The right photo is of Halifax — old, worn, and musty Halifax. I never made it to New York or Bombay. Instead I was left stranded at the Halifax airport after a series of unfortunate events that I am now calling the scourge of anti-trip.<\/p>\n
My secret untold desire was to be able sit on a plane for 12-hours straight and read unhindered; I can’t remember the last time I was able to do that. However, it seems that at every twist and travel turn I was thwarted from my goal. In Toronto I found out rather suddenly that my journey to India was canceled. On arrival in Halifax I managed to rebook my tickets to N.Y. (because nullifying the Bombay portion nullifies the whole trip I found out).<\/p>\n
This started a chain of events that were completely surreal and bound by the rules of anti-trip. There was a dinner where people got food poisoning and a complete cancellation of my N.Y. trip one hour after we were supposed to leave and 10-minutes after other flights left for Boston, Newark and Laguardia. I felt a little sorry for the Halifax Airport staff because they were completely unequipped to handle the assault of livid travellers that ensued — until they demanded that everyone return their duty free goods before they would address anyone’s concerns; after this I had no sympathy.<\/p>\n
There was more anti-trip: no rental cars available until August 4th; no buses running; and, internet at the airport stopped working. None of my remaining connections in Halifax were answering their cellphones and the rest were already two hours away in the Valley.<\/p>\n
I managed to book a hotel room and find a cab — but when I arrived downtown my reservation had been lost. They found me a room and I decided to go for a relaxing swim just before I found out that the pool was closed for maintenance. And it still continued: internet was not working, restaurants closed early for the evening, and I discovered just as I was paying for something that I had no Canadian cash. It was the scourge of anti-trip and the final crowd pleasing piece-de-resistance: once back in my hotel room I couldn’t find my book!<\/p>\n
Eventually I found my happy place and spent time wandering around old musty Halifax. I attempted to take some photos but as you can see from the photo above the city was mired in a thick blanket of photo prohibitive fog. I don’t think I’ve ever blogged about Halifax before… it’s really lovely and not a bad place to be. Don’t let my anti-trip scare you away.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"