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Today was a travel day: car to the train station, train to Toronto Union Station, Union to Pearson Airport, then British Air to London.

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Vacations are always a bit stressful for me initially. Apart from doing all the running around to nail down all the last-minute details, I find that I've been increasingly settling into a comfortable rut. I love Kingston and it totally feels like home, so I'm reluctant to leave. Apart from its other virtues, a long vacation is a good way to climb out of that rut and breath some fresh distant air.

We're still masking in enclosed public spaces, which means a long stretch—about 29 hours from the time we left the house on the 5th—with very unfresh air. Very few other people wearing masks. But we have friends who almost died from Covid on their trip from Boston to Hawaii. So we're not regretting having to put up with masks for a while.

First, of course, we have to get to the islands. Today was like that old film, "trains, planes, and automobiles", only in reverse and with two trains. We started with our dear friend Adrienne driving us to the train station. From there we took the train to Toronto Union Station, then the UP (Union–Pearson) light-rail line to the airport. Airport Security was minimal and quick, which is a pleasant change from the bad old days—except for not being sure how secure this approach is. Oh well: dum vivimis, vivamus as the Romans used to say.

We got a bit of a shock while sitting at the gate waiting to leave. Two Canadian Border Patrol Agents marched onto the plane, asked a couple people to produce ID, then handcuffed one poor guy and dragged him off the plane. I've never seen that before and hope we don't see it again.

An uneventful trip as far as Heathrow and then things got difficult. First, when I tried to get my local phone number set up, my iPhone wouldn't turn on. Second, Shoshanna's checked baggage didn't arrive, and is scheduled to be delivered tomorrow at some point; the British Air help desk at the airport was overwhelmed with 20 or so people whose bags didn't arrive. So our first major job in St. Helier was to fill out a form to get Shoshanna's bag returned to her on the next British Air flight. Next, I had to find an Apple Store or equivalent to see what went wrong. The staffer, a young woman, had the phone booting before I could finish describing the problem: sometimes, you need to do a "soft reset" of the phone. If I correctly understood her, you hold down the top one of the two sound buttons for a couple seconds, then the bottom one of the sound buttons for a couple seconds, then press the button on the other side of the phone for a few seconds. Not very intuitive, but it worked.

We'll be staying for the next 10 days at the Franklyn Guesthouse in Saint Helier, the capital of Jersey. Our hostess Elena (pronounced yellayna, as in Russian) seems nice. The room's unspectacular, but will do. At least it's not on the third floor—a problem that we encountered several times in Sicily. We found several lovely places to stay, only to discover that having to climb three flights of stairs after a long day of hiking is not the greatest idea.

First order of business was to dump our bags and get out into the sun to get our daily rhythm shifted to the local daylight schedule. It wasn't very sunny, but at least the rain held off, so we went out to wander around the harbor for a couple hours (St. Helier's a working port) and made it all the way to the top of the mountain whose sheer clifs rise above the city. Makes for a good view of the harbor and the rocks that rise outside it to host a fortress, Elizabeth Castle.

Next: May 7

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