Originally Posted by
plhought
You guys need to look in the little phone book every once a while! 'Snack Y2K' is the 24 food service in Iqaluit. It's honestly the best roast chicken meal I've ever had in my life. They deliver 24 hours. The key to being up north is never be afraid to ask.
The very first thing we did when we checked into the hotel was ask if there was
anyplace we could get dinner - the answer was a simple no, everything had closed at 10 except the previously mentioned bar. The very next thing we asked was when they started serving breakfast - 6am, which was 90 minutes
after we had to leave to head back to the airport to do the testing (we wanted to test early, before the sun started to warm things up and we'd lose our required low temperatures). A few people did head off to the bar to knock back a few - they later confirmed no food aside from some bar snacks.
Travel split us between two hotels - don't recall now which place we stayed out (nice lobby, not so nice rooms), but the ones that stayed at the other hotel gave a similar story. After we were done with the testing, six of us had to fly back commercial - including me (long story) so we were dropped off at the airport terminal to check in for our flight to Toronto. After we checked in for our flight, I asked if there was any sort of restaurant on-site. No, just some pre-packed sandwiches in the gift shop, but there was a coffee shop a block down the street that had food. So we walked down the street to the coffee shop in the frigid cold (apparently concerns that the sun would warm things up enough to lose our test window were unfounded). No food service there either - just some pre-packed sandwiches
. I did buy a crappy sandwich at the coffee shop, but the only decent food I got on the entire trip was in the Toronto airport (which nearly caused us to miss our connecting flight to Chicago
).
If there was 24 hour food service available - with delivery -
no one we talked to seemed to know anything about it (and we asked plenty of people - when all you've had to eat for 24 hours is a stale sandwich you get desperate). Maybe those friendly Canadians just didn't want to share their precious food with those nasty American visitors...
It sticks in my mind as the least pleasant trip I ever took for Boeing - I'd had to drop my wife at the airport at midnight the night before, then I had to be at Boeing for the charter at 6am (although we didn't leave until after 8am). They had box lunches and some soft drinks but we were not warned we wouldn't arrive in Iqaluit until 10pm so most of the box lunches were polished off early on. After our late arrival in Iqaluit, I basically couldn't sleep so I stayed up until 2 doing email. I did go to bed for about 2 hours but I'm pretty sure I didn't sleep - back to the airport for the test. The return flight was Iqaluit - Toronto - Chicago - Seattle, arrive in Seattle at about midnight. But now I'm at SeaTac, and my car is in Everett where we caught the charter... Hour cab ride ($120) to get my car so I could turn around and drive home. Nearly 48 hours door to door, no meaningful sleep, a box lunch, a stale sandwich, and a meal at the Toronto airport all that I had to eat. After I finally got home and went to bed, my dog pee'd on the rug while I was sleeping - something he'd never done. I suspect he tried to wake me to let him out but finally gave up...