Tuesday April 12, 2005 - Flying to Ireland

Due to our usual pre-trip jitters, we awakened fairly early. After breakfast we also went through the usual second-guessing of our original packing scheme and changed things around. I took along the thicker sweater I had originally bought in Germany during Wanderung 2, and Monika exchanged her blue jeans for a lighter pair of pants that would dry out more quickly if (when?) we got wet.

At noon I drove Monika and the luggage over to a bus stop to start the first segment of our journey. Our plan was to use public transportation to get over to National Airport, so quickly driving back home I walked back to the bus stop using he shortcut through the woods. Fortunately I arrived before the bus did and we took it to the Metro station where we rode the Orange Line to Rosslyn and transferred to the Blue Line to get to National Airport. The total time for this folderol was about an hour and total cost less than $5 each, so that worked out well.

At the airport we had surprisingly brief lines for our tickets and the security screening. In fact, we were so early that the ticket agent put us on an earlier flight to Boston, which gave more time to switch from the domestic to the international flight terminals for the flight to Ireland. The flight from National airport to Boston was only about 90 minutes, and I had nice views of the tidal basin and the Jefferson Memorial from the air as we left.

En route we crossed over New York City low enough that I could take pictures of the tip of Manhattan Island and Central Park, of course the 10x telephoto lens helped a lot too!

At Boston we dropped below a cloud layer and once again I had a great view of downtown Boston and the harbor as we were approaching Logan airport. After landing we switched to the international terminal and cooled our heels for 2 hours while waiting for our 7 p.m. flight. The time was not entirely wasted, however, as we ate some peanut butter and jelly sandwiches, after which I worked on the journal on Baby while Monika read one of our books.

The flight to Shannon from Boston was uneventful, and "uneventful" in the airline business is a Good Thing. We departed on time and arrived as scheduled so the flight was short, at 5.5 hours, and that had both an upside and a downside. The blessing was that we didn't cramp up all that much compared to the 7 or 8 hour flights from Washington to Germany (e.g., Wanderungs 2 and 5). The downside was that since we were fed an evening meal we did not have much, if any, time to sleep. I fell asleep during the stewardess's pass down the cabin to sell "duty free" goods, and managed to get a couple of hours of, if not real sleep, then some kind of a restful doze. Given the driving I ended up doing the next day, I was very glad I had at least that much rest!