We have arrived in Ireland! After leaving Colorado on a 7:45am flight, we finally arrived in Shannon, Ireland at 7am the next morning! We took three flights to get here: Denver to Chicago Midway, Chicago to Newark and finally the international overnight flight to Shannon. Our second leg of our journey was pretty stressful, as everything that could go wrong, did go wrong. We originally had a 3.5 hour layover between the 2nd & 3rd flights, but that soon dwindled down to barely enough time to get on the third flight. First they delayed out flight to Newark by 50 minutes, we then spent an extensive amount of time taxi-ing before we took off. While we were in the air, the flight went well. The flight itself featured WiFi, which was pretty fun to use at 35,000 feet. However, when we landed the jetway that was supposed to let us off our plane apparently broke, and we had to be towed over to another gate. Throughout this time Bethany and I were sweating bullets, watching the clock tick and knowing we still had to get off this flight, retrieve our bags and then turn around and check-in on our flight to Shannon. Luckily with a little running, we made it in time. Our flight to Shannon was very enjoyable, as Bethany and I had a row to ourselves and got to spread out. The flight itself was almost 7 hours, but then you add on 5 hours of time-change which made it 7am when we arrived.
Most of our Saturday was spent lying low and getting settled. We got into our cottage with no problem. We’re staying at a Golf Village near the town of Bodyke. We then drove out to Ennis where we got some phone service for our international phones and enjoyed a cup of coffee and peach ice tea at a coffee shop out here. I am blown away at the kindness and generosity of the people here. When we parked in Ennis we were in a “pay & display” lot, and some departing people offered us their parking ticket so we could park free for an hour! We also bought some groceries for breakfast &lunches for the next few days, and then stopped at a farmers market in Scarriff before we headed back home.
The roads here are something else. Like England, people in Ireland drive on the left side of the road. Also I’m not sure how England is, but the roads here in Ireland are very narrow. When come from the town of Bodyke over to our cottage, the road is one-laned. However, the shrubbery is so grown that there really aren’t any pull-offs when you see another car driving. The road curves so much that it’s made for a few close calls as we drive down that road.
We went to this pub called Pepper’s Bar and ended up riding over in a shuttle with an Australian couple that has been traveling around the world for 6 weeks. We ended up sitting with them for dinner and enjoying some good conversation and of course some Guinness as well. By the time we headed back to our cottage at 8:30pm we figured that it would be late enough where we could fall asleep without ruining our jet-lag. We ended up sleeping nearly 13 hours.
We’re out the door for Day 2, so a recap & more pictures will come later!