to have gone too) but the estimated time via public transport was too long (she had to get back for the jet boat ride) so we didn’t go. Later on I checked the Uber price and it was only CAD15 each way so would have been fine and would have had us there and back in plenty of time. Also our tour manager gave us a code to use if we hadn’t used Uber before so it might have even been free.
After the Topdeck tour I had arranged to fly up to Ottawa for a few days with Mel, a friend I made in Scotland on a Contiki trip in 2013.
Sometime between the time in Canada on the tour and the time in Canada with Mel afterwards KnowRoaming started providing their unlimited daily data deal in Canada. This seemed to result in me not being charged at all for my data usage in Canada while there on the tour. Down on the boat at Niagara Falls my phone roamed back to the US though and as I didn’t have a daily data pack activated it started charging me for data, so I disabled mobile data until we got back up top.
The pick up for the airport when leaving New York was a bit late (I actually rang them after 20mins to find out where it was). I ended up checking in on my phone on the way to the airport just to make sure I didn’t miss it. So yeah, private transfer. If I had taken a picture of my passport they would have emailed me boarding passes, which wouldn’t have helped as I don’t carry a printer around with me so declined that option and just used a machine at the airport, fairly simple. USD25 for the checked bag, which I had to take to a cart to be loaded onto the plane, don’t know if that was because I was so early or the flight or what. I assume the flight as most of the other flights from the gates around mine were to USA destinations.
Ottawa airport was quite nice to arrive at from overseas. Fairly small, rather new and clean, and the staff were friendly. Longest wait was about 5minutes waiting for the bags to start coming out after passport control. I ticked most of the boxes for where had my trip started. The duty free limit for gifts when arriving in Canada is CAD60, I’d calculated Mel’s gift at about CAD70 so ticked the box saying that I had goods in excess of the duty free limit. The passport guy asked what I was bringing in, I said just a gift for the person showing me around, he crossed that bit off and that was that. The only staying 3 days concerned him a bit but he asked when I was last in Canada and I said a few days ago, I did a tour from New York etc etc and then he was fine with the 3 days as it was at the end of my trip, passport stamped, enjoy your stay, done. Collected my suitcase when it eventually appeared, a guy collected the arrival form and out I went to a waiting Mel.
Star Alliance Silver gave me Premier Access on the United flight, which meant, not much really. On the Air Canada flight it meant I could use the premium check-in counter apparently, which I only found out after I checked in with a machine and went to check-in assistance (as told to by the machine), I assume due to all the connecting and international flights and stuff.
Mel was waiting for me land side in Ottawa, went out to her car and she drove me into town and my hotel (the Arc The Hotel Downtown Boutique). She had a parking “building” (all the parking in it seemed to be under ground from what I could tell) she wanted to use as it had free parking on the weekend which took a while to find (basically just a lane on one side of an intersection that disappeared underground). Ottawa also likes their one-way streets which didn’t help. At check-in the lady seemed to think Mel was staying also (got two room keys, hinted at the wine being for both etc), a welcoming wine at the bar was included (for both of us) but we didn’t take up the offer. The hotel was quite nice, well located, within reasonable walking distance of a lot of stuff (including at least two Tim Hortons, there was one at each end of the block that the hotel was on). They had a bowl of free apples at least on my floor .
After check in we dropped my suitcase in my room and I got sorted for a little walk around. I made sure I took my wallet so I could pay for stuff and off we went for a walk. It wasn’t until we were away from the hotel that I remembered that my wallet was full of USD and only USD, I did have my cards with me though. Unlike when we stopped on the way from Montreal to Toronto on the tour when it was in the low teens if that with wind chill, it was in the 20s all 3 days with Mel. So we had a look around, took some pictures, had something to eat at a pub/restaurant place that Mel knew/liked, she walked me back to my hotel, talked for a bit then she went back to her (parent’s) place. Next day was a public holiday, Mel picked me up from my hotel and we went out to some falls and bush (saw a chipmunk), and then to a tulip festival. Afternoon was filled with a tour of a cold war bunker (http://diefenbunker.ca), it was a little way out of Ottawa, but it was awesome. The tour was for an hour but it didn’t seem anywhere near that long. After the tour there was an hour until it closed and it was pretty close to closing time when we left. Went to Mel’s parent’s place for tea, met her parents, one of her sisters, and the sister’s boyfriend. Tuesday we went to the Aviation and Space Museum and a special exhibition Star Trek: The Starfleet Academy Experience. Ended the day with a meal at a mall food court, some shopping for my little nephew, bit more of a look around and more talking. Wednesday I started my flights home, all 4 of them.
