We left Sydney amid a country-wide heat wave at 16:20 on Wednesday Jan 15 on United Airlines for SFO with connecting flights to Chicago and Toronto. As usual we were on FF tickets in business class obtained with US Air points. The flight was uneventful, in fact the service was pretty good by UA's standards. When we arrived in SFO it took an hour to get through immigration, luggage collection, and customs to the bag drop for connecting flights (most of this time was spent waiting for our luggage). At the bag drop we were advised by the baggage handler that our connecting flight was delayed by at least 4 hours meaning we would miss our connection in Chicago to Toronto (the last flight of the day). So we went to the re-booking agent and low and behold with no fuss she rebooked us on the next Air Canada direct flight - amazing. We finally arrived at Toronto airport at 11:15PM and to our amazement our luggage arrived within 5 minutes - even our skis. We got to our hotel, the Park Hyatt in Yorkville, after midnight. Dead tired!
Thursday
We both had a bit of a restless night and got up a bit late - 9:00AM and had an excellent breakfast before showering and getting ready for the day.
We met Ernst and Hilde at noon and walked around a bit then had a very light lunch. Ernst drove us around a bit to see the extensive damage caused up an ice storm just before New Year's. We went back to our hotel for an afternoon rest up. At 5:30pm Dieter went out for "happy hour" then we all met for dinner at an Italian restaurant, Spuntini, just a few blocks from our hotel on Avenue Road. Ulla had arrived late that afternoon to stay with E&H so of course she joined us as did Eberhart.
Friday
Ernst took us on a drive down to the Niagara wine district - we visited a few wineries and bought some wine (for Ernst's cellar) then had a nice lunch before heading back to Toronto around 3pm. Later we went to E&H's for dinner with them and Ulla - a quiet evening.
Saturday
We picked up our hire car and drove to Deb & Bill's place out near Port Perry - about 1.5 hour drive. We had lunch with them then hung out talking etc before driving back to Toronto and an early night.
Sunday
Up at 5:30am for our 8am flight to Vancouver - as luck would have it neither of us slept very well so we started out very tired but made it.