Delayed

The day started chilly and overcast in Dartmouth, but by midday the clouds had burned off and it was sunny again. That was good, because it meant we had something nice to look at from the window of the terminal. You couldn't say the same of New York; thunderstorms there meant that our departure from Canada was delayed by two hours, which in turn meant that we were most likely going to miss our connecting flight to Hong Kong. Neither of us were downcast by this; it should be more bad news for our insurers, but we'll get to hang out in New York for a day with our friends, and hopefully arrive back by Tuesday morning. It might even be possible for us to get bumped onto a direct flight home, which would be rather more pleasant than the utter grind of a flight to Hong Kong plus another interminable wait in the airport and another connection.

It also meant we had more time to explore Halifax International, which isn't so great. I'm not sure about the main terminal, but the area for US departures has an abridged Tim Hortons (no maple glazed doughnuts) and a tiny bookstore. And when you see a magazine on sale there that is dedicated entirely to soup, you begin to doubt you're in the most cosmopolitan of locations.

Still, the absence of maple glazed doughnuts is good for my body, and you can't really say anything bad about soup, and finally, we had a woman conduct a survey for whether we liked Canada or not (during which we realised the mindbending expense of our plane tickets once again), before giving us each a maple leaf badge, which was a very happy occurrence, because otherwise I wouldn't have realised that I'd mislaid my new Alexander Keith hat. That was another opportunity for Canadians to show how friendly and helpful they are. It's a shame that the Americans can't be friendly and helpful by being able to land a plane in a thunderstorm, but then not everyone is a mentalist Cathay Pacific pilot.