When we were planning to go to Wendover for the 7QP contest, I decided to rent a car dolly from UHaul and tow a car down so we’d have some transportation. It’s been over a year since we’ve done anything in the motor home, thanks to the pandemic. The year before we’d borrowed our grandson-in-law’s car dolly which worked out pretty well. So I made the reservation.

The car dolly had to be picked up in West Valley City, about 45 minutes east of here and our destination was 90 minutes west of here. Got to the UHaul place, waited an inordinately long time to get to the counter, to find that they wouldn’t rent the equipment to me as my motor home is rated for 3,500 pounds and the dolly weighs 900 pounds, and when combined with the car, it was over weight. So we went to Wendover without the car.

I found a used car dolly for sale in Perry, Utah, about an hour and a half north of here. Negotiated a good price with the seller and we picked it up yesterday, (Saturday) morning. No more borrowing or UHaul hassle.

That was followed by our first Salt Lake Bees baseball game of the year. Saturday night was their 3rd game of the season. Unfortunately, they’ve lost all three games, including last night! It was chilly, but so very nice to be at a baseball game once again!

I’m teaching a Morse code class at the CW Academy. One of my students has run a weekly podcast since sometime in 2014, which I really enjoy: QSOToday. He interviewed me for the podcast to be published on April 29, 2021 and in the interview we talked about my blog … and how it needed to be updated! There will definitely be more written here.

We’re somewhere over the Atlantic Ocean headed towards Boston. The entertainment unit at my seat is stuck so I can’t use it do anything useful. That includes seeing the map. It’s 11:45am Dublin time and 6:45am Boston time. We’ll arrive in Boston about 12:30pm, a little over six hours from now. I think we’re on a bit more northerly route because of hurricane Lorenzo that is churning its way northeast across the Atlantic.

Some of the highlights of the trip:

Glendalough, Clonmacnoise, and Versailles.

Some of the lowlights of the trip:

Standing in very long lines, small bathrooms, and putting the wrong fuel in the rental car.

I knew a little about Irish history before we arrived and learned a whole lot more during the two weeks we spent wandering around Ireland. In retrospect it would have been good to have learned more before coming over. Ireland has a rich history. We were in places that had been there for a thousand years or more.

Same is true of my knowledge of French history. The river cruise we took from Budapest to Amsterdam a few years ago was a real education into European, French (and Napoleon in particular), and Catholic Church history. But, I hadn’t known prior to this visit the decades of religious wars in France between the Protestants and the Catholics. I’d heard of the Huguenots But didn’t really know how they fit into this whole scheme of things. Need to do some more reading.

One take away from this trip is to be better prepared history-wise before embarking.

Another one is to make a more detailed plan of the places we would be visiting and take advantage of on-line tickets and scheduling to avoid the lines.

A third is that our next trip will probably be a cruise.

Another is RyanAir and similar cut-rate charge-for-everything airlines are not part of our future.

We came over with one large suitcase each and a backpack each. We had too much stuff. The suitcases were too heavy as were the backpacks. Airports involve a LOT of walking. Next trip like this we’ll get a couple of smaller roller cases (hard sided) for carry-on to use in and around airports. We’ll take a SMALL backpack for when we’re sightseeing. The airports we were in had literally no place to sit down and lots of waiting in line. We ended up dragging the backpacks rather than wearing them. Hard-sided roller cases move along easier and can be a makeshift chair. I was envious of some folks who had them and were able to sit down.

We did enjoy the Bed and Breakfast places we stayed at. The place in Cork and the one in Belfast were in closer to town that the place outside Galway. The nightlife in the cities isn’t interesting to us, but restaurants are. The place outside Galway was a long way from food, although the Donnelly’s Pub and the Pier Seafood Restaurant were very good. We just couldn’t walk there.

None of the B&B’s had much space in the room and having two large suitcases was a bit of an issue. Another reason to travel lighter.

The flight has gotten very bumpy. They’ve had to sit the flight attendants down. Then as I wrote that, the air smoothed out for a bit.

Electricity was an issue at every place we stayed except the last night at a Holiday Inn Express at the Dublin Airport. None of the other places had electricity anywhere near the beds and we both needed to plug in our CPAP machines. I bought a British extension cord in Dublin, but that wouldn’t work in France. I had a power strip with me, but it had only a one foot cord. Before going on the trip I got power adapters for British style and French style outlets which was very helpful. Next time I need a power strip with a 6′ cord plus the adaptors. That would help us not to have electrical cords daisy chained across the floor to stumble over when we get up in the middle of then night to go to the bathroom. I should include some masking tape to tape the cord down to make it less likely to stumble over them.

