30 October: Frankfurt to Johannesburg

The flight to Toronto yesterday was pretty uneventful, although we ended up leaving half an hour late. I did spend most of the flight chatting to the guy sitting next to me - people seem quite fascinated by a South African who has traveled all this far from home (although goodness knows why because it seems as tho every Canadian knows some South African who has immigrated here!). Anyway, it certainly made the flight go a little faster.

The flight from Winnipeg to Toronto was one of their cheap domestic routes so I didn't end up eating cause I thought I'd grab something in Toronto Duty-Free (always a good way to pass the time in an airport!) ... clearly something I didn't really think thru tho because by the time we landed, I only had time to dash straight to my boarding gate. And besides, at 10pm at night, just about everything was closed anyway!

I also, sadly, did not get my passport stamped out of Canada. Weird, I know ... but I guess cause of the late hour and the delayed flight they just checked my boarding pass and ushered me thru (And by that I literally mean 1 member of airport staff standing at a small glass gateway that clearly was not the usual passport control route - maybe they just don't care if you're leaving?). It's annoying really, as someone who relishes their passport stamps.

By this stage tho, I was starving, having not eaten anything since my pretty unsubstantial Tim Horton sandwich at lunch but, at least I did get dinner on the plane! I honestly wasn't sure if we would considering our after 11pm take-off time.

Oddly (because honestly, before this trip I can't remember this ever happening before!) I ended up chatting to the guy next to me (another local Canadian who'd never seen or thought to see the Polar Bears - as my last aeroplane-companion explained to me, their winters are cold enough for them, they'd rather go somewhere warmer!) who was headed to Egypt to join a tour that sounded pretty similar to the one I did in 2006.

I managed to get quite a bit of sleep after my dinner and awoke to fruit juice not too long before we landed (although I missed the muffins they were handing out for breakfast - although it was about lunch time in Frankfurt).

I'm hoping I won't actually get affected by jet-lag at all tho because I managed to get some sleep and am now having my day at Frankfurt Duty-Free and will hopefully manage a little more sleep on my overnight flight to Joburg.

Had brunch at McD's, I tried their Hot Chicken Nacho burger. Interesting, but it wouldn't become a favourite. Okay, I know I've eaten a vast amount of McD's in the last week ... but when on holiday it's safe and cheap and as I've said before, I enjoy trying the items we don't get back home. I spent ages wandering the 2 Duty-Free shops deciding early on what I was buying (perfume for me and whiskey for Varen), and then faffed around reading my book waiting for my flight to show up on their schedule board. It was a long and boring day...