Heading south

JJ and I are heading south for a few days.  And by "south", I mean Ottawa, not a nice tropical vacation.  "Why are we heading south?" you may be wondering.  "I thought you were up there for a year!" you may be thinking.  Yes, we are still committed to staying in Nunavut for a year.  But, we had a great opportunity come up--my mother is visiting and has agreed to look after the kids for us while we run for the hills for a quick "break".  We need it.  The house we are in is small, it has been winter for 2 months already, and its dark a lot.  At times it feels cramped.

How good is your Inuktitut? 

This trip will give us a chance to purchase some supplies not readily available up here.  Mostly we need things for Freya, our new rescue cat, and her kittens. There is no pet store in Iqaluit, so this is a good time to pick things up (cat collar, tag with our house number on it, decent cat food, cat carrier, etc.), We also will look for pants and shirts for JJ (his are getting holes in them) and hair supplies for me (a deep conditioner is an essential item I am missing--I've actually considered just coating my hair in Vaseline to see if it helps with the static). Also, it will be amazing to eat at restaurants and shop in real stores. We have both made a deliberate choice NOT to turn this trip into 3 days of dashing around the city procuring things we can't find in Iqaluit.  Instead, our priorities will be 1) sleeping in, 2) eating at least once at McDonalds and at least once somewhere nice, 3) picking up only supplies that made "the list", and 4) going to the spa.  That last one is just for me.  I want a facial.

So, away we go.  I'm a little nervous about the flights.  Not about flying, but about things being cancelled.  This has been a record year for Iqaluit in terms of things being shut down due to weather. It has made the news, and people are starting to complain.  The city has been "closed" so far a total of 10 times since September.  That means essential services stop (such as trucking in water to homes, snow plows, emergency services like the fire department, hospital clinics, the airport, etc.).  The GN (Government of Nunavut) shuts down, as do the schools, grocery stores, dental clinics, convenience stores, aquatic centre, etc.  I don't think the kids have gone to school for a full week in the past month.  Every morning, and every day at lunch, I need to check the websites to make sure school is still happening.  JJ's flight last week to Kimmirut was cancelled, so he had to leave a day later than planned.  Our trip south to Ottawa is only for 3 days, so I'm REALLY hoping nothing goes wrong with our flight.

I had already started a blog post about our airport here in town, so this seems like a nice segue into that. Enjoy!

The Iqaluit International Airport

Everyone knows what a baggage carousel is at the airport.  They are those motorized belts that our suitcases go on when they come off the plane.  They circulate past throngs of recently disembarked passengers, who reach out and nick their bags off the belt before it passes.  If you miss your bag, no big deal, it will eventually make its way to you again.  After all, the belt takes your bag in a continuous loop until it is picked up.

NOT HERE!  At least, that's not how it used to be.  The baggage belt at the Iqaluit airport couldn't be called a carousel.  Baggage carousels are called "carousels" because they are like little merry-go-rounds for our luggage.

source

No, the baggage belt at the Iqaluit airport did not go around in the circle.  It travelled about 15 feet and then ended abruptly.  Bags just dropped off the end of the belt.  Onto the floor.  Into a corner.

The old Iqaluit Airport.
source

I apologize for not having pictures of the inside of the old airport.  I could easily have gotten some amazing shots when we landed last summer with our 16 suitcases, dog, cat, and tired and cranky kids.  After 2 days of driving, a ridiculously early morning, the flight, and then realizing we had no keys to our house, I was NOT in the mood to take photos.  If I could go back in time as Future Me and tell Past Me to just suck it up and take photos, I would.  (And then Past Me would probably punch Future Me in the mouth.)

In my page about how to get here I mentioned that there are two flights from Ottawa that land in Iqaluit daily.  They are from two different airlines: Canadian North and First Air.  They both land between 12:30pm and 1pm, about lunch time.  (Why both flights are scheduled for the exact same time is a mystery to everyone I've talked to.) This means passengers from both planes are disembarking and looking for their luggage at the same time. That's a lot of people trying to get to the end of the "Baggage Belt to Nowhere", trying to keep their suitcase from ending up on the bottom of the luggage heap. Bear in mind, most people do a lot of shopping when they travel as many items are scarce here, so it isn't unusual for one traveler to have 4 or more bags (or rubbermaid containers) with them when they come back. The airport rectified the problem by hiring people whose job duties included catching all the luggage before it fell off, and trying to make less of a "pile" and more of a "clump" of luggage that people from both flights could rifle through.  It made for disorganized chaos every day from 12:30 until about 2:00pm.

But now, THERE IS A NEW AIRPORT!  And this airport, amazingly, has normal baggage carousels.  Two of them!  So now, like almost every other airport in the world, you can go to the carousel assigned to your flight and look for your bag in a civilized fashion. The best part is, if you miss your bag, it doesn't land in a heap on the floor buried under everyone else's.  It just comes back around to you.

Aaaah.  Better.
(source)

The new airport has a sleek design and is bright red (as opposed to bright yellow).  It is spacious inside, and the walls are covered with painted murals.

Coraline at the gift shop.

The Iqaluit International polar bear and husky.

Inuit carvings on display.

Inuit textiles.

The new airport has only been up and running since about mid-August, but its fantastic.  There is Inuit art on display, a cafe to stop for a snack, a little gift shop, and funky red couches (they look like they would be soft, but they are not.  They are as hard as concrete.  Still, they LOOK really nice.).

Neat-looking hard red benches.

JJ feels the new airport is somewhat deceiving.  When you landed at the old airport (Ol' Yeller), you immediately got a sense of where you were.  The airport was old, looked a little beat-up, was bare-bones, and rugged. It had lots of personality, just like the city.  The new airport is bright and shiny, everything is new, and it even feels a bit cosmopolitan. This is NOT like the rest of the city.  I can see how a newcomer getting off the plane would think "Gee, this actually isn't so bad! Not what I expected at all!"

And then they would walk outside.

Don't worry, I have another blog post lined up to post while we're away.  What is it about? Check back and see.......

PS: We made it! We are in Ottawa!  Holy cow the internet is fast down here!