I bought a USB charging hub with 8 outlets before going over. Turned out to be a very good device. It ran on 100-240v, so as long as I had an adapter it could be utilized. We both had iPhones that needed charging each night. We also both had an extra battery. i had my iPad (I didn’t bring my MacBook, the iPad plus a keyboard sufficed) and my Galaxy Tab A that needed charging. That used 7 of the 8 ports.

We found that trying to travel without having a smarphone was a mistake. Both of our iPhones are locked to AT&T because they’re financed on a two-year contract. I thought we could just turn off roaming and use them on WIFI at night. It didn’t work very well. Google Maps is imperative when trying to get around anywhere. So, I opted to pay AT&T another $10/day for international roaming. Never again. Nina had no access except at night which was very frustrating. I could turn on my hotspot and have her connect through me, but whenever she put her phone in her purse for more than about 10 minutes, it disconnected itself from my hotspot. If the phones had been unlocked, we could have bought a SIM card for each phone and had a local phone number and data at far less than $10 each per day.

Speaking of Google Maps… It works great in Europe when driving. When walking, even when set in walking mode, it’s pretty flaky. And it never tells you that you’re going the wrong direction. It just automatically and silently reroutes and you think you’re on the right path when you’re really going “three corner around a hat.” Because the GPS location is not exact on the phone the little triangle showing your location doesn’t always match up with the blue dots marking the route. That can get quite frustrating. Google definitely has some work to do.

Another interesting item is that Google Maps on the iPad has functionality not available on Google Maps on the iPhone. For instance, in Paris I could turn on the Metro system as an overlay on the city map. Can’t do that on the iPhone.

Lunch is done. We’ve got about 3:40 left in the flight. The air has smoothed out and the aisles are crowded with folks lined up for the bathrooms. Time to put this away and see if I can take a nap (that is, if this cold and runny nose will let me).

We didn’t plan much in the way of sight seeing for our last day in Paris. Most museums are closed on Monday anyway. But we did have a few things that really needed to be done.:

1. Do some laundry. We had seen a coin laundry about a 5 minute walk from the hotel.

2. Get some mailing supplies so we could mail a box back home.

3. Find a post office and mail the box.

We were successful at all three, but it took all morning until about 1pm. We first went to the laundry. I’ve noticed in Paris that there is a high degree of automation, first evidence by the Metro system which has no driver or other attendant on the train. They’re all run from some central location. The laundry was also quite automated. Each of the washing machines and each of the dryers were numbered. There were two dispensers for laundry detergent and for fabric softener, each also numbered. A central money-handling box managed the entire process. Want detergent? Enter the number for the desired brand and the display tells you how much money to deposit. It took coins and bills and gave change. Want to run a washing machine? Load it up, put detergent and softener into the proper locations, enter the number of the machine on the central control unit, then deposit the requisite amount of money. The machine then automatically starts. One of the benefits is one central location for money rather than having money in each of the machines. Makes it easier to put a proper strong box in place making it a less desirable target for thieves.

European washing machines heat their own water. They also run for about 45 minutes for one cycle. That’s a significant investment of time so you might as well do a full load.

While waiting for the washing machine, we noticed an Office Depot across the street. They had the needed box as well as tape to seal up the box. We loaded the box up with about 10 pounds of stuff and got directions to a nearby post office from the hotel staff. She sent us a kind of a convoluted route which we greatly simplified on the way back. With that we felt we would be at or under the RyanAir weight limits. $12/kilogram overweight charges are pretty steep. Mailing the box was cheaper than paying RyanAir for the overweight, or buying another suitcase and paying RyanAir for another bag.

The box is mailed. It’ll take about a week said the postal clerk. There’s a website where I can track the package.

After that we took the Metro to Charles de Gaul Place (the location of the Arc de Triomphe). We rode the elevator up to the top of the monument and took a dozen or more pictures.

This is a picture looking southeast from the top of the Arc de Triomphe down the Champs-Élysées towards the Louvre.

