Alright, I last wrote that Robyn and I were heading out to Buffalo to take a flight to Boston and then to Dublin.  As it turns out, that’s where the story gets interesting.

With full knowledge that it’s the May 24 weekend, we left Burlington at 10:00 am and made our way to the border.  Our only stop along the way was at Tim Horton’s in Grimsby.  Robyn and I each got donuts, me a chocolate dip (as I usually do) and her a Boston Cream.  The thing is, her Boston Cream donut had no cream.  It was just a chocolate dip donut with no hole in the middle.  Apparently, that was a sign of things to come.

We crossed the border at the Queenston Lewiston Bridge, and the wait time was about an hour, it sucked, but we expected it, so no big deal.  However, on the way to the airport, we had to go through Tonawanda (don’t know/don’t care if I spelled that wrong).  It took us over an hour to go 3 kilometers to get to the highway.  It was bloody ridiculous, and we were pretty pissed off.

So we finally get to the US Airways desk to check in and the self check in machine said ‘no seats available’.  Thankfully we were OK on this one, as we were early enough to not get bumped from our flight.  We made our way through security and went to check the Departures screen.  Our flight to Boston said “DELAYED” so we asked about it, and were told that instead of 2:50, our flight would be leaving at 3:40 (no reason was given).  We grabbed a bite to eat and waited.  An announcement was then made that our original plane had electrical problems, so they sent a second plane, but it ended up having electrical problems too, and we would now be leaving at 4:15, and we should expect an announcement with more details shortly.  As 4:15 came and went, I went and asked the girl at the counter if she knew what time we could expect the plane at, and in a bitchy tone she said “I don’t know, if I have any info, I’ll make an announcement”.

At about 4:45 we got word that they found us another plane and it would be there in 30 minutes to take us to Boston.  By this time we were getting worried that we might miss our flight from Boston to Dublin.  Our plane arrived just after 5:30 and we quickly boarded the plane and were ready to leave.  The problem, some idiot was missing.  How are you late for a flight that’s already 3 hours late???  I don’t get it.  The guy was located and we finally left Buffalo at about 6:30.  With just over an hour flying time, we made it to Boston for 7:50, one hour until our Aer Lingus flight and we were leaving from another terminal.  Thankfully, my brother and his wife had just flown to Europe out of Boston and warned us that navigation was tricky, so we asked someone immediately and were sent in the right direction.

We got to the Aer Lingus counter and got checked in and went to the security line.  We waited in that line for 20 minutes or so when we saw the check in girl from Aer Lingus escorting some people up the first class line.  On her way back I caught her attention and she helped us cut in line and into security.  Even with her help we just barely made the final boarding call.

Our flight was pretty good and I even managed to catch what I’d guess to be an hour of sleep.  To our amazement, our baggage somehow made it on our flight.  We took our stuff and found an Air Coach bus into Dublin and made our way to the Leeson Bridge Guest House.  As it was only 9:00, we couldn’t check in, but they allowed us to leave our luggage so we could walk downtown.  We spent about 7 hours walking the streets, getting lost due to crappy maps a few times along the way.  We managed to see a number of sites we’d wanted to see, and we’ll be back next Saturday to see the rest.  Tomorrow we take the rental car out of Dublin and Obama’s chaos.

It’s 8:30pm here in Dublin, and I’ve been up for a long time, I need to get some sleep.  Here are some photos from our long day.

Enjoy!!!

www.DustinHallPhotography.ca

St. Stephen’s Green, a park in DublinA few shots from Trinity College.This was our line to get in at 9:30 when it openedI actually saw an orb exactly like this in the Pine Cone Courtyard at the Vatican Museum in Rome back in 2005.McDonalds for a breakfast pick-me-up, what a crazy mural eh?Who knew?  Tim’s in Dublin.A bunch from Dublin Castle and it’s church.With Obama coming, we saw cops everywhere.This one’s for my dad, he’ll understand :)