Flying to Singapore!!! My 40th Country (Costs and First Impressions)

We woke up super early and made our way to Billy Bishop Airport in Toronto where we hopped a flight to Montreal before heading onward to Singapore, my 40th Country!!!! After a long flight we stay overnight in the Changi Airport Jewel and explore the airport before taking the train into the city centre. Also, we talk about how to get a metro pass in Singapore and what to know on arrival!!

I managed to get a few hours of sleep between work and our 4am wake up call. Our flight was at 10:20am from Toronto’s Billy Bishop airport. We both had never flown from this airport before. My mom was to pick us up at 4:30am to take us to the Burlington GO station, but at 4:45 we hadn't heard from her. I texted her and then called her.. She thought our flight was at 4:00pm and would be there in 15 minutes! I felt so bad waking her up, and promised to make her tea. Only a few minutes later she arrived at our house. Aren’t moms the best!? I offered to drive her car to the GO station, as I had been awake longer, and I drive there almost every single day for work. We drove to the Burlington GO (no traffic at 5am) and it took about 30 minutes to get there. We had planned to take the 5:28 GO train to Exhibition station, but just missed the train. It was honestly ok, as I am an overplanning borderline obsessive (well not too borderline) and we had loads of time to spare. We took the 5:58am train to Exhibition station. It cost about $10 on our Presto cards for the trip (it’s a few bucks more if you pay without the Presto). As we waited on the platform to board the train, we saw a little fluffy brown bunny in the grass just beside the tracks, right beside us! I named the cutie Waffles. The train took about 50 minutes and we arrived in Toronto just before 7:00am just as the sun was rising right behind the CN tower. Really beautiful. We could have taken the street car to the airport in 15 minutes, but we decided to walk and watch the sun rise, plus we would have had to wait almost 15 minutes until the next street car arrived. The walk was lovely and a bit brisk, maybe 13 celsius or so. There was a tunnel to Billy Bishop and a ferry. The tunnel obviously is more regular than the ferry. The tunnel was uneventful and took maybe 10 minutes. We arrived at the airport, one of the smallest I have ever been to. We used a kiosk to print boarding passes and proceeded to the security line. Security was easy, as the airport is tiny….it took maybe 15 minutes. The security lady put another man’s smokes in my bin, and he pointed this out to me, but I told him the smokes were mine now (a joke)... he didn’t seem to understand. I figured a bearded 30 year old white man might find me funny, nope. We then proceeded to the boarding lounge, it was tiny. We ordered coffee and an egg and cheese ciabatta. We sat and waited almost two hours to board, overplanning for the win! Our flight boarded in like 10 minutes flat, as it was a super tiny plane. Overall Billy Bishop was nice, but lacks the big airport feel. I understand that a small airport is probably most people’s jam, but I love Toronto Pearson (despite all the flaws), driving to it just gets me so excited to travel. I love the international feel, the flights leaving for places all over the world, the nostalgia….am I weird? The flight was a little over an hour (the lovely flight attendant gave Jives and I the only two little Bailey’s bottles for our coffees). It took off and we had a perfect view of the CN tower and the entire skyline of Toronto. It was a perfect cloudless day.
We arrived in Montreal and had a bit under two hours layover. We found a place selling Jives’ favourite “lady beers” and we decided to have a pint before our flight. Jives ordered an IPA with a brunette goggle wearing lady on it and I got a stout with a straight haired brunette. Both were very nice beers. We made our way to our boarding gate, sending Gaby a selfie along the way (for Montreal-Narita nostalgia reasons). We boarded a little late…(I boarded behind a Japanese lady with toilet paper stuck in her pants..I felt horrible, but decided to point it out to her). As we boarded the flight to Narita a white lady with a HUGE backpack was fighting with the boarding gate staff about her bag size....

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