Sunday we left Chicago anticipating that we would continue on to Kinshasa with a change in Toronto and Brussels. However, we missed the connection due to two issues. First, the United schedule from Chicago to Toronto changed to 30 minutes later with the result that we only had 50 minutes in Toronto. The second and most significant issue was that the flight to Brussels did not originate from Toronto, it originated from Montreal even though it was listed as a Toronto-Brussels connection. Thus the Toronto-Montreal leg was a domestic flight. This meant that we needed to go through Canadian immigration and customs and NOT just be in transit through Toronto. All this quickly took all the time we had and we missed our flight. This also meant that we needed to reclaim our bags–UGGH.
After asking at both Air Canada and Lufthansa, our ongoing carriers, we were directed to United, with whom we came from the US, and they were very helpful. They rebooked us and provided lodging and meals for 2 days at a nice hotel. We are thankful for luggage storage at the airport so for $8/day we were able to store the 9 trunks for 2 days.
Monday we had a lazy, free day looking around Toronto. We really enjoyed walking around the Toronto islands just 15 min by ferry from the city. Beautiful. Check out the pictures I posted on fb as I can’t seem to upload one to here at the Toronto airport.
Thanksfully today everything went well checking in with all 10 of our bags. Air Canada had no problem accepting that we had already paid the extra baggage charges. So off we go.