We then walked down the Champs-Élysées and had lunch in a sidewalk cafe. It was a very nice day, a bit breezy but nice temperatures under partly cloudy skies.

Of course McDonalds has a significant presence. You had to order your food inside and then carry it out to the sidewalk location on a tray … then clean up after yourself. Not at all what happens at all the other sidewalk restaurants.

Crepes! I particularly liked the sweet sugar variety. Nina had an apple torte for desert. It looked equally as delicious.

We really enjoyed watching people … and cars.

Ferrari had several of their Very Expensive sport cars out on display so folks could sit in them and take pictures. We didn’t sit … the testosterone crowd was too large.

By then it was about 5pm. We decided to go back to the hotel, do some packing, and come back to this area after dark when all the lights can be seen. Besides, I still had unused Metro tickets. Might as well use them all up.

We got back, took another trip up the Arc de Triomphe, and took a lot of pictures.

Of course, one of the pictures needed to be of the Eiffel Tower. On the hour and on the half hour, the Eiffel Tower begins to “twinkle”.

https://www.rnsmith.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/10/img_8493.mov

The video isn’t top quality, but does convey the idea.

The Arc de Triomphe isn’t lit up at present. There’s some kind of a problem with the lights. That was a bit disappointing.

Then it was back to the hotel and finish preparations to leave early Tuesday morning. I had booked a “super shuttle” to take us directly from the hotel to the Paris Beauvois airport. It would pick us up between 5:00 and 5:15am. That meant being up at 4:00am.

After a fitful night’s sleep, we were downstairs at 4:50am for the shuttle. The driver was there waiting for us. There was already one passenger in the van. After loading us up, he drove out into the suburbs to pick up another fellow then off to the airport. We got there about 6:30am.

And, when checking in, we were 3 kilograms over weight. My suitcase was one kilo over and Nina’s was two kilos over. We did some rearranging, transferred some stuff into backpacks, and got down to exactly 40 kilograms total.

RyanAir advertises (and has) the lowest fares. If one can travel with nothing other than a very small carryon, the total price probably can’t be beat. For instance, the fares for Nina and me over to Paris Beauvois airport was $22.50 each and the return trip was $24.00 apiece. The price includes one small carryon 20cm x 20cm x 40cm (about 8″ x 8″ x 16″) weighing not more than 10kg. However, if you want to check a bag, the first one is $25 (more expensive to send a suitcase than to send a person) and the 2nd is $30 each to weigh not more than 20 kilograms. Overweight costs $12 per kilogram. If you want to select your seat rather than have it assigned when you get to the airport, that’s $25 per person. If you want to have priority boarding (and about half the airplane load did, we didn’t), that’s an additional $45 per person. If you want FastTrack through security, add another $50. Anything consumed on board costs money, including water.

Once RyanAir proposed a fee to use the toilet while inflight. That met with sufficient uproar that the idea was dropped.

In the end, the total price to fly round trip to Paris Beauvois plus the cost of getting from that airport to downtown Paris was not cheaper than an Air Lingus flight into Charles de Gaul airport would have been.

We got up and rode to the airport in the rain. We walked out to the airplane in the rain. The flight left close to on time, but we spent about 25 minutes in a holding pattern before landing in Dublin International Airport. There the wind was blowing 25-35mph, it was raining HARD and the wind chill felt like 35 degrees. Further, there is a category 5 hurricane coming through the north Atlantic which has Ireland in her gunsights. The hurricane will likely be downgraded to a tropical storm by the time it gets here on Thursday. Tomorrow will be partly cloudy and chilly. Just about the right time to be leaving for home!

The walk from the RyanAir gate to passport control is about a half-hour long. When we got to immigration there were at least 250 people ahead of us. We were once again standing in line for just over an hour to clear immigration.

We were booked into the Holiday Inn Express near the Dublin Airport. The website advertises a shuttle service. I needed to get in touch with the hotel to find out how the shuttle service operated. The advertised number was +353 1 852 8866. How to dial that number with my iPhone that had roaming turned on? Dialing the US international access code followed by the number (011 353 1 852 8866) failed. Dialing. 353 1 852 8866 failed. Since 353 is the country code for Ireland, perhaps I didn’t need to dial the country code since I was already there. Nope. Didn’t work. Then I saw a sign for group travelers that were needed a transfer with a phone number to call if an agent wasn’t available. That gave me a clue. It turns out that dialing 01 852 8866 worked. The shuttle ran every half hour. The next one would be at 1:15pm. We were to go to Zone 16.

