Failte!

We arrived! After dreaming of this trip for the past ten years, we are here! I am sitting in a cafe at the Shannon Airport, looking out the window at the beautiful green countryside. Ken is snoozing in a chair across the table from me. I honestly did not believe that we would ever get here--not until our plane touched down on Irish soil. What an interesting feeling to look out across the Irish countryside of Clare Co. and wonder if my ancestors walked there many years ago. I've never had that feeling before. Maybe it was jet lag--who knows.

I have now been awake the better part of 20 hours but right now I feel great. We did not have a good start. The ticket lady in Wichita was not helpful and was actually rather put out when she had to help us check-in rather than checking in at the little kiosk. If I had wanted to check-in on a computer, I would have done it at home. When her supervisor walked up to the desk she suddenly became very helpful. Go figure. The flight to Denver was uneventful and we got there in plenty of time. We boarded our plane on time, got situated and then waited. Finally, at 11:00 when we were supposed to leave, they announced that a fuel valve was leaking and it would take about 15 minutes to fix. Hardly. 30 minutes after our departure time they announced that it was taking a little longer to fix than they thought and that we could deplane. By the way, if you de-plane when you get off of the airplane, what do you do when you get on? Plane? At 12:15 they said they would make a departure decision at 12:30. At 12:30 we were able to get back on-re-plane?-the airplane and we took off around 1:00.
Now we had planned a nice cushion of time to change planes in Boston. However, we landed at 6:15ish and weren't able to deplane until 6:30 or so. Ken and I were at the front of economy class so we were able to leave the plane very quickly. Now, get this, the Aer Lingus gates were in another terminal. The only way to get to that terminal was to go out of the secured area, sprint to Terminal E, and go back through security. We did it in a record time of 25 minutes. We were the last people to board the plane but we made it!

Here's why we couldn't deplane once we were on the ground. An older lady who must have had a connection got up while we were taxiing in and she came to stand by the door. The flight attendant politely told her to go sit down. She wouldn't. She actually became quite irate and started cursing at the attendant. A supervisor was called and she not so politely told the woman to sit down. The woman started crying but didn't sit down. The supervisor told the pilot and the pilot stopped the plane and said we couldn't taxi anymore because someone was out of her seat. When the entire plane groaned, she finally sat back down. Her seat was at the back of the plane so she did not get off as quickly as she would have liked.
I'll skip the details of the flight to Ireland. It was a typical long-haul flight. I tried to sleep but couldn't so I will be running on adrenaline today.

So, now we are here. I will wake Ken up in a minute and we will go pick up our car hire and maneuver through the highways of Co. Clare to the Dysert O'Dea castle. We can check into our hotel after 2:00 so I imagine we will be back early afternoon.

By the way, no matter how sharp your white shirt looks with your black pants, don't wear it for 15 hours on an airplane. It won't look sharp by the end of your journey.