A Funny Thing Happened on the way to Niagara.

Not.

Niagara was a bit of a side trip. The OH had miscalculated the time it was going to take to drive to son no 1's place and had accordingly arranged to pick up the hire car far too early. So he suggested we revisit Niagara.

 

He did it with the best of intentions. The last time we were there wasn't a terribly happy time, for a reason with which I will not bore you but which has coloured my view of Ontario ever since; suffice it to say that the thought of visiting there doesn't have the greatest of pulls for me, despite having been there several times since and actually enjoying myself. Eastern Canada and my Ph D supervisor have this in common; they didn't  get a second chance to make a better first impression, and in my experience you get past that stuff but somewhere deep down you don't get over it.

 

But the OH thought we could go to Niagara and lay some happy relaxed memories over the tense unhappy ones and it was a good idea. On the way we stopped for coffee (and a doughnut) at Tim Hortons because that's what you do in Canada and then we pushed on to Niagara where we discovered that the town, which last time was  a bit on the tacky side but quite small, had become way bigger and tackier since we were there. We parked a little way out of town at great expense, paying  with cash out of my wallet and got out of the car and  prepared to walk to the Falls.

 

It was at this point that the OH discovered that his bag was missing. That would be the bag with his debit card, his credit cards, his wallet, our passports, our travel itinerary,  our hotel confirmations and the e-tickets for our flights in it. So much for new and happier memories....

 

I'm not quite sure how come I didn't have a total  melt down on the spot, and he  said later he was very surprised and impressed that I didn't. Maybe I'm getting less uptight as I get older?

 

It was obvious that  our best hope was that he had left it at Tim Horton's because, really, what else could he have done with it? So we made our way to the nearest branch where really, despite the fact that it wasn't their problem, they couldn't have been nicer. It took a long time to workout which branch we had been in because out along the Queen Elizabeth Highway the franchise places breed like rabbits, but once they had, they phoned and found that yes, the bag had been left there, and yes, it had been handed in, and yes it was all intact and waiting for us, all we had to do was get back there and pick it up.  

 

I want to say a big thank you to Tim Hortons, in addition to the many thanks we gave them at the time. Not only did they find our bag, the people at the Niagara Falls branch gave me a free coffee while we were waiting and when we picked the bag up from where we had left it,  we were given a gift card because of 'all the worry'. Additionally the manageress had looked in the bag to try and find contact details and had not only e-mailed both of us (if only we had thought to check our messages!) but had contacted the hotel we were on our way to to tell them she had it too. Sadly the manageress had no idea who had handed n the bag which was sad as we'd have liked to leave a card and a small token of our thanks.

 

I spent the rest of the time away being a total pain whenever we got out of the car.  'Have you got your wallet? your phone? your bag? the car keys? ' Because really, although I managed not to have the meltdown, and although it all ended well, I didn't want to live through the trauma all over again.