Start of an Ireland Tour
I left the house in Seattle at 10am, when Shuttle Express picked me up. When I checked in and dropped off my bag at the airport, I was told to wait for wheelchair service. 30 minutes later, they came and got me, only to take me over to their own check-in desk. The service was piss poor and I waited another 10 minutes for somebody to wheel me to my gate. While waiting for my flight, I had lunch and ate some really good crabcake sliders.
My flight left Seattle at 2pm and I arrived in Frankfurt eight hours later. During the flight, I was only able to get about an hour of sleep. Frankfurt is also nine hours ahead from Seattle.
Wheelchair assistance was waiting for me when I got off the plane and took me to a special waiting area and through a private security check (which was a lot quicker than if I had to queue in line at the main one). I then had to board a bus to be taken out to the flightline to my plane. I was the first one on.
The flight to Dublin was about two hours if you count the time to park the plane. Again, wheelchair assistance was waiting for me. The Irish guy who was pushing my chair was really sweet and pushed me to a different terminal where I needed to wait for Cosmos to pick me up. It was after the 11am pickup, so I settled in a seat to await for the 1:30pm pickup. Lucky for me, the tour Director, Hugh, saw my Cosmos luggage tag and asked if I was waiting for him. I got a private tour bus ride to our hotel, the Regency Hotel, fairly close to the airport.
My room was ready, so I went there and took a 30 minute nap before my friend, Susan, arrived (she got into Dublin a week early and had been staying in a hostel).
Hugh gave us an orientation tour of Dublin during some really bad traffic. He wasn’t sure what was going on…it usually wasn’t that bad. He also reminded us that were arrived during the country’s 100 year anniversary since the Easter uprising.
Back at the hotel, I opted to eat in the bar rather than venture out for dinner. The lamb stew was really good, but a little odd compared to how I’ve eaten it in the U.S. It had a large dollop of mashed potatoes on top along with a good-sized whole, unpeeled potato.
After dinner, I took a bath and went to bed by 7pm after being up for 28 hours. I had slept about 2 hours when I woke to really bad knee pain. I popped some Tylenol 3 and fell back asleep for another three hours, when once again, I awoke from pain and had to take some more pain pills.
