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.