Well, that turned out to be a bit of conundrum. There were signs for Zone 16. It was raining and blowing hard. We got to the sign with no bus visible. At 25 after, I called again. The next shuttle would be a 1:45pm. We were to go to the “Bus Loading Area” at Zone 16. The shuttle was a full-sized bus with “Holiday Inn Express” painted on the side. There was no place for a bus of that size any where near where we were waiting. I went down what looked like a side route and found another Zone 16 sign with an arrow points to the left. We pulled our suitcases the indicated direction and about 4 minutes later came out in a big area populated with big busses. Shortly thereafter a big Holiday Inn Express bus pulled in.

We’re now in our hotel room. It’s nice room. There is no restaurant, but there is a bar with bar food (limited selection). The Crown Plaza next door doesn’t have a restaurant, either. The closest place to eat is a 10 minute walk from here. The weather is forecast to improve, but we’ve already walked 7,200 steps today (18,600 yesterday, 17,000 the day before, and 16,200 the day before that) and we’re tired of walking. Bar food it will be tonight.

The flight to Boston leaves tomorrow morning at 10:35am Ireland time and gets into Boston at 12:55 Boston time. We have a 5 hour layover and then fly to SLC getting in about 9:30pm. The trip is fast coming to a close.

A good night’s sleep is essential when one walks all day! Yesterday my iWatch reported 16,200 steps, the most we’ve done in a day so far on this vacation. Both of us slept pretty well, but started the day with the expectation of not walking as much as the day before.

Hah!

The plan was to take the Metro to the Eiffel Tower stop, change to the train and take it to the St. Michael’s stop, then walk over to Notre Dame. It turns out that the train sometimes goes only to the Invalides stop and other times goes to the end of the line. I managed to get us on the train that went to Invalides with no way to get over to the track where the other train would go. There were security folks everywhere. We later learned that the former French president and former prime minister Jacques Chirac had died and would be taken to the Presidential Palace at Invalides today to lie in state. A private funeral will happen tomorrow. I remember Mr. Chirac as the Prime Minister who refused to get involved with Iraq in defiance of President Bush II.

After asking a couple of people, we figured out a route on the Metro that would get us to Notre Dame. We’d have to change twice, but would not have far to walk. Not far on a map is not necessarily not far in reality. But we got there.

The whole area is blocked off and not open to the public while renovations due to the fire are being carried out. We could only stand behind the fence and take pictures. We needed some cash to we walked up the road towards an ATM but took a detour into a Catholic Church where a high mass was underway. The organ was fabulous and filled the whole church with music. So we did get some “church” in us today.

After getting some cash, we walked to the Metro station for the train that would take us to the Louvre. That was quite a walk. We took the Metro for one stop and got off at the Louvre and had lunch in a small pasta / pizza shop across from the Metro stop. That’s where we learned about the activities going on for Jacques Chirac. The big screen TV in the cafe was showing the funeral procession making its way to the Invalides Palace.

We stood in line for an hour and fifteen minutes before getting into the Louvre. They let people enter in batches every 20 minutes or so. Lesson: check into buying tickets for popular venues, such as the Louvre, online and in advance. Folks who had previously purchased tickets showed up at the time on the ticket, were batched up with other people ticketed for the same time, and then let through security as a group on the hour and on the half hour. By the time I checked it out we would be already in the museum before the next available on-line time slot.

There is so much to see in the museum that several days would be required to do it justice. We just had a couple of hours before the museum closed for the night.

That big pyramid thing in the center of the courtyard is copywrited … it’s illegal to take pictures of it lit up at night (you can take personal pictures but can’t pass them along to anyone else, paid or unpaid).

We spent some time on the top floor and the middle floor looking at the paintings and some of the sculptures.

The Temptation of Christ.

Naomi and Ruth

The St. Bartholomew’s Day Massacre. This was part of a pretty sordid chapter in French religious history when the Catholics became enraged when the king’s heir became wedded to a prominent Protestant Princess of Navarre. The uprising assassinated her in her bed as being depicted in this painting. I’d not heard of these religious wars in France, but apparently they went on for almost a half-century between the Catholics and the Protestants.

