Traveling West is Supposed to be Easier

I left via CDG airport the next morning. I read a lot of horror stories about how busy it was so I got there a little over three hours early. I think one reason it's so busy is that the check-in lines for each airline only open about two hours in advance; they simply don't have the space to have a dedicated line for each airline. Anyway, I was through and waiting by the gates at least an hour early, and the plane was further delayed by an hour, so no worries there. I'm up and away.

There was a connection through Iceland -- I had to dash to catch the plane, one of the last five people to board -- amusingly, after all this, I just have two Icelandic stamps to show for it in my passport. Then the extended flight over the Atlantic. I had a long conversation with the old woman next to me, who had emigrated to Ontario from Italy in her youth without speaking English or French. I told her many stories too and thus we passed the time.

At some point there were crazy ice floes outside the window, so I got my camera out, but mostly missed them (these are all chunks of ice in the open ocean)

I did catch some other beautiful shots of northern Canada though:

At one point we passed right on top of another plane, heading for Ottawa I think. You can see discrete exhaust cycles from the engines:

We landed, and I waited for my luggage before realizing it was definitely still stuck in Iceland. So I filled out forms and stepped outside. Even though I had been awake for about 24 hours straight at this point, I still stopped to watch the sunset:

Unfortunately, my SIM card with Canadian data capabilities was in my luggage. But I figured out how to get to my hostel, and fell soundly asleep, 26.5 hours after waking in Paris that morning.

While I was sleeping...

There was a shooting literally right outside my hostel's door at 5am. I slept through it because I was so tired, but when I got up at 7:30am there were cops outside and the door was cordoned off -- I heard one detective saying, "there's blood here, and there's blood there," and I looked outside and I could see it for myself. Three people were shot and two of them died soon after, in what appeared to be gang violence.

I'm not going to show pictures of that -- this is a travel blog OK? -- but here is what appeared the day after:

There was a police car stationed there 24/7, but no one made a move to erase this.

Strangely, I still feel safer about Toronto than I do about American cities like New York. The total number of crimes like this is much lower and everyone seemed to take it seriously here. I spoke to one of the cops for a while. There's still a sense of community, of general good will that seems to be missing e.g. when I see law enforcement in the States.

Anyway. I took three maple seeds and threw them into the wind from the top floor, watching them float away. Rest in peace.