The.Girl.Goes.to.Ireland

Here I am writing to you from the beautiful country of Ireland.  I arrived yesterday and immediately went out to see some of the gorgeous sites that Dublin has to offer.  This of course was all thanks to my Irish buddy who offered to welcome me to Dublin.  Thanks Andrew!!

Since this is a blog about commuting though I am not going to share all the details of my adventures or misadventures here in Dublin.  Well not at this point anyway.  I'm sure if something really news worthy happens I will for sure be on here to update.  I digress.  Ah yes, commuting.  Today I'm going to tell you all about my longest commute to work.  Toronto, Canada to Dublin, Ireland.

It all started at around 8:30pm Toronto time.  I arrived at the airport 3 hours prior to my departure, just like I was advised on my ticket.  My husband thought perhaps it was a little too early.  I kind of did too but if it says 3 hours, I'm gonna go with that.  Well the ticket was wrong.  Should have said be there closer to 4 hours in advance.  The line was; how is this best described?  The line was RIDICULOUS.  Plain and simple.

I went in the set of doors closest to my airlines check in counters and began to walk to the end of the line.  After passing the other set of doors (you know how far apart they are in the airport), I started to giggle to myself.  All these people couldn't possibly fit on my flight, I was thinking.  My thoughts were correct.  The mass amount of people weren't there just for a flight to Ireland.  They were there for flights to Rome, Venice, Paris, London and who knows where else.  7 flights in total folks, and they were all departing within 15mins of one another.  Chaos. 

It only took about an hour and a half for me to get to the check in counter.  By that time I had made friends with an Irish women who was heading home and an English/Canadian couple going to London to visit family.  I checked in finally at around 10:10 pm and I was advised that my plane was going to start boarding at 10:40 pm.  What??  I still have to go through security; panic begins to set in.

I find my way to the security check in and to my amazement there were only a handful of people in line.  I mean it took me longer to take my boots off and put all my crap in the bins then it did to get to that point.  Either the security team should be renamed to Rapid Security or they were a little lax.  To be honest, I don't really care.  I needed to get on that plane.

I arrive at my gate after a brief but necessary pit stop to Duty Free.  Sit for 10mins and observe the other people I'm about to be trapped on a plane with for 6 hours.  There were a couple of young families with tired little children but the majority of the plane was to be filled with seniors.  My guess is it was some kind of tour group because even though they were sitting apart, there were a lot of them and for the most part they knew one another.

We begin to board.  My row is one of the first to be called because I'm at the back of the plane.  The plane that holds approximately 250 passengers.  Luckily enough in the set of 3 that I'm sat in there is no one booked to sit in the middle.  I feel like someone is looking out for me because these seats are narrow.  In a mean way, they're narrow.  Like, if any one were to be bigger than I, they would have been uncomfortable the whole flight.  You may think I'm joking or over exaggerating, but really, I'm not.

Moving on.  The other person in the set of 3 seats is a women (sat at the window seat) heading to Ireland to meet a friend from another European country (she told me but it was kinda late, and I was only kinda paying attention).  Anyway, this woman was not the best person to be sat near.  Before take off there was some friendly chatter, which was nice.  But by the time the plane had leveled out and we were on our way, she just continued talking.  

I'm telling you, she really wouldn't stop.  It's nearly passed midnight at this point and I'm trying to tell her politely that I would like to try and get some sleep.  That doesn't work so I just fully tune her out, close my eyes and try to catch some zzzz's.  You think she would get the hint and she sort of does but it still doesn't stop her incessant need to her own voice.  While I'm there with my eyes closed, obviously not in the mood to talk, she decides to push the call button.  Ding dong, I hear.  The flight attendant comes over.

"May I help you?"  The response is quiet and so the question is asked again a little louder and with some leaning in (which just happens to be over me since I'm in the aisle).  She then asks for a blanket but she doesn't want to pay for the whole travel kit it comes with.  For goodness sakes lady it's $7!!  I'm so tired of fake sleeping I nearly offer to buy her the $7 kit just to shut her up, when she agrees to pay for the whole kit and caboodle.  

At last, I'm thinking.  She's got her kit now so she'll be nice and quiet.  Boy was I ever wrong.  She decides that the neck pillow she brought with her isn't sufficient any longer and she needs to blow up the one in the kit.  Nope, she can't do that quietly either.  Ding-dong, the call button goes off again.  This time she needs to ask how to blow up the neck pillow that has the same valve as any other blow up product.  Trying to keep calm, I wait her out.  Finally she is done talking to me and everyone else on the plane.  Finally I can get some sleep.

2 hours later I'm woken but the announcement that breakfast is about to be served.  Yum, I can't wait to see what we've got.  I should have known that it wasn't going to be too exciting but plain yogurt is something I didn't expect.  Oh well, still enjoyed it because neighbour lady doesn't talk with her mouth full.  Thank goodness for that.

Its landing time, and I'm sooo excited.  Not only do I get to see what Ireland is like but I get to finally meet someone that I've known for 5 years, but never seen face to face.  I'm thinking to myself, what a fantastic time I'm going to have.  And so far it's been fun.  I just can't wait to meet everyone else from our Dublin office.  It’s so nice to be able to put faces to names.  I can't wait to see what the rest of this trip will have in store for me!!