The last gallery we walked through had a number of paintings from early Christianity. These were often of Mary with the infant Jesus along with other saints and martyrs even though everyone in the picture couldn’t have been there at the same time. This is an example:

This is a painting of Mary and Jesus in the company of two female saints who didn’t live until 200 years after Christ’s death. Most of these paintings include guardian angels.

We took the Metro back to the stop by our hotel.

We had dinner and then checked out a Boulangerie where I’ll probably buy a baguette tomorrow morning.

We’re now in our room chilling out. I’m coming down with a cold so I’ll look for a pharmacy tomorrow morning to get some cold medicine.

We walked 17,040 steps today.

We both tried to sleep in this morning. Nina was up first, probably around 6am. I managed another half hour after that. We had breakfast (part of the room cost), packed up as lightly as possible, and made our way to Versailles.

The route was on the Metro, about a 2 minute walk from the hotel, to the stop for the Eiffel Tower and then we transferred to the railroad to go out to Versailles. The total trip was about a half hour or so.

We bought our tickets to the palace at the information booth as we exited the train station and walked the 5 minutes up to the palace.

See all the people inside the fence? That was the serpentine line for entrance into the palace. We stood in line for just under an hour before admittance. There’s a beautiful optical illusion painted on one of the buildings associated with the palace:

The painted building is actually round but the painting looks like it goes in rather than out. Nina is taking a selfie trying to get the illusion into the picture.

The Palace.Is.Beautiful. And huge. And crowded with people. There were probably 10,000 souls in the building with us making the tour. In some of the rooms it was difficult to even move. I can’t imagine what it would be like in July or August when all the tourists are there along with the sweltering heat.

There are probably a thousand paintings in the building. Most of them are portraits of people, but there are quite a few scenes, some quite dramatic:

Like this one relating to the crusades and crossing the Bosphorus in Istanbul (or, in those days, Constantinople). The ceilings were also beautiful.

The “Hall of Mirrors” was definitely the highlight.

You can begin to get an idea of how many people were there with us. This long hall has mirrors on the left and several dozen chandeliers hanging from the ceiling. Absolutely stunning. One can almost imagine attending a formal ball in this room.

We had lunch at one of the restaurants in the castle, bought a couple of souvenirs, and headed outside to the gardens.

The people were all gathered around waiting for the barely-visible fountain to come to life with classical stereo music accompanying. The fountains came on about 5 minutes later at 2:30pm.

We did a tour around the upper part of the gardens and then got a text from our daughter Heather telling us we should rent a golf cart for the gardens. Just then one drove by. I hadn’t seen them before and we were almost to the end of our visit. There was about an hour-long line waiting for a cart to become available. The price was 34 Euros (about $38) for one hour. Nina observed that we should do a better job of scoping out all the options when we’re traveling to someplace like this.

Then we reversed the route back to the hotel, unloaded, and went out for dinner. We’ve got back to the room just before 9pm and we’re right ready to call it a day!

The closest English-speaking church service is about an hour away. We’ll do church like we did last week … probably at Notre Dame Cathedral followed by the Louvre.

During breakfast on Thursday morning I called EuropCar about a possible replacement car. I was quite directly told that because the problem with the car was customer negligence, I would be responsible for any damages to the vehicle. Further, EuropCar had a policy that when a customer negligence issue occurs, there is a 24-hour “cooling off” period before they’ll issue a replacement vehicle. Bluntly, we were on our own for getting to the Dublin airport.

Turns out that wasn’t difficult or very expensive. There is an airport express bus that leaves Belfast regularly during the day which goes to the Dublin airport. The cost was 17 pounds Sterling per person (about $15) and takes about two hours. We took our goodbyes from our hostess (a very delightful woman) and took a 6 pound Sterling cab to the bus terminal. By 1:45pm we were at the Dublin Airport for a 7:25pm flight. Plenty of time, but we needed most of it.

I went to the EuropCar desk to verify that they knew I wasn’t going to be returning a car. The fellow read the notes from the roadside assistance call and told me that their management was going to have to take a look at how badly we were treated. I’m hoping that means they’ll disregard any possible charges for damages….

RyanAir out of Dublin is definitely not very high on my favorite airlines list. We weighed our suitcases and each of us were 4 kilograms over weight. RyanAir charges 11 Euros for each kilo over 20 kg. In our case it would be 88 Euros, or about $97. We needed to lighten up.

