Dublin or Bust

Home sweet home, for a week

Day 8 (8/10/15)

I wouldn’t say that we are seasoned travelers but at this point we have seen our share of airports. This flight was one of the worst we have ever had. We were supposed to fly out of Milwaukee to Philadelphia and then to Dublin. After we got checked in and went through security we headed to our gate. I went to ask a guy at the gate a question and he started going on about how glad he was that he had found us. Apparently after we had checked in, our plane had been delayed and we would not catch our connecting flight. He sent us back to get our luggage and then we were to board a bus which would take us to Chicago to catch a nonstop flight to Dublin. It was kind of a hassle finding the bus and doing the whole stopping along the way thing with weekend traffic returning to Chicago but at least our flight was nonstop. When we got to Chicago we showed our note to the ticket agent and he told us we would be flying on one of their affiliates, Aer Lingues which was in a different terminal. So we had to catch the terminal shuttle and head for our new destination. After about an hour of standing in line with nothing happening rumors started passing that our flight had been canceled. Instead of telling us what was going on they started diverting people to other flights. We eventually found out that our options were to be put up in a hotel and fly out the next night on the same flight or fly through Heathrow in London. We also heard that they were limited on both of these options. We figured we were safe since we were in the first half of the line. Suddenly they started pulling people from the back of the line and processing them in a separate line. Now we were starting to get worried and we had already stood in line for two hours at this point. We found strength in that a man just ahead of us was flying alone with a three and five year old. We couldn’t believe how well behaved they were and how patient he was with what had to be unbelievable stress. Finally after almost three hours in line it was our turn. We had already decided that we would fly through London and at least save part of our first day. By the time we got finished we had to race back to the original terminal that we had gone to earlier and try not to miss our flight. Fortunately they were holding the flight so we got our seats and were just thankful to be finally on a plane. There had been times that we weren’t sure if we would make it to Dublin or not. The rest of the trip went well enough and we finally made it to Dublin although it was about six hours later than we were supposed to. We had planned on spending that first day checking out the area around our hotel and getting to know where everything was. By the time we got to our hotel we decided to get something to eat, take a shower and go to bed.   

We always knew we were home when we would see this sculpture