Wanderung 34

As it was way too early to find a breakfast place open anywhere when we arose around 5 a.m., we simply finsihed up some old scones, polished off the soft drinks, and had a bag of potato chips. We had a surplus of bags of potato chips, so we left the rest of the unopened bags on the counter in the hope that someone else could eat them rather than having to throw them away.

I had managed to stuff my CPAP machine in the bottom of a backpack, my courier bag on top of that, and all my leftover dirty clothes on top of that, and still get the backpack closed. That was GREAT because it meant that I had only the over-stuffed backpack and my suitcase to handle, and likewise Monika had only her rucksack and suitcase to cope with, which made moving around a LOT easier.

We managed to catch the hotel's airport shuttle shortly after 6 a.m., and were dropped off at Dublin airport about 15 minutes later. But there was a decent hike with our luggage over to Terminal 2, so we didn't get there until about 6:30. Fortunately, check-in was easy and quick, so we waved good-bye to our rolling suitcases as they went down the conveyor belt, and hefted our backpacks to proceed to US Customs and Immigration. For flights to the US that do not land at a designated Port Of Entry, you must perforce be processed by US Customs and Immigration before you ever get on the airplane, and such was the case for us.

We were surprised to go through the security screening a second time before the Customs and Immigration check, which delayed us a bit, but we are Global Entry-qualified citizens so we could use the automatic finger-print recognizing machines and that speeded up the process quite a bit. Once through the Customs and Immigration checkpoint, we just had to find our departure gate and then relax and chill out a bit.

The flight from Dublin to Charlotte, North Carolina, was rather long, between 7 and 8 hours, but we had very smooth flying conditions and were seated together in the middle set of 4 seats. That makes a surprising difference as we are used to jostling each other for position and can always find a way to get comfortable beside each other, whereas when we are seated between strangers that is a far harder thing to do.

The flight from Charlotte back to Dulles Airport was in a smaller regional jet, but the lady with my seat offered to change seats so that we two could sit together again. That was very nice of her and made the final flight of the day, when we were already getting rather weary, much more bearable.

We kind of stumbled out of the airplane at Dulles, but as we worked our way to baggage claim, I was startled to see the human-powered aircraft Daedalus hanging from the ceiling above a set of escalators leading to the inter-terminal train. How did it get there? Anyway, I read the description of it, and found out that the entire aircraft only weighed 70 pounds! It was an amazing feat of aeronautical engineering by Paul MacCready, and I took a bunch of pictures of the structure to get some ideas of how I might build my electric airplane. It was a bright spot on an otherwise rather tiring "travel" day.

But when we found our baggage carousel, only Monika's bag came out! Argh! So we waited and waited and checked with the baggage handling guys for American Airlines, but no luck. So in the end we took our backpacks and Monika's suitcase and bundled into a cab for the drive home. Fortunately, the driver was a very competent and relaxed older guy driving a Prius V station wagon, and we arrived home in good order.

Once home, we turned on the water and all electric circuits, texted the kids that we were home, had some hot soup for a light evening snack, and then kind of collapsed into bed as the jet lag finally hit us. My bag apparently came on the next flight from Charlotte as it was delivered to our doorstep by about 9:30 that evening, but we were both conked out by then. It had been a great trip, but we were totally exhausted and it took us a couple days to get back to normal.

If you are thinking about taking a driving tour of Ireland, there are a few important considerations that you might wand to ponder. I will put my impressions about driving in Ireland on the next page so that you can get my view on that.