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).