Halifax to Burlington

I have never been in a commercial airliner where I had to duck while walking to my seat. Today I was in two of them. This was a day for United Express and two short hops to get to Burlington, VT.

Ann and I were in a relaxed mode while winding down from our Road Scholar tour of the Maritime Provinces. We were able to sleep in and then go to breakfast at our leisure. No more intense schedules to meet. We saw many of our tour group at breakfast so we were able to say our good-byes to them. All of them were leaving Halifax today, trickling out the door two-by-two to take taxis to the airport. Our ride arrived at 11:00. Airport taxis are not typical. They are nice private cars similar to those of Uber drivers. They are expensive because of the long distance to the airport. It takes well over a half hour to get there. The route goes past lots of vacant land where you would think that an airport could be built much closer to the city.

Ann and I had separate flights. She was traveling to San Francisco via Toronto. I was traveling to Burlington via Newark. We checked in at our different airlines and then went to the small food court to have lunch. After that we had to split up. If you fly from Halifax to the US, you go through US customs before going through security. It seems strange to see US agents in Canada. I was able to use my new Global Entry for the first time. It was flawless. I still had to talk to the customs agent which was eerie. He asked me some basic questions and then asked me to identify my checked bag which showed up on his monitor. I didn't know that they could do that.

Both of our flights left around 2:00. My two planes were configured with a single seat on one side and double seats on the other side of a very narrow aisle. It took two hours to get to Newark where I had over two hours to walk around and have a good sandwich at the Earl of Sandwich. Then I had another 1 1/2 hours flight to Burlington. I arrived in very warm temperatures. The hotel picked me up in its van. I checked in, picked up my bicycle which had been shipped earlier and went to the pub that is attached to the hotel.  Being Thursday night with the Patriots playing on TV and being in New England where there are avid Patriots fans, I couldn't find a seat to order a snack and a beer. So I went back to my room, found something to eat in my backpack and dumped all of my dirty clothes from the previous tour into the hotel's washing machine, caught up on Internet things and read a book until my laundry was done. I also had a couple of freshly baked cookies that the hotel puts out every evening.

Bedtime was early.