Spent the morning packing - yet again and wandering around through the nice fresh snow and down to the Lake where a group of 8 Bull Elks had come in, quite an unusual sight as the males don't usually travel together.
Then the wheels fell off the train, so to speak, The bell captain rang and said the train was running very late, and by that I mean it had been 24 hours late leaving Toronto, and had been loosing time ever since. We were told that VIA would pay for our accommodation that night, but not where we were and only at one hotel in town. He said this with a sort of dread in his voice and offered us transport into town. Our journey back to real life started. We arrived at the hotel - pretty basic and just over the road from the station to be told that we had to obtain a voucher from Via, so over we all trudged, picked up the voucher and back to the hotel to check in. Then Lynn and I went to explore the town and spend money.
Later in the afternoon we went back to the station to check progress, only to be told with some delight by the clerk that we had cancelled our booking and had "leaked out of the system". We insisted we hadn't done any such thing and got a little "techy", he insisted he could fix it??? Interestingly enough when I said I had ordered special food he could find that in the system under my name, obviously that part of me hadn't "leaked out."
Back at the hotel came another little surprise when we received a message saying that as we had cancelled our booking we now would have to pay for our room. NOT HAPPY JAN! So I called the Canadian providers of our tour and got them working and within a couple of hours the rail clerk got back to us a little subdued, saying the service manager had us on his Blackberry, so we had a compartment.
We had a lovely dinner and then the next day it all started again. Off to the station, where a very efficient lady ticketed us and got it all sorted, no probs,. but all day the misinformation continued, first we were leaving at 5, then 8.30 etc, etc. The rail manager gave us all vouchers for a lovely restaurant for dinner, then many disgruntled people sat around the station until finally the train arrived at 1.00am, by that time a mere 36 hours late. needless to say it was straight into bed.
The journey itself was rather pleasant as tired as everyone was, although we missed the best views of the highest point in the Rockies, but we did get to see vistas that the train travellers don't usually see.
Via handed out letters of apology offering 100% of any rail journey within the next 12 months, minus accommodation - I would just hate to think how much they loose every year if this is the way they operate.
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