Day 1

I made it, I am in Dublin.  It has been a full, long day of travel.  I left Fremont 24 hours ago.   It is hard to believe that it was that long ago.    Travel is interesting in that it totally takes you out of what you know.  First up - Virgin Atlantic.  Now each time I have traveled to Europe in the past, I have flown KLM or Lufthansa.  This was my first trip with Virgin (yeah, I know, a Virgin virgin, ha).   It started off well to learn that Premium Economy came with it's own express check in to be followed by a cute little "Priority #1" stamp on my boarding card that let me be one of those people I deplore at the airport security line.  The ones that have their own special, short line and just zip through.   Yup, that was me, SCORE!    Same went for the actual boarding.   We had our own line with the upper class people only they got to turn left at the on-board bar, we had to turn right.      No sooner did I get to my seat than I was asked if I cared for a beverage.   A tray was held out with sparkling wine and juices.   I hadn't even sat down.

Heathrow Habitrails

Over the course of the next 90 minutes, the flight crew offered pre-meal cocktails, wine with dinner and either Baileys or a brandy for the after meal sip.  All complimentary.   Wow, the Dutch and German's never offered free liquor.   My guess is it was to try to get as many people as possible to sleep as quickly as possible.

Landed in London without any trauma and made my way through the funniest human hamster habitrails I have been in.  Little glass tubes everywhere, long passages that cross back on themselves that have cross-roads that will stop you in your tube to let a crossing tube by.  Very strange.

Aer Lingus Shamrock

Anyway,   had a quick lunch at the Giraffe, a world foods spot in Terminal 1.   An interesting thing I noticed was that there are a lot of single women travellers these days.  It was kind of cool to see.

Shorty partitions and you can
 SEE the old storage lockers

Made my way eventually to gate 80 - a long way from the central hub in Terminal1 by the way - down more hamster trails to the gate for Aer Lingus.    Boarded and realized I was sitting in a circa 1972 737 or some such other cast off from 40 years ago.  Yikes!   Talk about no-frills, water was a charge and not so much as a bag of pretzels either.   The engines whined the whole trip and not at an even clip either.    I am a nervous flyer to begin with so I think I've decided that if Aer Lingus is the top airline leaving Dublin I don't want to try RyanAir or Go.

Finally made it to the hotel and settled in.    I did go down to the cafe and have a light dinner and to celebrate Mother's Day I ordered a half pint of my mom's favorite ale - Smithwicks and raised a Mother's Day toast to her.   I found a great Mother's Day card in my suitcase from Scott too.  He sneaked it in before I left since I would be gone Sunday.

Tomorrow it's off to student housing and meeting up with the class.