Travel with Pets and a Life Update

My posts these days are all over the place. It seems that I'm having trouble keeping the order of event chronological. One minute I'm talking about what it's like to be back home and the next I'm talking about the process of moving (right now in fact). This post is about the day we traveled home to Canada by plane.

Moving and traveling with pets is stressful. Worry about their safety and well being occupied our minds for days (if not weeks) leading up to the move. We even chose the airline based on their pet policy and procedure. AirCanada has been a shit show since the pandemic started. Delays and lost luggage are all you hear in the news. They made a bunch of bad decisions when the pandemic happened and they are still suffering the consequences. Of course they are blaming everything on covid and not their own poor organization and planning though. We decided to fly with AirTransat instead and had no issues whatsoever. Our decision was even validated when we checked the AirCanada flight that same day and saw that it was delayed for 2 hours. That would have been 2 hours longer that the pets had to wait in crates for a totally of 10 hours+ for the day. That would be 2 hours more stress and anxiety for everyone. We avoided it though, which was lucky.

We ended up paying for an upgrade with the airline as well. The reason wasn't for the slightly better food or the additional leg room, though those things did make the 8 hour flight more enjoyable. It was about timing. Previous AirCanada flights had held passengers on board after landing for up to 2 hours and they were previously only letting passengers off in small groups of 20 people or so to avoid flooding customs (I think). As such, we wanted to be at the front of the plane in case that happened again, to get off in the first batch to go and collect our pets. In the end it was completely unnecessary. They let everyone off at the same time and we were all in the baggage claim long before our pets arrived. Everyone (us and the pets) made it safe and sound by the way.

AirTransat isn't fancy enough to have a "first class" section but the upgrade included slightly better seats with rows of 2 rather than 3, a little more leg room, a little better food and alcoholic beverages included.

Oh, and a bathroom dedicated to the 20 passangers up front, so it was never too busy. That was actually a plus. All and all, the upgrade isn't something I would pay for under normal circumstances but it wasn't too expensive since AirTransat is sort of a budget airline and it was quite a bit more comfortable for the 8 hour flight. Okay this post seems to be turning into a review of sorts.

The entertainment system was a little lacking compared to AirCanada I will say that. AirCanada has a huge selection of new movies and TV shows and series. AirTransat only had 2 or 3 new movies to choose from and then a bunch of older stuff frkm way back. I watched King Richard - the Venus and Serena Williams story and then Rush Hour with Chris Tucker and Jacky Chan (nice throwback movie) and Mars Attacks (another throwback).

We landed and were picked up at the airport by family members. Then we spent 2+ hours in a typical Canadian highway traffic jam. It was a little too familiar if you know what I mean.

We stayed the night at my wife's parents house and then went to our empty but clean home in a neighboring city to wait for our furniture to arrive.

We were actually pretty impressed by the condition that our tenants had left the house. It was clean and had almost no damage to it other than some expected nail and screw holes for hanging pictures on the walls. My wife's parents actually painted our living room and a bedroom for us before we arrived home, which was super generous. Big thanks to them for their help.

The house is so different than our French home as you can sort of see in the photos. It's completely furnished now so maybe one of these days I'll take you on a tour of it like I did in a previous post.

I spent the next week painting walls and trim. It's nice to be able to make changes and upgrades to your own home. It's not really something that you do when you know that your living situation is only temporary.

We still don't have our stuff that we shipped from France, just the furniture that we had in storage for 3 years while we're were away. But we did learn that everything is currently on a ship and making its way across the ocean. Hopefully it will arrive in the next 3-4 weeks or so.

Until then, thanks for reading.