Planes, Trains and Orthotics: A Middle-Age Woman's Guide to Travel

As I previously stated, we came to Newfoundland because of the musical, “Come from Away,” and the biggest draw for us was to visit “Gander,” the town and the people that inspired such a wonderful show. We were so excited to immerse ourselves into the place where this wonderful story took place, clearly showing that there were still kind and generous people left in the world.  We drove more than three hours and immediately realized that Gander was a bit of a bust.  We did go to the North Atlantic Aviation Museum, which included a 10 minute emotional piece (at least I was teary-eyed) by Diane Sawyer on the generosity of the Gander people during this trying time. Other than that, it could have been a town in any American community with a Walmart, a McDonald’s and a “Mary Brown’s,” the Canadian version of Popeye’s. It was early afternoon, and we now had to figure out what to do for the rest of the day.   After more than three hours in the car, K-Dazzle suggested to Judy that ...

After leaving our shorts and tee shirts behind in New Jersey, Mary, Bob and I flew via Toronto, to St. John’s, the capital of Newfoundland. We knew that it would be much colder here and were armed with sweaters, gloves and hats (At least those of us with Type A personalities).  While inside the airport, we called an Uber, opened the airport door (No electronic doors here—this airport is no JFK) and as the cold wind smacked the three of us in our faces, we all yelled at the same time, “OH MY GOD!” We jumped into the Uber as fast as was possible for three middle aged people, and met our first friendly Newfoundlander, who happened to be from the Sudan.  Before he even put on his seatbelt, Bob asked him how he got to Newfoundland from Sudan and he said, “Well, I first came to Toronto,” which hardly cleared up that question for us. As the wind whipped around our car, we then asked if this was normal weather for this time of year and he said—much to our chagrin—that this was really ...

Right from the beginning, I have to confess that Newfoundland was never on my travel bucket list.  In fact, up until a few years ago, while I knew that it was a Canadian province, I couldn’t have pointed it out on a map of Canada. For all I knew, it could have been located right next to the western province of Saskatchewan, which I also do not think I could identify with any certainty.  But geography aside, none of that seemed to matter after seeing the Broadway musical,  “Come from Away.” Soon after seeing the show twice and reading the book, “The Day The World Came to Town,” I got out a map of Canada.  If you haven’t seen it, the musical is based on the events taking place in Gander, Newfoundland, during the week immediately following the September 11th attacks, when planes carrying about 6,500 passengers were ordered to land at the very large Gander International Airport and stay there until the skies were safe again.  While the circumstances were unimaginabl...