November 21, 2022
Day 76: Marseille to Montreal & Vancouver
The Marseille airport Ibis hotel is no more than one km from the terminal, but one would not want to walk that with a pile of luggage. That's why we were careful to make sure they had a shuttle before booking. When we arrived, we were concerned to see that the shuttle was a seven passenger van, mostly filled with seats. So it seemed to us that loading in our stuff plus the bikes and any possible other passengers plus their stuff was not going to work. That set us to scheming, and our plan was to have me walk the bikes over while Dodie would go with the luggage in the shuttle.
That one km walk may not have been long, but it actually was a bit tricky, involving two roundabouts and some parking lots that you can wander in to, but that have no exits. So we rehearsed the walk a couple of times. Obsessive? Maybe, but we did get lost (or trapped) more than once in rehearsal!
When the time came to reserve our shuttle time, I explained our scheme, and they responded by allocating the whole shuttle just for us. With that and some jockeying, all our stuff plus the bikes went in!
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This was a good start to what turned out to be a fairly rotten travel experience for Dodie. It started (as usual) at security. Dodie explained that she has metal knees, which would cause their walk through scanner to blow off. They didn't believe her, so she walked through and it blew off. Now they suggested the problem was Dodie's wrist braces, so those came off and went away somewhere. The machine blew off again. Ok, manual scan. But then they had another item, one we have not seen before. It seems to be a shoe scanner, saving you from removing your shoes? To use it, you put first one and then the other foot up onto a scanner, while steadying yourself on two rails. Dodie could not steady herself on the rails without the now mostly disappeared braces. So they said ok, take off the shoes. But Dodie has laced shoes, double knotted. Taking off the shoes takes a chair and also those darn braces! Our batteries, passports, computers, spare clothes were arrayed down the line in seven bins, and I was trying to keep an eye on these. But I went and undid the shoes for Dodie, later finding a chair and the braces so she could put them back on. It was quite a mess. And when we were finally ready to leave security, I had to go find Dodie's stick. They had grabbed and stashed that early in the show.
At our 4 hour layover stop in Montreal, things started well as the driver of one of those electric carts spotted Dodie moving along with the stick, and gave us a lift, quite a respectable distance, to "Transfer flights". That's where we met our first unhelpful employee. He asked to scan our boarding passes for the continuation flight. These were stuck into the passports, and Dodie, hands full, handed over passport and boarding pass, saying "Here, scan whatever you like". "I asked for boarding pass, and that's what I meant, do not hand me that passport" was the reply. He absolutely refused to just pull the pass out a bit from the passport book. We told him we thought he was rude and not doing a good job, but he did not care in the slightest.
After the customary not being welcomed back to Canada by Immigration, we walked quite a long distance down lonely corridors, towards the gates. Those boarding passes were scanned an additional three times along the way. We had by then figured out that our gate was to be gate 7, and I asked the last scanner wielding girl how far that was. She said she did not know. I said "You work this corridor but you have never been to Gate 7?" "Correct", was her casual reply.
We walked some more, until we arrived at a sign that said Gates 1-50. And yes, they began at Gate 50! Dodie went up to a man dressed in yellow (not me), who may have been airport security, or somesuch. She asked if he could find one of those shuttles for her. But he refused, saying she would need to phone the airline for any assistance. (If you have ever tried to phone an airline, you know you need about two days for the project!) We walked on, and encountered a man in red, whose tag said he was an airport "ambassador". Dodie put her request to him. He walked back to the man in yellow, who told him he had already told Dodie to shove off. The "ambassador" returned to relay the same message. We had a little debate with him about how were we to know that our transfer would involve such immense distances in his airport. He basically held that only idiots would not plan for huge walks in airports. This guy should apply for Russian ambassador for his next assignment.
At this point, one of those shuttles came by, going the other way. We hailed the driver, and requested a lift. The answer was sure, but he would have to deliver his current passenger and he would be back. I went and found a chair and put Dodie in it. At this point the man in yellow took it upon himself to walk down and tell us that the shuttles were not supposed to travel to the distant Gate 7, and that we were lucky that the driver was going to do it.
When the driver returned, he told us that the Gate 7 prohibition story was nonsense. He drove us down, way down, past all those 43 other gates, finally finding Dodie a seat at 7, and carrying her bags to it. So, good and bad employees all along.
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I am typing this from my own seat at the famous Gate 7! I will post it now, and add anything more and some photos later!
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Well OK, we made it to Vancouver. Playing it a little smarter, we had arranged for one of those electric carts for right from the gate. There was room on it for Dodie and two other ladies, but not me. So I jogged along beside, together with the middle aged daughter of one of the other ladies on the cart. Finally that daughter got fed up and made the driver slow down. I was rather enjoying the exercise, but oh well.
We had arranged with Patrick, the owner of Vickie's B&B in Richmond, to pick us up with his truck. Patrick is very responsible and helpful, and we very much appreciated his coming out at the late hour of 11 p.m. We had a discussion about a lift the next morning to the ferry terminal. Patrick and us are on the same wave length, because all recommended a really early start to make sure of no glitches. So around midnight local time, which is 9 a.m. in Marseille - yesterday or tomorrow - who knows anymore - we and Patrick turned in. We had been awake by that point about 27 hours!
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