Robert's Travels

The trip to South Africa began in the early afternoon on Wednesday, June 13, 2018. Our first flight, KLM 692, was scheduled to depart from Pearson at 5:15 PM, so we had the car packed and departed from Kitchener shortly before 1 PM. Traffic was a breeze, and we arrived at the Park N’ Fly Self-Park lot shortly before 2 PM. We had checked in online the afternoon before, however we still had to get into line to check our bags at the KLM drop-off point in Terminal 3. The line moved quickly, and after clearing security we had about 2 hours before our flight was scheduled to begin boarding. We walked around the secured area in Terminal 3 for about an hour, then had a quick lunch at Smash Burger before walking back to our gate. We chatted while waiting for boarding to begin, and once people began lining up shortly after 4 PM we got into line. We were in Zone 5 and thus were amongst the last to board, however there was tons of space in the overhead bins when we got to our seats so we did not need to squish our backpacks underneath the seats in front of us. Our plane, named City of Hongkong, was a 747-400. Our seats were right over the wing on the left side of the plane, and while they were not large there was still enough leg room that we didn’t feel squished. We ended up taking off shortly before 6 PM - the plane had to queue prior to take off and so our departure was slightly delayed. Once in the air I watched the second Kingsman film then spent the remainder of the flight getting some sleep. Todd watched Game Night, Ladybird, and then 3 Billboards outside Ebbing Missouri. We made up the delay in the air and landed shortly ahead of schedule at Schiphol International Airport in Amsterdam shortly after 6:00 local time.

We deplaned without issue, then walked the terminal to find the gate of our connecting flight. We did not need to clear EU customs or security as long as we stayed in the terminal, which made this a very easy airport for connections. When we reached our new gate it was empty, as boarding was scheduled to begin in about 2.5 hours. We used this time to wander through the terminal. We found some interesting artwork, recharged our phones and then did our language practice for the day (Spanish for myself; French for Todd). We picked up some breakfast at McDonald’s shortly after 8:30, then walked back to our gate and waited for boarding to begin.

The flight was scheduled to depart at 10:00, and boarding began at 9:30. We got on board and found our seats; the overhead bins were fairly empty and I had no problems finding space for my backpack. Our second plane was a Boeing 777-300, named Tijuca National Park. Our seats were right over the right wing, and were a bit more modern than those on the City of Hongkong. The seats had power outlets in addition to in-seat entertainment units. We took off on time and began our flight down to Cape Town. I watched Game Night (on Todd’s recommendation), then pulled out my laptop and worked on some personal coding projects. I later put on Thor: Ragnarok for some background noise while coding, but I spent most of the flight on my laptop. I had an hour long nap about 5 hours into the flight. Todd watched Kidnap, the fourth season of the Unbreakable Kimmy Schmidt, then he had a couple hour nap. He finished the flight by watching Ibiza and a few assorted TV shows. We began our descent into the Cape Town airport shortly after 21:00.

We landed without issue, deplaned and then walked to immigration. There was a short line, we only had to wait for 10 minutes before we were through and waiting for our bags. The baggage carousel was already full with bags, however we had to wait a few moments before our bags showed up. The ground staff had organized the bag onto the carousel in the most organized fashion I’d ever seen - all the bags were lined up side-to-side with no space in between. Once we retrieved our bags we took a short walk to the first parking garage (which is where the app-based pickup points were located), and called ourselves an Uber. The driver arrived within 10 minutes, and we departed from the airport around 21:50. It was a 20 minute drive to our hotel; however we were not able to see much of Cape Town in the dark. We drove through some scattered showers, however when we arrived at the hotel the rain had stopped. We checked in and were relaxing in our hotel room by 22:30. We had a quick shower to freshen up after almost 20 hours of travel, then crashed into bed and had a fantastic sleep.