We moved as much as we could from the suitcases to backpacks. Nina got down to exactly 20 kg (but with what must have been a 10 pound backpack, not pleasant at all). I couldn’t get any lower than 23kg, so we opted to pay the additional 33 Euros. RyanAir also requires passengers to check in online rather than at the terminal (and charges 55 Euros if you do check in at the counter and haven’t gotten your boarding pass online). We had no way to print a boarding pass. I could check in but had no printer available, Without a printed boarding pass we couldn’t check luggage as that was done through an electronic console; no human intervention.

I went to the checkin lane, got to the front of the line, and pleaded my case. Because I had already checked in online but couldn’t print, she waived the fee and printed all 4 passes, going and returning. Then came the process of checking in the luggage. My suitcase checked just fine. Nina’s wouldn’t and was asking for 187 Euros as it was 17kg over weight. Nina finally spotted a RyanAir person who gave me a very incomprehensible explanation, but went ahead and did the baggage checkin manually for us and I paid the 33 Euros ($40) for the extra 3kg. Then she wanted to upsale us on priority boarding and some kind of fast pass through security. We declined the additional 94 Euros. She told us that it’d be a half-hour walk to the gate after clearing security. She wasn’t kidding!

Security was a breeze and we were both patted down as usual because of the titanium knees. The departure display board said that our flight was five minutes delayed but no gate information. It simply said, “Enjoy our facilities. Info at 6:25” What facilities? No place to sit down. We couldn’t go to the gate a we didn’t know which one and then didn’t know what direction (there were three different concourses). We both sat on the floor up against the wall near the display board waiting until 6:25pm, the promised time when the gate information would be displayed. They don’t reveal the gate info until 1 hour before the flight. Then it was a full half-hour hike to get to gate 111. The boarding area was mobbed as several flights were leaving about the same time for that area. Two flights were going to board AT THE SAME TIME through gate 111. RyanAir doesn’t pay for gate bridges. We walked down two flights of stairs and across the tarmac to get to the airplane. It wasn’t raining but definitely threatening.

The 737-800 aircraft was configured for 208 passengers. There were very few (maybe 10?) middle seats open when we left the gate. The flight was scheduled for 7:25pm. We left the parking area at 8:00pm because of air traffic delays. The 1:15 flight to Paris was uneventful. If one wanted anything during the flight, a credit card was required, even for a glass of water!

I had booked an airport hotel near the Paris Bouvais airport for the night. We got there about 11:45pm. There was a very limited menu still available so we had some tomato soup (not too bad) and some crepes (very nice) and went to bed. Up at 6:30am on Friday, we went back to the airport and caught a bus to to Paris (14 Euros apiece) and then a taxi to the hotel (50 Euros). I’m sure there was a different method on the Paris Metro to get to the hotel, but I didn’t know what it was. We’ll know the system well enough by next Tuesday to take the metro out to catch the bus to the airport.

Amazingly, our room was available when we checked in at 11:30am! We put the luggage away and began the walk towards the Eiffel Tower. Then we decided we’d be much better off on the Metro. We bought a stack of tickets to use as we traverse the city and had our first experience with the Paris Metro. Worked well.

The Eiffel Tower is amazing.

Everyone has pictures from their visit and none of them do any justice to the real size of this structure. It Is Huge!

We waited through a 1:20 line to get on the elevator up to the 2nd floor. We walked around, took a gazillion pictures and also took quite a few pictures for other couples and one took a picture for us.

We had a chocolate eclair (delicious) and I had a cup of hot chocolate (divine). Then it was back to the metro to go to the hotel. I misread the map and we went two stops too far before we got off. It was a Very Long Walk back to the hotel. If I’d have gotten us off at the correct stop, the hotel would have been 2 minutes away. As it was, it was 20 minutes and we’d already surpassed our 10,000 steps for the day!! We were dragging when we got to the room at about 5:30pm.

About 6:30pm we went to a restaurant around the corner from the hotel. I had a pasta dish and Nina had a chicken dish. Both were quite tasty. We had dessert … chocolate cake with some vanilla ice cream for me, and French toast with vanilla ice cream for Nina. There wasn’t enough of either dessert to share….

So we’re now in the hotel room. Electric cords strung across the floor as there aren’t plugs anywhere close to the beds and we both have CPAP machines to plug in. A late alarm for tomorrow (Saturday) morning. We’ll make our way to Versailles for the day tomorrow. Meanwhile, time to crash. G’Night!

