My adventure begins with a last minute trip down to Mexico where my sister's been living for a number of years now. Needing her old car brought back up to Canada I, being the only transient member of the family that drops her life at a moments notice for adventure (aka not having a real job), managed to get down there to help out.
If it was left up to my dime there's no way I could afford it. But I have a wonderful friend at Westjet that graciously gave me a buddy pass. Thus, making it doable.
2 days before I left, my parents decided they wanted in as well. However, if they were going to come down, they wanted to spend some time on the beach. Clearly this wouldn't work in with my non existent budget so they offered me a spot in their room if I would stay with them a few days.
Um... free room on a beach? Yeah. Pretty sure I can make that work.
However, funny things happen when you try to "mennonite your way"... they got to Mexico before me.
Since buddypass means standby and it was apparently reading week (only finding this out at the gate), I kept getting bumped off of one plane to the next.
It was beginning to look like my adventure wasn't going to happen...
When I called Westjet even the client rep asked; "Hmmm... does it HAVE to be Puerto Vallarta?"
Yes. Yes it does.
I finally decided to check out what Air Canada could do for me and, I don't know.... is it better to book flights at the airport? Or was this a random one off thing...
AirCanada could book me on a flight leaving within' the hour to Toronto and then in the morning to Puerto Vallarta.
First he quoted me 900+ dollars and, well, that's almost the value of my car. So THAT wasn't going to happen.
As I stood there blankly, actually thinking I may just go for it... KNOWING I didn't have anywhere near that kind of money and my line of credit really isn't designed for this... something changed. I have no clue what he did, worked something out, and my flight was suddenly $350+
Sold.
Once I arrived in Toronto I tried to factor in the cost difference between going for an adventure downtown and sleeping in the terminal, too getting a room at the airports Sheraton and resting up since I caught a nice little cold playing at Festival du Voyageur.
"Hi there, how much for your smallest, least expensive room?"
"All our rooms are the same price and they're $250 plus tax"
"Uh huh... hmmm... ok. I'm just going to walk over there and take a moment to process this."
WHAT?! That's crazy!!
Plan B, walk aimlessly around the airport until I figure out where I should go, and what I should do until tomorrow morning!
I headed over to the airport information booth and asked the on site volunteer where the least expensive hotel was closest to the airport.
"Once you've paid for the cab fair, checked in, and taken a cab back in the morning it's no cheaper then staying at the Sheraton."
"Yeah, that's 250 bucks"
"Not if I fill out this form for you and get you a room for $90."
"....seriously?..."
Tell you what... that room was NOT worth $250, but it was worth more then $90. And I had the best day sleeping, watching tv, and eating greasy take out food in those extremely bleached white sheets.
No comments:
Post a Comment