Almost four years later, I was ready. More than ready to hit the road, and take the long way home to Dublin.
It felt almost disingenuous to spend so long living in Canada without visiting the 'wild' West and I was dying for some contrast to the straightlaced geography of Ontario. (Sorry Toronto, but there's only so much lake and hills I can take before I need the sea and some proper mountains!) Great Outdoors here we come!!
The main travelling objective was South America but it seemed like a good opportunity to take the time, while we had it in abundance, to make our way across to the Rockies as slowly and as cheaply as possible! See ** for our money saving methods!
Our itinerary was as follows:
Day 1: flight from Toronto Edmonton.
$360 one way per person direct with WestJet.
** Used RBC credit card points to pay for one of our flights = $180 each.
That morning of departure was truly a nightmare. Weeks of packing, planning and purging all came to nothing.
There it was.....the dreaded miscellaneous pile of junk. Lounging obnoxiously in a heap on the kitchen table and extending to a overflow pile on the floor beside for the larger items.
All bags for home already long gone, so whatever was left here some hard decisions had to be made!
** (We had the good fortune of 2 friends flying to/fro Dublin and Toronto with work, which meant business class tickets for them with up to 2 check in bags. Which meant for us, two massive suitcases back to Dublin for free. Thank you fruit basket delivery not withstanding!)
Back to the situation at hand - our rucksacks packed to the brim. Not to mention the additional 3 carry on bags that couldn't fit into the Queen bee bag.
Too late to do anything with this pile but chuck them in the bin and this was proving hard for me. My beloved bucket armchair that was never adopted, my massive creepy painting I bought in a jumble sale in Kensington market...what should I do with them!
Spare phone chargers- seems a crime to throw perfectly good items in the bin. (Incidentally, I still have that stupid spare charger 3 months later. Should have just binned it!!)
I think it goes without saying that the reality of what we were doing was starting to churn in my stomach that morning.
Left our jobs, got rid of all our stuff (most of it...), decided against using our Permanent Residency which incidentally took lots of money, hassle and time to get, no apartment, no return ticket to Ireland, no jobs in Ireland...essentially all we had was our savings (which I guess most people our age and situation would have used for a wedding fund instead!!), our backpacks (plus a few carry on stragglers), not much of a clue where we were going and each other!
So my anxiety about the "stuff" we were leaving behind was admittedly more of a silk screen for a serious freak out going on behind the scenes.
About 120mins before our flight was due to leave from Pearson Airport...I was frantically 'sorting' a drawer of God-knows-what in the bathroom of our downtown apartment 25km from lift off when John appeared looking understandably harassed. He called me out to the hall, went into the bathroom, closed the drawer, turned off the light, shut the door and announced "The bathroom is now closed' in a final and somewhat unearthly tone.
It was time to go!
The actual moment of leaving Toronto and all that it represented was lost a little in the sheer relief of making it to the airport in time and not being overcharged for luggage!
We were so hyped up from running in circles for the last few weeks, all the goodbyes and little jobs and big jobs and lists...man oh man the lists! We were on the highway before we knew it, speeding away from my life of almost 4 years while trying to check off the mental to-do list and respond to unanswered bon voyage texts. I was just so happy at the prospect of sitting on a plane with nothing to do for the next couple of hours that the significance of it all paled considerably.
We could honestly have been going anywhere! If there was a cold drink, a small bag of pretzels and shite movie on a tiny screen it was enough for me. It felt surreal to glance out the taxis rear window and say a visual farewell to the shrinking CN tower and the city I had made so many memories in.
Arrival in 'Dead'monton:
