Day 205 - Farewell For Now Doug and Alison and Thanks to You Both)

As this was the last day at Danny’s Godparent’s place we had to finally do the task we’d both been dreading – packing our bags from scratch again. Just like back in NZ we’d be leaving with a freshly cleaned set of clothes each and fully charged batteries (both physically and metaphorically.)

Danny’s day of packing was broken up with a trip out to the shop and also the Beer Store with Doug. The Beer Store was fun to look around just to see how many hundreds of different beers were on offer here.

Apart from this though it was just packing for both of us.

With the leftover meat and the odd Yorkshire pud we were able to enjoy a second roast dinner today which was great stuff.

It was all over too soon and we were saying our goodbyes to Douglas and Alison at the local bus station as we waited to board the bus to Toronto. Danny was especially sad to leave as he’d really settled in over the past 12 days and gotten to know his Godparents much better in this time.

We only had a minor hold-up en route to Toronto which was at the very last set of traffic lights where someone had driven through a wall and plunged into a construction site.

We got in the station, got our train tickets, checked in our main bags and then went to await boarding in the comfort of the first class lounge. Here we helped ourselves to drinks and bided our time until our carriage number was called.

The train is huge and we are at the tail end of it. We found our sleeper bunks and settled in here before heading to the dome car for hor d ’oeuvres and champagne as a welcome aboard gesture. Everyone in the dome car had the pleasure of an obvious train spotter from Texas who seems to have just one volume level – loud. He did get the lights shut off though and this gave everyone a much better view. While everyone was saying to each other how well they could now see the landscape and surroundings he could be heard saying how easy it now was to see: “the train, the track and the signals… Perfect.” We sat in the dome car for a while before deciding we should call it a night. We are now on board this train until it reaches Edmonton on Sunday morning.