I’d read that I would need to collect my bag at LAX and manually transfer it but I asked the check-in guy in Ottawa and he said no, Auckland would be the first place.
Coming back my suitcase had two luggage tags on it as apparently you can only have 3 airports on a tag. I went through USA security and passport stuff in Toronto, in a rather weird setup. “Transit to New Zealand” as the place staying in the US on the arrivals card. So I was sitting at my departure gate in Canada in the US. It took about an hour from landing through to waiting at my departure gate (or as close as I could get at the time as they have combo domestic/international like Christchurch does and my gate was domestic when I was going to it) so that’s where I needed the time, not LAX. My arrival gate and departure gates were actually right next to each other but you had to go to basically the other end of the terminal to go through the security etc stuff.
Is Air Canada like a budget airline (but not in price) or something? The in-flight entertain was a bit of a joke and food was extra (although they did have some nice looking options, but my cards were in the overhead bin and I had a window seat), they did have WiFi though. I used the WiFi on the Toronto -> LA flight, CAD3.50 for the “Messaging” option which basically meant anything that uses just a little bit of data at a time. SQ26 had WiFi and cellular (SMS and 2G data). I enabled cellular on both legs (on my work phone, with mobile data disabled!) but only sent a couple of TXTs on the Singapore to Frankfurt leg, just to check-in with the guys from work I’d be meeting up with in Frankfurt (they were supposed to get in before me, but their flight (Air Canada from Toronto) was delayed so I ended up getting in before them). I used WiFi on the Frankfurt to New York leg, USD12.99 for 50meg or something like that. Very slow, and not that reliable, but I was able to check email, Facebook etc (just make sure you disabled background syncing!).
Arriving at LAX it was just straight off the plane and out. The signage was crap. Wasn’t too bad to get to the baggage claim, you could see the signs making sense by following somebody. I went to and waited at the baggage claim for 15mins or so to make sure the Ottawa guy was correct that I wouldn’t need to collect my suitcase until Auckland. After that it was a good thing I had looked at a map of LAX as there were 0 signs to other terminals at that point. I’d looked at a map on a website or something so I knew I had to turn right out of my arriving terminal to get to the Tom Bradley International terminal. I knew when I got there, but there weren’t any signs at that level saying to go up the outside stairs to get to departures! Once on the right level for departures there were boards listing the checkin counter numbers for the different airlines so I was able to find the AirNZ Premium checkin counter fairly easily (in the mess of people). Only had to wait in line for a couple of minutes. I handed over my passport and said I’m hoping to find that my upgrade request (silver recognition) had been approved, to which the guy said yes and he took my Ottawa printed Premium Economy boarding pass off me and printed a new Business Premier boarding pass for me (and a new one for the flight to Christchurch as well I think). I also mentioned that I hope my bag has been transferred OK and he confirmed it was checked right through to Christchurch and I’d have to get in Auckland etc etc. He then made sure I knew where the lounge was. Going through security didn’t take very long at all. I went through the Business/First class line. Didn’t have to take my shoes off or laptop out of my bag. Signage after security was much better than before. Went and found my gate and then went back and settled into the Star Alliance Lounge. Had some yummy stuff to eat and drink and used the WiFi to make sure all my photos were backed up to Google. Getting close to boarding time I made use of the facilities and then headed to the gate and basically straight onto the plane.
Business Premier is nice. Would you like a drink Mr Gordon, what would you like to eat Mr Gordon (for the evening meal I just had the desert from the quick meal and some pieces of bread, which they arranged for me without issue), would you like your seat turned into a bed etc. Actually slept most of the flight, only watched a couple of TV programs around breakfast and coming in to land.
The domestic transfer baggage drop in Auckland could do with one extra sign that is visible directly in front of you as you are walking along the check in area, or just say that it is in area C on the other signs, as I got to an area with people going in (where the transfer used to be) but there weren’t any more signs for the transfer bag drop visible.
I got CAD200 and USD250 from Travelex at the airport (ordered before hand). The Canadian was all $10 notes which worked out great, the US was 2x $100, 2x $20 and 1x $10. The smaller USD was fine, the $100 notes were a pain, it wasn’t until we were back in the US after Canada (on the tour) that I actually broke them. I also had some CAD and USD from previous trips and from my sister. I came back with a heaps of USD1s, so the 3x $5 + 1x $1 that I got from my sister was repaid with $1 notes. I was going to try and get some $5s at LAX by buying some food but I ate in the lounge instead .