Our Holiday - Getting to Canada and Finalizing the Immigration Process

I promised to tell about our holiday in Canada, so here goes.

We were flying out of Gatwick Saturday morning with Air Transat. We hadn't heard of the airline before, but it was about 300 pounds cheaper than e.g. BA or Air Canada so we thought: how bad can it be. We soon found out.

First of all, Gatwick is not my cup of tea, and it didn't help with a gazillion people in track-suits on their way to somewhere south with another cheap airline. I'm might just be snobbish, but you'd never catch me in a worn track-suit anywhere but near a gym! :) Anyway, after a while we find the far-away corner where Air Transat has their check-in and starts queueing. We're used to queues and we were in good time, so waiting 15-20 minutes didn't matter too much. What did matter however, was the woman behind the counter. We were aware that we were only allowed 20kg each, but every single airline we've flown with before doesn't batter an eyelid before you pass the 23kg per person mark, so we hadn't thought much of the weight. Apparently they meant the limit very much, and we had to pay for every singe kilogram of overweight. Not only that, but all of the sudden they had added a new limit on hand luggage, which had come into effect after we booked and paid our tickets and they naturally hadn't thought of telling us this, even though they had postal address, e-mail address and phone number. It turned out they posted it on their website; like I'm going to visit that after I've booked my tickets!

Having argued with the woman without any result and having paid our overweight, we headed out to the plane which was starting to board an hour before take-off. I guess it takes a while to get 300+ people into an air plane but the less time sitting down the better, and having pre-booked seats we lingered as long as we could. The next surprise we got was the plane it self. They had removed all partition walls and dividers which you usually find in long-haul planes, and crammed in probably 10 extra rows of seats. I just barely touched the seat in front of me with my knees (on BMI from London to Dublin which is also a cheaper airline, I have at least 5cm of space) and the seats really weren't that comfortable. Had it been a one or two hour flight I wouldn't have minded too much, but we agreed there and then that never again would we fly with them. Call my snobbish or what-ever, but we can afford the higher price of going with one of the other carriers and having tried this I don't mind spending that bit extra. For that exact same reason we never fly with EasyJet or RyanAir when going from Denmark to London...

Seven hours later...further west

We landed without much further fuss in Toronto, and started looking for signs etc. towards the immigration officers who we needed to speak to regarding our case. Being so focused on our cause, we kind of forgot to look exactly where we were headed, so when we reached the regular passport control we looked for one that might be for us. We finally spotted one for special needs or special cases or something, and since there wasn't any queue we thought it might be where we needed to go. First thing the officer said was "Why are you here?" to which we started to explain about our immigration papers and everything. He smiled and said that next time we should use one of the regular queues as that one was for disabled people! Ups! He was nice enough to quickly look at our customs form, fill out his part and direct us to the right office. Nice guy :)

In the immigration office we expected to be quizzed for hours about the information we've given them and what our plans was etc. and we had brought screen dumps of our bank accounts as well as a list of all our possessions we would be bringing later. Having waited about five minutes a friendly woman invited us into her cubicle and started looking at the forms we brought (you get this huge printed form with multiple layers of paper, loads of slightly cryptic number and categories together with one of the photos we've sent in) having written a few different thing and asked us a few questions each (do you have any children etc.) we were asked to sign the form a few different places and give her a ball-park figure of how many funds we would be bringing over - no need for the screen shots or anything. Finally she voided our temporary visas (which you get after your case has been approved. They allow you to enter and finally Land in Canada) and gave us new, regular tourist visas. It might be because we were only going there on holiday and not actually moving there yet, but that was it! we were through within 15-20 where we had expected to spend hours! :) Very nice and enjoyable process. Now we just need to get our permanent resident card and social insurance numbers and we're ready to make the move...

In next episode: The great days we had with our Canadian family in Toronto.