YOW to YYZ to NCL

It can hardly be a coincidence that no language on Earth has ever produced the expression, "As pretty as an airport." Airports are ugly. Some are very ugly. Some attain a degree of ugliness that can only be the result of a special effort. This ugliness arises because airports are full of people who are tired, cross, and have just discovered that their luggage has landed in Murmansk - and Murmansk Airport is the only know exception to this otherwise infallible rule. And architects on the whole try to reflect this in their designs. They have sought to highlight the tiredness and crossness motif with brutal shapes and nerve-jangling colours; to make effortless the business of separating the traveller forever from his or her luggage or loved ones; to confuse the traveller with arrows that appear to point at the windows, distant tie racks, or the current position of Ursa Minor in the night sky; and, wherever possible, to expose the plumbing, on the grounds that it is functional, and conceal the location of the Departure Gates, presumably on the grounds that they are not.

- Douglas Adams, The Long Dark Tea-Time of the Soul.

This passage (or as much of it as could remember, at least) was running through my brain yesterday as I sat in the airport at Toronto, waiting for my flight back to Newcastle. Airports always make me restless and cranky, not least because of the way time seems to stop when you're in them... Maybe this explains why! :) I was stuck in the airport from noon to 7:30pm (long story short, it was much cheaper that way) and it wasn't until my plane was taxiing out to the runway that I realized the day had passed by and it had become late evening. ugh. I hate that.

anyway, I'm now safe and sound in Newcastle, about to head off to the post office to pick up a parcel. yay!