Day One spans 38 hours

Sunday, 10:03 pm IRE time. We are finally hitting the sack after being awake for 38 hours straight. Its still light outside at 10pm in Ireland. We've been up since Saturday morning in PA and the traveling has taken its toll. Its been a pretty long day and I'll try to recount it for you...


Everything started out pretty well. The Philadelphia airport was conspicuously empty and quiet was we arrived around 6pm. Even check-in at USAir went okay.



That was until when two young Dutch guys in their late twenties, wearing capri pants and carring man-bags, attempted to cut in front of us during international check in by slyly moving their luggage in front of our luggage. Fortunately, i noticed this while talking with Wendy while wearing my made-in-the-USA, state-police-style Ray Ban sunglasses, and asked them if there was some sort of misunderstanding. We weren't delayed any further.


Aunt Kelly arrived from San Francisco and connected with us. Owen was glad to see his favorite aunt from California!


Ten minutes later, Janine and Dave Van Ommeran met us in the airport bar and we were all set to fly out.
The only problem: look carefully at all the empty space on the tarmac out the window in the photograph behind us...That's because our USAir jet plane was missing. However as many of you know, that's business as usual at Kra-aMerica-- sorry i mean to say-- USAir.


Eventually our USAir jet arrives and we take off around 11pm. Its a 5hour flight which will arrive into Shannon IRE in a time that would have us walk off the plane around 9am local time. Again, everything looked pretty good, until yours truly got to his assigned seat 5E. An aisle set right behind first class. Which i gotta tell you looked pretty darn good, until i soon realized was situated directly across from the lavoratory. Like 2 feet across from the lavoratory. However, with it being a nighttime flight and also pushing off two hours late at 11pm, not too many passengers needed to use the bathroom. USAir served us our chicken parm meal, we watched our Julia Roberts movie, and i settled in for a nap. And then...
I was awakened by the whooshing sound of the lavoratory, the door banging open, and the most horrible smell...as it turns out it was from some fat lady who had apparently just totally destroyed the bathroom. Ugghh. No way i could go back to sleep after that. Owen thought it was pretty funny. And shot this photo:


After another hour, my olfactory senses returned. The pilot announced we were approaching Shannon airport and i snapped this picture:


You heard it's green in Ireland, right...?


Getting in to IRE at 9am local time, actually works out fairly well. You're tired, but it feels like you should be beginning your day so you kind of roll with it. We skated through customs, grabbed our luggage and headed over in the EuroRental mini van to get our rental car.
If you know me, you know i like cars. I was looking forward to the challenge of driving on the "wrong side" of the road and seeing what model Euro car was reserved for us at the rental lot. You can imagine my dismay when the guy handed me the keys to this:
Thats right. It's a #*&^ Chevy. A Chevy "Epica". Which is apparently a Chevrolet Malibu, rebadged, with the steering wheel on the right side, for Europe. More on driving this pig later.

The girls wanted to stop at our hotel to drop off luggage and you know, fix hair and freshen up. So we did. Eventually, we headed out in the afternoon through County Clare to the coastal Cliffs of Moher, about an hours drive through the countryside. What a magnificent sight. Even more rugged and taller than you would think.



A funny site i should have shown you, was a bunch of local Irish tourists sitting around the visitor center macking down on soft serve ice cream cones. It was only funny because the weather out on the coastal cliffs this afternoon was in the low 60's and cloudy with a chilly breeze. But for Ireland, that's a balmy summer day!

Despite the cool weather out there, the girls did pretty well, and we hung out for a while. We decided to head back to hotel. And get some dinner at Durty Nellies pub. However at this point it about 5pm and johnny boy was really beginning to hit the wall of no sleep. Now we got up out of bed in Philadelphia about about 33 hours ago. And thanks to that overweight lady who crushed the toilet on the airplane and woke me up, I'd been awake for about 32.5 of those hours.

You know how you read those articles about overtired drivers being almost as dangerous as drunk drivers? Well i can vouch for that research now. I recently had an discussion about this with Frank3. He said he has nearly fallen asleep at the wheel and i was claiming that's not possible, to be actively driving knowing you might kill yourself. Well, Frank3, i can see what you mean now. We had about an hours drive back through the winding and narrow country roads, and i really had to struggle to focus. Dave Van Ommeran vouched for the same. All i could think about was that episode of The Flinstones, where Fred takes that second job at nightshift, then has to prop open his eyelids with toothpicks at the rock quarry during the day so Mr. Slate doesn't fire him for sleeping on his dinosaur. Aunt Kelly turned up music on the iPod and fortunately i got my third wind and we made it safely to Durty Nellies pub.



After a couple pints of Guiness and some Irish lamb stew, we were all feeling better. The sun doesnt set until about 10pm over here. And i think that was about the time we all got into our rooms and passed out. Wendy said she could here me snoring outside in the hallway as i didnt even budge until Monday morning...

Slainte!