The plan on Wednesday was to drive down the coast from Belfast through Bangor, the various Bally…. towns to Portaferry, take the ferry across, poke around, and then come back. On the way down we stopped at the Walled Castle Garden in Bangor, a beautiful Victorian garden.

A little further down the road was a lighthouse, requiring a stop.

Nearby was the Donaghadee Lifeboat Station. Posted on the door was the info on their last callout:

As we got back on the road we saw a sign for a windmill, so off we went.

We learned that on this little peninsula there weren’t any rivers or streams sufficient to turn a water wheel, so around 50 windmills at one time dotted the landscape earning the area the nickname “Little Holland”. This is the only one of the windmills left. There was a little visitors center, but it was closed. Today the landscape is dotted with individual wind turbines. These aren’t like the windfarms in the US. The wind turbines here all look to be individually owned and operated, one here and one there.

I needed fuel for the car so we pulled into a small gas station. The car takes diesel. I was sure that I was using the diesel nozzle, but apparently failed and put 40 liters (about 11 gallons) of gasoline into the nearly empty tank. About 10 minutes later the car started acting very strangely. The engine would race, then stall, then chug along, then race, stall, etc. We were very close to Portaferry so I nursed it into town. The dashboard flashed “Engine Failure. STOP” and I coasted into a parking place right in the center of the town.

We called the roadside assistance number, which meant talking to an Europcar call center. They then said they would pass along the info to AA for roadside assistance. We made the call at 12:55pm. At that time the Europcar representative said it would take 90 minutes for the AA to arrive and they would call me on their way.

While waiting we looked around the town and saw an old castle.

There was a small visitors center. We walked in and were warmly greeted by a lady working at the center. “Do you remember me?” she asked Nina. Turns out she was working on Tuesday at the reception desk at Belfast City Hall. She and Nina had had quite a conversation and she was the one that recommended we drive down the coast to Portaferry. She had written the whole itinerary down on a small piece of paper which somehow during the day we lost. For me it was an astonishing coincidence.

At 3pm (two hours later) I called again as no one had arrived and no one had called. By this time we in a small cafe Captain Jacks having lunch. While the Europcar person was quite apologetic, I was on hold for about 20 minutes while they were checking and the call failed. I called back and was eventually told the AA person was 15 minutes away.

At 3:45pm I called Europcar again. This time they were 20 minutes away. At 5pm the answer was that they were “trying to sort it out.” At 6:10pm when I called, I didn’t get the Europcar call center, but the AA office in Dublin. Apparently Europcar quite at 6pm. This time AA escalated the call to a supervisor who said that AA Ireland had to transfer the ticket to AA UK and that the way it worked was Eurocar called AA Ireland. Because we were in Northern Ireland, AA Ireland then called Lyon, France to place the trouble call with AA UK who then placed the trouble call with AA Northern Ireland, and they had my location wrong. After that was straightened out, the AA vehicle arrived at 7:30pm and promptly determined the problem was the wrong fuel in the car. It would have to be towed.

They arranged a flatbed tow truck to come. It would take the car to a secure lot and then deliver it to Europcar on Thursday morning. We would ride with the tow truck. After dropping the car, he then drove us to our B&B. It was 11:45pm when we got to our bedroom.

It’s now the next day. I called Europcar at 8am to see what my options were. Putting the wrong fuel in the car is customer negligence. If there is any damage to the car, I will be responsible for it. Further, when a car is disabled due to customer negligence, there is a 24-hour “cooling off period” before they’ll issue another car. We were on our own for getting to Dublin to catch our 7:25pm flight to Paris this Thursday evening.

Fortunately, there’s an airport express bus from Belfast to the Dublin Airport that leaves once an hour and takes about 2 hours. We’ll take a taxi from our B&B to the bus terminal at 11am and take the next bus to Dublin and chill at the airport.

An interesting (and possibly expensive) end to our delightful two weeks in Ireland. It’s raining today. We’ve only had four rainy days and even then they didn’t rain very hard. Two of then were days we spent most of the day driving. People here tell us that the weather we’ve had is remarkable. I’m OK with that!

So, we’re off the Paris where the Yellow Vest Protests have been somewhat violent the past couple of weeks. We’re leaving one interesting political situation to experience another one.