Michal's flight was departing from Prague Ruzyně airport on Sunday 17th August at 11:25 local time, but I had to be at the airport three hours before the departure, at 8:25. Travel to the airport takes about an hour, so I had to get up at around 6:30. Shiver... I don't get up that early on business days. If I knew that I would not be able to choose a window seat because all window seats were already taken (because many people checked in even before me), I would have stayed in bed an hour or so longer...
After check-in, I had about two hours to waste before boarding, so I was going to check the activity on the airport. Unfortunately, there isn't much going on on Sunday early morning, so I wasn't able to take many pictures, except a few of a landing Lufthansa Airbus A319. Notice the two aircraft holding short of the runway (the closer one is a Boeing 737-800 of Travel Service, the farther one is a Boeing 737-500 of Czech Airlines). The partially visible airliner in the foreground is waiting for passengers of the Czech Airlines flight to New York JFK, scheduled to depart about 30 minutes before my flight.
Then I found my plane: Airbus A310-304 (OK-WAA). It was still two hours before scheduled departure, so the aircraft was being refueled, food was being loaded, and - the windows were being cleaned. Though it's possible to fly without seeing anything (like in a fog or in clouds), it's certainly much better if you can see, so Czech Airlines (and all other airlines) have people who will make sure the pilots can see well. Look at the pictures!
Shortly after the windows were cleaned, the crew arrived. The cabin crew started to get the cabin ready and the pilots did the external checks (this time both the captain and the first officer checked the airplane). At that time, I went through the security check to the waiting space at the gate - and for the first time ever, I actually needed the letter from my doctor about my pharmaceuticals that I need to carry with me. Actually, this was the first time that the airline employees were really checking my passport thoroughly. Then I waited... and waited... and waited... and then I realized that there's no toilette in the area in which we were all sitting. Luckily, after the New York flight departed, the airport employees opened the doors to the waiting area of the JFK flight, which had a toilette - and a lot of people from my flight took advantage of it!
When I went through the gate to the plane, I was told that they changed my seating. I was seated at the emergency exit, which was great - you don't have that much leg room anywhere else, not even in business class! Even though I wasn't sitting at the window (the emergency exit door's window didn't have a window you could see through), I didn't complain. And it was cloudy the whole flight except the first few minutes after departure and the last few minutes before landing, so I would not have been able to see anything outside the window anyway.
Because the airplane I was flying in isn't certified for extended operation above the ocean, we had to stay close to the continents, so we had to take a slightly longer route: north-west from Prague over Germany, then north of the United Kingdom, over Iceland, over Greenland, enter Canada from the north-east, and then fly directly to Toronto. The flight was scheduled to take 9 hours and 10 minutes, but we were about half an hour early. The flight certainly didn't feel like nine hours; though I got four newspapers and two books and though there were two long movies shown, I didn't watch the movies and I only checked two of the newspapers and I didn't even touch the books - and I wasn't bored. I'm weird!
Czech Airlines is an airline that provides a lot of support for families with small hildren, so we had a lot of them on the airplane. It was very nice to see a lot of children playing in the aisles.
Every visitor to Canada must present an immigration card to the immigration officers. The cabin crew gave each passenger the card, so that we could fill them in in the airplane. One of the questions in the card was the flight number that took us to Canada. The cabin crew, trying to be helpful, told everyone to put OK 050 in there. But wait... OK 050 is the flight from Prague to New York JFK, not to Toronto. So I had to alert the cabin crew that the flight number should be OK 102. After a short moment they announced that the correct flight number was indeed OK 102. Luckily, my alert was fast enough, so none of the passengers had to start over because no one used the incorrect original information from the flight crew. I'm not sure what the immigration officers would do if people presented the incorrect information to them; after all, giving incorrect information is the last thing you should do if you want them to let you go in!
