The Beginening: It Has Begun

Swine Flu

A 16 hour plane trip with 3 different stops over 2 days, nothing could go wrong with that right? …or so Courtney tried to assure me. She seemed to be right for a good while too.

The Journey started out fine enough. Up at 5am to catch out 7am flight to Chicago.  Ate some Pizzaria Uno while in the airport and waited for our next flight to Newark NJ. Got into Newark late afternoon, had some sushi, which was surprisingly good for raw fish bought in an airport.

The Newark to Dublin leg was the longest flight we took. Saw our bags being put onto the jet as well. That was a relief. One of the last things I saw of America was the statue of liberty sitting there looking surprisingly small from the airport. Very poetic or something.

Although we didn’t get any free seats next to us (so much for the recession keeping people from traveling) the flight was still pleasant enough and we had those in-seat computer things upon which I decided to watch “Paul Blart:Mall Cop” for some unknown reason. Didn’t get any sleep on this overnight flight, but, what can you do.

The sun started coming up as we were set to land in beautiful Dublin, Ireland, and at 6:30 on time to boot! Then, out of no where ::cue dramatic music::

SWINE FLU

The captain informed us that we would be coming to a park on the tarmac for a little while because 3 people reported being ill. I looked out the window and saw in the middle of the tarmac a couple of police cars and about 4 ambulances waiting for us because they suspected that the sick people might have swine flu. So we wait. We are quarantined because the Irish Health Service isn’t quite sure what to do. After about an hour they decide they are going to send someone on the check out the sick people. So on come a couple of people in safety green vests and masks. Meanwhile I am looking at my watch as our next flight is at 9:30. Eventually they tell us that we are OK, and it is in fact not that evil dastardly swine flu we keep hearing about. So they are going to send busses over to where we are parked to take us to the terminal, and they will even unload us from the front and the back to make things go a little bit quicker. Turns out Courtney and I were sat in the very smack dab middle of the plane. Things even stop moving entirely at some point when the first set of busses fill up. Finally we make it back to the terminal.

9am. And we have to get our bags from one international flight, go through customs, and check our bags into the second flight before it leaves in a half hour. It turns out that a half hour is just barely not enough time to do all of those things when running around with the 100 lbs of baggage that contains everything we will use for the next 6 months. So after a half an hour of running around like that after only having had 4 hours of sleep in the last two days, in desperation we start walking to the ticket counters to see what can be done.

Apparently nothing is the answer. We just missed the only flight that day into Bournemouth, and Courtney’s class is the next morning before the next flight would get us in. Exhaustedly we start walking from desk to desk to see if any airlines had any flight to Bournemouth, and it just so happens they don’t. At least they said no in a lovely Irish accent that made it ever so slightly more bearable.

Plan B. Find the next best thing. Next best thing is a 4pm flight to a neighboring town and then a train ride that when added together slightly surpassed the cost of our entire inter-continental trip thus far. They love to get you on those same day tickets. Had to bite the bullet though, Courtney needed to get there that day, so we bought the tickets and Courtney passed out. We spent the next several hours there waiting for our flight.

Its about 4am the day after we started Phoenix time, about 24 hours into our trip. We find some comfy leather chairs near a Starbucks (you really can’t escape those things). Courtney sleeps, while I try desperately not to for fear of our luggage getting stolen. I slip in and out of sleep anyway having vivid and strange dreams immediately upon closing my eyes.

Eventually we get on that last plane where I am lights out immediately. Oh so good. Then a quick train ride and I have my second wind. Finally about 6pm, 28 hours after begining we pulled into Bournemouth station and had a taxi take us to our hotel, but being the masochists that we are we couldn’t leave well enough alone and had to walk around for an hour or two and see the sights before stopping at pub, grabbing some food and a pair of Caffrey’s then going back to our hotel and at very long last falling asleep at journey’s end.