Almost a day in Dublin

Well, I didn’t think I’d be writing another blog, but the day has already produced enough excitement and entertainment for some extra paragraphs.

But there’ll neither golf nor food porn, lads and lassies. :)

We’ll get to the title eventually, but let’s start, as Maria does, at the very beginning.

We got up around 4.  Yes, A-M! My Fitbit (which is, of course, infallible) says I got 4 hrs 15 minutes sleep.  And I was first in bed, if not last up.

Here’s the thing: it was light out!!! WTF!??!!? It was rather mind-boggling.

We were cleaning up.  Mostly Mike, who we decided was a domestic god. :). I tried to help, cleaning the fridge.  There was a half bottle of something orange – called Irn-Bru.  I poured it down the sink as Mike grumbled something about John, and I put the bottle in the recycling out back.

Not long after 4:30 we were on the road.  We were amazed at the amount of animal and bird life on and around the road.  I tried to hit I don’t know how many doves in the middle of the road.  There was a cock pheasant (I didn’t see), Butch said “just watching us drive by, like we were nothing.”  Sheep, cows, horses, rabbits, squirrels, some in the road.

I said something about coffee and John said “it’d be good to have that half an Iron Brew I had put away for just this ride.”  Turns out it’s an energy drink.  Of course, he only said it once. #ifonly

We listened to the radio, first out of Dundee, then Forth; the guy on Forth said in his time slot it was his job to play stuff that got you energized.  He did a decent job.  I have Whitney Houston’s “Be My Baby Tonight” stuck in my head (yes, Michael, there was SOME singing – it’s a Euro thing).

To get an idea of the ride, I said to Butch, “it’s only 5:15, isn’t it too early for that.”  Mike said “it never stops.”  Butch said, “It’s always running.”  Not clear if that was his mouth or what.

And part of this Schtick were a series of sheep puns.  Butch started (of course) with “the flock on that hill looks sheepish.”  It wasn’t the worst of the series that followed.  Groan.

Butch suggests we drop the bags with a couple people and we take the car back.  In an interesting development, they wanted a £1 coin for the opportunity!!! I had one, we did it, and John and I meandered around the complex to the rental return hut.  The guy was pretty chirpy for 545 AM.  “Let me just have a wee inspection of the car.”  He goes and comes back with the thumbs up sign.  I say, “I guess I didn’t rip one side of it up.”  He says, in full Scottish brogue, “That’s quite a disappointment to me, actually.”  #irony.

Long walk to terminal, found Butch and Mike, and bag check was smooth, onto Ryanair – or into the cue.

Sandwiched between us, as she put it (sometimes you can’t make this stuff up) was an Irish woman.  Who turned out had four daughters – she said of her husband “I don't know where he went wrong”- two of whom showed up with her.  They had been to Edinburgh to shop for wedding dresses.  “It’s our first wedding,” Mom says.  To which (Dad joke coming) I said “you’re not married then?”  Karen will be embarrassed to know she didn’t laugh but corrected. :). Turns out (I now know too much about wedding dress shopping in the British Isles) that dresses are both better and less expensive in Edinburgh.  They weren’t sure, though, that they’d found anything to their liking.  And were told that the average expenditure on a wedding dress is 2, 500-3,000 euros, and a good one, “a Vera Wang” one of them cited, would be 6,000.  We suggested they could fly to New York and get one for far less and still save money.  They seem to be considering it.  Mom was big on us visiting Gallway – in the west, if your Irish geography is light – and JP said he wanted to play Ballybunion.  There was a short description of my visit (10 years ago with Ian) to Kilkee to play golf.

Bottom line: Gallway is beautiful and wedding dresses are quite the commodity in Britain and Ireland (this may come as no surprise to certain readers; I told the Irish women that they had hit my subject matter wheelhouse :) (another Dad joke?).

You can tell we were in line a long time.  Shortly after boarding we were zip, off and the flight is up and down – maybe 45 minutes in the air.

We get to Dublin, I stand up, feel my right rear pocket and curse.  I don’t have my wallet!!!!!! I realize I never picked it up out of the bin in security at the airport.  This is not good.  I have no idea what to do.  But I look in my messenger bag and there it is!!!!  I guess the security people didn’t like it laying around and threw it in there!!! Whew!!!!  It was the nth BP check of the day (what I think of as lots of turbulence on the plane – woke up multiple things thinking we were dropping and crashing, yikes!!!)

The line at border patrol was long.  But we had plenty of time.

Hahahahahahahaha.

We find our way to the “tunnel” from Terminal 1 to Terminal 2 – we went the long way because no one told us differently last Sunday – and checked our golf bags and JP’s clothes whore bag – it weighed 21 kg where his golf bag weighed 18.  But he looked wonderful all week, didn’t you think.

Some unnamed went out to “burn one,” then we went through security (this is important) and then bought Irish whiskey at duty free.  JP wanted to drink Guinness in Ireland, so we went to a bar right there.  We thought we had plenty of time.

Well, it turns out there was a second line for security and passport checking!  For American flights.  We were in line to get our picture taken (this was done on the NYC end when we went in January) when an announcement came “will the Dodson party and Mr Hicks make their way to their gate immediately.”  Uh oh!

We still hadn’t been told our gate.  We went through security, again, this time (for those of you who know) taking off our shoes (the first time all trip?), then there was a line.  We didn’t know if we needed to fill out the declaration card, so filled them out in line.  As I’m 3 from going up one of the people says “anyone going to New York on Delta?” I said yes and he said I was okay.

LOL.

Oh, yes, and here they showed you a picture of your bag (you checked) and asked if it was yours.  I told JP that it might have been my golf bag or maybe not, but I wasn’t going to be wishy-washy at that point (3 of us have black golf travel bags – you have to look closely to tell them apart).

Butch and I were ahead of the kids by about 10 in line and we took to the gate; finally a sign said…well, I thought it said “405”.  405, of course, is at the end of the spur, where 401 was the first gate.  I see a second board and now I see it is “Delta 45 401” whoops.  JP says they wondered how we got behind them.

We were the last ones on the plane.  As JP said, “we were that guy.”  LOL.

Beware what you wish for: there was some comment that it wouldn't be that bad to have to spend a night in Dublin and fly back tomorrow, getting to see the town.

Whoops!

I’m sure we Americans are all safer for all that. :)

But we made the plane and are on our way.  Now 5:27 minutes from our destination (those of you who’ve flown lately with a screen in the back of your seat know there's a flight tracker that tells you this).  Rah rah.

There’ll be updates later.  If there’s anything interesting.  Like luggage not arriving, no one having the car park chit, a rough trip from the airport, or wisdom over Jameson’s and cards tonight.