It took all of the above modes of transportation to get me where I was supposed to be in Ireland after 3 days of unexpected delays and traveling...but I am getting ahead of myself. First let me apologize for taking so long to update here. I got home from the trip at 11:15 Monday night after being up for 24 hours. Tuesday and Wednesday I caught up around here with the dogs, laundry, housework, etc. Then yesterday I basically crashed from the jet lag. I slept 11+ hours for the past two nights, and finally feel normal--or what passes for that with me, anyway.
On Saturday the 13th, (I now see why my dad feared that number) my friends Judy, Lauri, Bonnie, and I boarded the Chippewa Valley Airport Service shuttle at 9:15 AM and headed to the airport in Minneapolis. (I coincidentally was sitting in front of a guy who heard me mention that my daughter was a social work major--it turns out that he was one of her professors and advisor in the SW department at UW-Eau Claire!)
After a smooth check-in at the airport and getting through security, we checked the flight board and saw that our 2:30 plane to Newark was not on schedule. To make a long, all-day story short: due to storms and high winds--up to 75 mph--out east, planes were delayed, stacked up, and unable to take off or land. By 5:30 PM, ours had been delayed and then cancelled. So what do we do now?? As an infrequent flyer, I was blown away by the fact that best-laid plans can be destroyed by the whims of Mother Nature and the airlines. I have seen on TV the mobs of travelers stranded at airports during the holidays, dealing with blizzards and over-booked flights. "Poor saps," I'd think. Now I was one of them.
We worked with a determined young man from Continental named Said, and he found two seats on a flight to Newark on Monday the 15th. TWO DAYS away!! The four of us looked at each other; at that point Lauri and Judy decided to cancel their trip. We would be missing much of the tour we had booked, and two of us would still have to find a different flight to get there. Bonnie and I took the seats on Monday's flight and added two days to our stay in Limerick with Katie. With long faces, we got on the 6:00 shuttle that we had boarded with such excitement that morning, back to Eau Claire to figure out what to do next.
After pizza and 2 pitchers of beer at Sammy's with Lauri and her husband Paul, Bonnie and I went back to their house for the night. Between e-mails and phone calls to our travel agent and the tour company, we learned several things: neither business would do anything for us as far as reimbursement or travel vouchers regarding the days we would be missing with the tour. When we arrived in Dublin, the tour would do nothing to help us catch up with the group, who by then would be all the way across Ireland in Killarney. They had their money, so why help, right?
Continental had given us a voucher for a cheap rate at a hotel near the airport, so Sunday afternoon Bonnie and I drove to the Cities again in my car and spent the night there. We headed to the airport early Monday, just in case we could catch an earlier flight. No--instead, our 2:30 plane was delayed another two hours--causing us to miss our connection from Newark to Dublin. :( This is crazy!! The gate agent managed to get us seats on the 9:50 flight to Dublin, and we took off for Newark around 5 or so. It had taken us 2 1/2 days from first setting foot in the airport to actually get on a plane!!
It was raining when we arrived in Newark, and we hustled to get on an airport shuttle that would take us to the terminal we were flying from. We soon discovered that the flight to Dublin was also delayed--we were waiting for 69 kids from the North Carolina State marching band to arrive on another flight; they were going to be marching in the St. Patrick's Day parade in Dublin. At 11:50 PM we finally took off for Ireland!!!
I dozed off and on during the night, but was pretty groggy when we landed a little after 10 AM, Emerald Isle time. Bonnie and I got our luggage and headed to the information desk. We bought a bus ticket that would take us into the city, about 20 minutes away. After getting off that bus, we went to the tourist center and a nice girl named Sinead told us about an internet cafe that stores luggage. We bought tickets for a sightseeing bus that goes around the city and lets you get on/off at various places. (More on that later) We also had to plan how to get to Killarney by that night. Katie had offered to come to Dublin to get us, but I assured her that we were big girls and would figure it out. Through various conversations, we learned we'd have to take the tram--like an above-ground subway--to the train station, and we could take a train to Killarney.
We spent about 5 hours touring Dublin, then located the tram pick-up spot. We stood there not knowing what to do! Where do you get a ticket? A girl in her early 20s heard us wondering aloud, and she told us how much it cost, then took our Euro coins and led us to the ticketing machine. She got the tickets for us--a sweet and helpful girl, contradicting the signs all around us that said "Beware of Pickpockets." We jumped on the tram, and no one even asked us for our tickets; we stood up all the way to the train station. By this time we were running late, and we ran in to get our tickets. We raced to the turnstile and didn't know what to do there either; a man took our tickets and put them in the slot for us. We hurried to get seats and flopped tiredly into them, just minutes before the train departed. Whew!!!
The trip to Killarney was 3 1/2 hours long, and until it got dark we were able to see some of the countryside. This was the Ireland I had come to see! Most of the houses in the country seemed to be painted a yellow/gold color. The hills and pastures were green, but not the deep color that later spring will surely bring. At each small town that the train stopped in, a voice announced the name of the place in both Gaelic and English, then said "Thank you for traveling Neither Here Nor There." After a few of these announcements, we decided that "Neither Here Nor There" was either the name of the train or the route. How quaint!!
At 8:30 we finally arrived in Killarney! It was raining, and we quickly grabbed a cab. It drove about a block and a half to get us to our hotel, 5 Euros worth!! The driver was very nice, and I tipped him a handful of change--not knowing yet that tipping isn't customary there.
The Killarney Avenue Hotel, where our tour group waited. We had missed 3 days with them--but we made it!! To be continued...
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