Made it to Ireland!

Hello all,

After three plane rides, 5 airport trains, and the scariest driving experience I've ever had in my life, we made it to Cork! We started our day at the PDX airport with a short 10:30 flight out to Seattle, then took a couple airport trains to the international terminal and found our gate nestled between a flight to Frankfurt and a flight to Korea. Wymana, however, didn't stick around too long because she was intent on finding the second Game of Thrones book for in-flight reading and realized that she only had 2 hours to do so. You'd think that wouldn't be a problem at an airport bookstore, but oh, it was. Thus it followed: Wymana begins single-mindedly stalking book-prey. She sets her 2-hour timer, and 3 airport trains and 4 bookstores later, Wymana finds her Game of Thrones book (3 bookstores had every book in the series except the 2nd. Hmmmm.). But Wymana is pleased. She returns to the gate via airport train and eats her last meal in the United States: a bowl of delicious udon noodles. We took a total of 5 Seattle airport trains that day. Best layover, ever.

Our flight to London Heathrow was 9 hours via British Airways. We got on and immediately walked through an area with seating pods that have leg rests and divider windows and room to nearly lie down. WHAT. This actually exists? Well, this was obviously first-class (but the airline has some nice club name for it) and we were flying economy, so we plowed through to the normal airline seats. In normal airline seats, generally people don't have much room to move around. Being relatively tall, my knees tend to brush the back of the seat in front of me. I don't really mind, except (cue rant): I feel like it's kind of a social expectation that you do not, no matter how tired you are, lean your seat back. Honey, there is not room enough to do that on an airline and not piss the person behind you off. But the person sitting in front of me did not know that. Please, please do not lean your seats back on modern airlines, unless you are flying first class. But we had a relatively good 9 hours. Each seat had its own little TV, with some pretty cool programming that included introductory German and a good selection of Bollywood films. This occupied the last 2 hours of the flight.

I was pretty excited about the Bollywood, but the real excitement happened when we arrived in Cork (via Aer Lingus airline) and drove in to the city centre. Yes, you heard that correctly. My mom rented a car and she drove. I am not allowed to drive in Ireland, which is a very, very fortunate thing, because I did not feel guilty about relinquishing the task to her. Neither of us had slept in 36 hours, the only rental cars available were stickshift, we didn't know our way around, the streets aren't well-marked, and the big one: people drive on the opposite side of the road. Mom was swearing, I was hyperventilating, and the 15 minutes projected by Google turned into 2 hours. Also we kept thinking the car was in reverse when it was really just in another forward gear. But all considered, we got to our B & B in one piece, with no damage to the car--and only got honked at 5 times. Do not drive in Irish cities as a newbie. The same street might change names like 10 times. Real-life example: N22 turns into Western Road which turns into Lancaster Quay which turns into Washington Street which turns into Grand Parade which turns into Saint Patrick's Street which turns into Saint Patrick's Bridge which turns into St. Patrick's Hill which turns into Audley Place, all within the space of a few miles. Not to mention the street names appear in Irish first, and maybe once per mile. Seriously, driving was scarier than the Indiana Jones ride at Disneyland by about 50 times, and just as jerky. But definitely an adventure. When we got to the B & B (and only by directions from some nice man at the gas station), they offered us tea. It was wonderful. Also my suitcase got delivered to the B & B shortly after, because it got lost and subsequently found at the Heathrow Airport and some nice Irish woman at baggage services tracked it down for a nearly hysterical Wymana, who was pretty sure that it wouldn't be coming through Carousel 4 with the golf bags.

Major surprise: Cork was sunny when we landed. Apparently, the UK and Ireland have been experiencing some extreme weather lately with gale force winds and above average rain. Landing in London didn't disprove this. But Cork, despite evidence of flooding, was beautiful. We were able to walk around the city a little bit in the evening to observe some of the early nightlife before dropping our jetlagged selves into bed around 9 pm. The beds were like cloud 9. Also I slept for 11 hours straight, which never happens except for the day after finals week.