Do read this in 'reverse' order.
After 2.5hours at Changi, + 13 hour + 4.8 layouver + 8 hour to Toronto = almost 30 hours to get to Pete's place. Yes we finally made it, our longest ever Journey!!
It was the captains final flight after 43 years,
The 2nd leg was an air canada, they did check ArriveCan app at the check in, vax certs, etc. Plane was very full and a disappointing 3-4-3 seat configuration in Economy on a B777-200 (plane was supposed to be a B787-9 when I booked). Entertainment was basic, food was basic...
They had buffet style which is against most covid regulations, but heck!
oh they had the best beer on tab!
oh they had the best beer on tab!
franziskaner weissbier OMG! ON tap? at 9am? ( it was beer o'lock in Singapore timing, and heck!!)
It was sooo goood.
Really spacious and not-crowded at all!
Yawn selections
We landed without issues, and no one check out Vax or other documents. The Germans are cool! It was a 4hour++ layover, and time to chill at the Senator Lounge!
We swapped out the SIN-FRA to the SIN-MUN route, SQ332 on a A350-900 and we had 3 seats to ourselves in this red eye segment. We changed to the FFP2 mask immediately after this. It was a 13 hr flight to Munich!
It was an ardous journey to even begin this trip, when VTL arrangements between Singapore Germany was announced, we were mildly excited of possibly going to have recreational travel once again. On 9th October, Minister Iswaran gave the biggest present on the daily news conference, with the extended VTL scheme, to 11 countries! We scrambled to look for locations for our year end trip and Canada was one of them, and there begins the search for tickets and routes. Our friend Pete was willing to host us in Toronto, and Singapore Airlines didn't not show any route at all to Toronto. The Singapore - Vancouver route was re-opened only a week or two later. There was then explosion of queues at Ion Orchard at the Singapore Air office, as well as at least a 2 hour wait on the phone. There was no way to book a flight to Toronto without either one of this, and it was pretty sad that in 2021, a website can't offer the 2 sectors to get to Toronto. Finally we book at SIN-FRA-YYZ on the 14th October, and all was good for the planning of our trip, probably a week in Toronto, and another week in Alberta before heading back out from YVR. Omicron created endless anxiety in late November, with different countries such as Korea and Italy making last minute 'border closures'. Would Canada do the same? Quarantine was suggested for 2-4 days or until a -ve PCR arrival test in Canada. Yet different provinces and airports had different rules, making our planning ever so difficult. We finally brought forward the depature date by 2 days to 'insure' against any of these rules, and finally on the 21st December, we were ready to lug half of our belongings to Changi! Here our huge stash seen, with some chaos at the airport. We weren't allow to use the automated ticket (the 2nd leg FRA-YYX was via Air Canada), so only counter applies and the Queue was LONG. Counter lady took super long too, mulling over our Vax certs/C+ reports and eTA applications (which in the end we think it wasn't useful at all). The flight was to be from T1 and we had zero time left for the Silver Kris Lounge. It was almost a sprint to get to the gate from T3, and finally we boarded.!