Half a year ago on my holiday in the Netherlands, Nicole tried to push me into the swimming pool, but she failed horribly. She promised me revenge and she joined her forces with Dar: I was promised to get wet on my Canadian holiday. I hate to say this, but I must admit they won even before I landed. The air conditioning in my Airbus didn't work 100%, so due to the sudden changes in air pressure and temperatures during landing, water started to condense in the air conditioning vents shortly before touching down. Yes, it was dripping on me. This was the first (but certainly not last) time when I got wet. Splish splash! Though I knew it was likely to be the air conditioning, the water was dipping from near a container with medical supplies and it was making the fluorescent lamps in the cabin wet. So I asked the cabin crew to check whether it was perhaps a broken bottle in the medical supply overhead bin that was the cause, but they replied that it was really the air conditioning and that they knew about it. I was thinking that with my luck, I'll be flying back with the same airliner and it will happen again. Oy!
Walking from the gate, going through three immigration checks, and collecting my case took about 45 minutes. Czech citizens don't need a visa in Canada, but the immigration checks took a while anyway. The immigration officers were friendly though and it looked more like a chat rather than questioning.
John and Dar had picked up Torsten and Nicole and they were all waiting for me at the Toronto Pearson International Airport. To make sure I would not forget about getting wet, they were all wearing rain coats with the name of Michal's Everquest character written on them. The other people at the airport were curious about the weird people in weird yellow capes, especially small children who were asking their moms what those people were doing; you can see for yourself on the first two pictures. And it was hot after 45 minutes in those coats! I was laughing when I saw them and I got a hug!
I was also given a gift: a T-shirt and a jersey that would remind me who has the best ice-hockey team in the world. Me and John with Dar tease each other when the Czech Republic plays against Canada, and this was a reminder that Canada will undoubtedly win the next match (unless they lose of course)! I don't play ice-hockey myself, but I can use the jersey when playing the real football!
Then we drove to my hotel where I checked in. I stayed in Delta Chelsea in downtown Toronto until Friday. John has a Tom-tom in the van, so it was pretty easy to find the hotel... or was it? It didn't take long until we were a few blocks away from it, but then the Tom-tom started to be confused and made us circling around the hotel for a while. But we were able to transition to visual navigation (the hotel is a huge building, so you can't really miss it), and after 15 minutes or so driving around it we were on the parking lot next to it. This is how the hotel looks from the parking lot close to it; the second picture shows the hotel as a reflection in the building next to it.
Everyone inspected my room to make sure it was a good one (it was), Nicole tested the bed by jumping to it a few times, and Dar and Nicole checked the balcony. Nicole also checked the naked Pakistani man standing in the window of the next building!
The hotel was only a few blocks from the CN Tower, so I had a very good view from the windows and from the balcony, both during the day and at night. At night, the tower is illuminated with lights that change color; it looks beautiful.
After I settled in the hotel, we took a short walk through Toronto, basically to have dinner. We went to East Side Mario's, an Italian restaurant where they played a lot of Dirty Dancing music, so it made Nicole twice happy! The food was great, the atmosphere nice, and the staff friendly, so I can certainly recommend this restaurant. After eating, we went back to my hotel, Torsten and Nicole headed to their bed and breakfast and John and Dar drove back to Oshawa.
In the evening, I unpacked a few items, including a bottle that I had brought from the airplane. This is the proof that the air pressure inside an airliner is indeed about 25% smaller than at sea level (this is equivalent of the air around 10000 feet above sea level). Since the air pressure outside the airplanes at cruise altitudes (around 35000 feet) is about one quarter of what it is at sea level, the decrease in pressure inside ensures that the aircraft fuselage does not have to withstand too big a pressure difference (making the airplanes easier and cheaper to manufacture, and also much lighter), while it still allows people inside to breathe. This collapsed bottle is a nice demonstration about how much smaller the pressure in the airliners is.
Copyright notice: Text, images, and videos copyright by Michal Řeháček, Nicole, Torsten, John Philip, Darlene Sine.