Some will say that the journey, not the destination is the story, (or something like that).. well, (IMHO) that doesn’t quite apply to
international travel. It is the bridge
you must cross to enjoy the destination. So we started to cross that span (and
Atlantic) last Thursday. A fellow traveler on our recent Scotland journey gave us the name of somebody who will drive you in your own
car, drop you off, and than pick you up at the airport upon return.
We availed ourselves of that and will probably be the norm now for any
extended travel.
Anyway, we got to Dulles without traffic or undue delays,
and found British Airways to be fairly easy to deal with, got our bags checked
to Shannon, and rode the little train to the correct terminal and got to the
gate without hassle. The other times
we’ve traveled from Dulles we kind of marveled at how empty it was in
general. Same here..
While we were passing time we saw a traveler using something
you never see anymore
Although intially deserted, the lounge began filling up with
what we speculated was a tour or athletic team composed mostly of young women
(teens we guessed) who didn’t speak our language. They did speak Texting however, since most
of them buried their noses in hand held devices.
We finally boarded, and this time the plane was a 747-400 and it was
MUCH better than our Scotland bound USAirway’s 757. We paid extra (go figure) to lock in aisle seats across from
each other, and that was also helpful.
Each seat had it’s own little programmable video screen in front of you where you could
pick what source you wanted to use to pass the seven hour flight time. Fortunately they had a classical music
channel and I was able to listen to Beethoven.
A friend who travels long distances frequently loaned me his
Bose noise canceling earphones. What a
difference! Audio quality was excellent,
and the jet noise was considerably reduced.
If you travel a lot, I would recommend an investment. Another good thing was that British Airways
offers complimentary beverages of any sort even if served in plastic.
Maybe buoyed by the music, I thought the food also exceeded
USAirways. Lots of plastic and foil, of
course
Which when uncovered revealed the pasta and green salad (with bottle of wine in background)
The ensuing hours passed fairly easily (thank you Mr. Bose), doing that dozing half
zombie like sleep and eventually we approached and landed at Heathrow. When telling friends of our trip and passing
through that airport, we got a lot of “oh dear”, and rolling of eyes in
response. And you know what? They’re right. We first had a devil of a time figuring out
what gate our Aer Lingus flight was, and finally with help from a nice BA lady we were
directed to a long hike involving several ascents and descents on escalators, eventually
arriving at a street level tram which would take us from Terminal Five to Terminal One, from
which our plane to Shannon would depart.
It seemed that the bus ride was enough to drive us to Shannon as it
weaved in and out, up and down around massive construction projects. Finally dumped us at the door of Terminal Five, and then we
repeated another marathon hike and escalator journey that took almost a half
hour. That was interspersed with
seemingly random checkpoints requiring partial disrobing, contents into trays on and on,
and even places where you had your photo taken, producing a little yellow
sticky on your passport for the next sullen security agent to see. You might guess that a seven hour plane ride
didn’t put us in a good mood for that. Eventually
we got closer to our destination and saw this sign.
At first I thought, how cute! Very funny!
Well, not really. Once past this sign there were no kiosks, vendors or
anything. You were sunk, and by the time
you figured that out, it was just too far to go back. Eventually we loaded on an Airbus of some
variety and flew above the clouds landing at Shannon. Not to denigrate the English, but the whole
scene changed when we got to Ireland.
Smiles all around, how are you? Custom agents, yeah, whatever, have a
great holiday. Gotta love it.
Then, and then, I was faced with my greatest fear of the
whole trip. We approached the Avis desk,
and indentified ourselves. We were at
the end of the line of customers, and so the wonderful lady spent a long time
making sure everything was okay, we had directions, gave us a little damage
report on our vehicle (a Renault of some variety) saying they knew the fairing around the passenger mirror was busted out
(but worked), and pointed out it was a diesel making sure we knew it was the
black hose at the gas station. I was a little discomforted
when she said, there’s a quarter of a tank of gas, but that should be “plenty”
to get you to Galway.
Well, guess what, about half way (by our estimation) the
little gas pump icon on the dash started blinking and dinging. Great.
Stuck on a road where we don’t exactly know where we are, out of
gas. Wrong. The next turn revealed a “Topaz” sort of a
local chain (it turns out) and we gratefully wheeled in. Across the pump from us was a beat up pickup
with two Jack Russell Terriers in the front seat of vastly different ages. The gentleman got out about the same time I did,
and it was obvious he was an Irishman, ruddy of color and white of hair. I looked at the (diesel) pump and seeing no
slot for a card, I sucked my courage and said “excuse me sir, how do you pay
for this?”. (without trying to phonetically
mimic his accent which was broad) he said “Ah, you just pump the gas and then
go inside and pay”. That started a
conversation that lasted a good five minutes about how you pay in the States,
how much it is over there, what we were doing here, where we come from,
etc. What a great thing. So with half a tank of diesel, and
40 Euros lighter we again took to the “other side” of the road as I have learned
the Irish graciously refer to our habits.
MFO had a handful of maps, and off we went, headed toward Galway. We only had a couple of mis-adventures on the
traffic circles, making a couple of revolutions, and only a few “Watch OUTs” as
I tended to overcompensate on the drivers side, placing the passenger in mortal
fear of clipping mirrors or cars. I kind of thing the "other side" deal is harder on passengers than customers.
We finally fought our way downtown (City Centre), and then got hopelessly
confused trying to navigate to the hotel.
It should be right HERE! Nope, a
warehouse. Round and round, no joy. Finally a call resulted in friendly helpful directions which got us there. We found we had
turned one little street short the first attempt..
So we arrived, pooped and somewhat pleased that we didn’t
have an accident, and buoyed by that, after a little rest, we enjoyed the first of several
great meals… but that’s for next time. Pretty quick we’re out the door for another
and we will be appropriately
DFD
No comments:
Post a Comment