Any suggestions? (parents and Canadians, this means you!)

[vaznetti]

(Otherwise known as, "surely my friends list knows everything...")

OK, here's my problem. We're going back to Halifax next month, so that I can pack up my office, arrange for shipping to the UK, say goodbye, all that stuff. And obviously, we are taking Spartacus with us.

We don't have a car in the UK; we have a borrowed carseat, but Spartacus has just outgrown it, so we won't be taking it with us. I have a car in Halifax (which I'm planning to sell). My usual practice is to take a taxi from the airport to the city. Now, as far as I can tell, taxicabs are actually exempt from childseat laws in Canada (at least, they are in Ontario -- as so often, it's harder to find info on other provinces), but I am a little nervous on two counts -- first, that it's about a 20 minute trip, and second, that I have serious doubts that a taxi driver will take us without a carseat. Does anyone have advice or suggestions?

I've emailed a child stuff rental company about renting a carseat (and some other stuff) while we're there, but they don't seem to do airport dropoffs. I'm going to phone my usual cab company (if I can find their card!) and ask them for advice. I think I'll also email former colleagues with children back in Halifax to see what they suggest (and hope that someone would offer to come pick us up! but that seems unlikely). In the worst-case scenario, there's a shuttle bus to downtown hotels that I can take -- after all, we'll be taking a bus to the airport here, and that's a much longer trip. But generally, by the time I've arrived in the airport, I just want to get the rest of the way, and I suspect that Spartacus will feel the same.

(And yes, I know he'll be on the plane in our laps, but air travel is statistically much safer than car travel...)

Comments

[cschick.livejournal.com]

Some taxi companies will be able to provide you with a seat.

If you were currently in Canada or the US, I'd recommend that you just purchase a Cosco Scenera and haul it with (if you've got a carseat to gate check with you, sometimes the gate attendants will work with you to place you in a row with an empty seat to let you use it onboard): it's a decent but cheap carseat that you're not going to cry about if it gets banged up while being gate-checked by the airline. But I don't know that they are available in the UK.

[vaznetti]

We decided to buy a fairly small and lightweight seat to use for this trip and later ones -- it just seemed the most straightforward thing. It will be interesting to see about using it in Canada -- according to the law there he ought to still be in a rear facing seat, and although technically, as a non-resident I should be exempt from that, my car is still registered in Canada... But even so, I think having the seat will just make things easier for us.