Getting ready to go

Friday was my last day at work, the movers come tomorrow, it has now become real! Flying out of SFO on the 27th will be weird. In, many ways we still feel as if we are just heading off to a vacation.

March 26, 2008
The house closed officially we are homeless. It feels very strange to walk away from 20 years worth of memories here. The house of course now looks exactly as I want it to and we have created such a home here. There is a little sadness in letting go of where the kids grew up, we are truly moving on to the next stage of this life called adventure.

March 27, 2008
Breakfast with Lorren, Kathi, Loretta and Beth - the last truly american breakfast we'll have for a while. Very sad as we love our breakfasts. Lorren and Kathi drop us at the airport and we are well and truly on our way. We board our flight for the London to Heathrow leg, Adrian has asked that we be placed in an exit row - something I have never done. I will always do so if I have to fly coach on long distance in the future. It was very easy to fly this way, lots of leg room and easy to get up - you do lose out on a window, but you can get up and look out the porthole. I managed to read two entire books on the flight over and watch Juno all were very good. We land in Heathrow at 6:30a.m. local time. It is only about 11:30p.m. at home - so I don't feel very tired. We go through a crazy amount of security, probably four different areas that we have had to go through security to catch our Aer Lingus flight to Dublin, from there we are meant to transfer to another flight to Shannon. We sit on the runway for what feels to be for ever but is probably only a little over an hour. A sensor that is responsible for the de-icing process has broken and they do not have the part in London. They need to fly the part over from Dublin, so eventually they move us onto another plane. They tell us they'll see how many of us they can move and then come back and say they are moving the entire flight. In fact, they even moved the flight crew. I tell Adrian I think it is because Sinead O'Connor is on our flight. She is just two rows ahead and over. There is no first class on this flight. She was not happy about the troubles, but even her pull could not help tremendously in this situation. It was interesting - we told the two women sitting across from us that she was up there and they said "Does she have any hair?" When we told the taxi driver the same thing - his first response was the same "Does she have any hair?" It was very funny. We land in Dublin and are told someone will meet us to lead us on. There isn't anyone and being the oh so experienced traveler that I am I start following the signs that say "Those with forward boarding pass, continue on". Unfortunately, that meant that we completely passed the "Transfer Desk" (the one place we could have been helped). Then we are stuck at the immigration booth - the Garda apparently does not know what to do with "Diplomats" that are coming here to work (see page 51 of our passports please). After considerable delay there we finally wonder around completely lost - with our two travel mates from across the way. Who are Irish but have lived in England forever and have never flown into Dublin, they appeared very confused. Finally, we find an Aer Lingus employee who is available to help us sort this out and she takes us down to the "Transfer Desk" "Where we should have stopped to begin with - before ever hitting immigration." This is when we discover that no we have missed the one and only flight out that day for Shannon and it left at "half past eleven" But, we are calling a taxi to take you to Shannon courtesy of Aer Lingus. It was a great day for our taxi driver - four hours down and back - cost Aer Lingus about 1,000.00 E - considerably more than our tickets and we had a lovely driver and chat. Stopped about half way at a place called Midway - they had a subway in there. We opted for Tea and a slice of Quiche. We finally arrived at our hotel around 7:00pm - checked in (did not think much of the room and wondered why it appeared to be a handicapped room). Went found dinner - I had fish and chips - Adrian had Irish Stew, his first. By 8:30pm we were in bed asleep.

March 29, 2008 - Saturday
First thing we do is go off to breakfast - included in our stay - it is sort of buffet style and they offer - scrambled eggs, fried eggs, baked tomatoes, blood pudding, sausage, "bacon", hash browns, assorted cereals that you scoop out of a bowl, rhubarb or peach Melba yogurt, muffins, brown bread, prunes and something else I am unsure of, orange juice, grapefruit juice, coffee or tea and white toast. The coffee is terrible, the bacon is what we would consider fried ham, the has browns are fantastic. Now why did I go into so much detail about the breakfast......it never changes-------everyday the same offering, and we have to live here for oh, only 60 days.
I o to the "reception" desk and inquire as to whether or not I request a handicap room, ooh dear no - did we put you in one? They moved us. Then Adrian contacted his new office to tell them we had arrived. There is a party tonight to say goodbye to one of the guys here and to welcome us and another family that arrived three weeks ago. Someone will be by to collect us at about 5:30pm. So we went and walked all about Bunratty Castle and the folk park. And I want you guys to know I did every bit of it. Man did my thighs hurt the next day for climbing all the stairs in the Castle. Did I tell you.... they constantly burn a peat fire in the hotel lobby - it smells a little like kerosene or the starting of a barbecue. Its a very odd smell. And it's not a great blazing fire although it is in a great big fireplace. The party is lovely and everybody is very nice it will be fun getting to know them.

April 2, 2008

Today I went into Ennis with Paula Kozlowski, she and her husband and two boys arrived three weeks ago. I needed to get a converter for the laptop and a hair dryer. Its pretty funny when you ask for something only to spend 10 minutes finding out that its called something different here. I also took a moment to shop for a few groceries now that we are in the holiday house. Still connected to the same hotel and breakfast is still included, but I am heartily sick of the breakfast, so I picked up a couple of items we can cook. We had lunch then and drove to the airport to meet the boys. Everybody has to meet with an nurse practitioner after they arrive, she will manage getting our prescriptions filled etc. So our holiday house. It is lovely, 3 bedrooms each with its own "Toilet" that's the term here, its pretty funny. But the showers are very tiny I was going to shave my legs today.....nope - no room to do so. Ah well whats a girl to do. The weather has been different every day. Both rain and sunshine most days at differing times. It did pour all day on Monday literally and it had started Sunday afternoon. Yesterday, it stayed beautiful all day and the first couple of days it was cold but it warmed up yesterday. Today it has been overcast and drizzly all day, but warm so that I think shows a change in the weather. Starting tomorrow I will try to download some of the photos and post them on here. But I close now that I have caught up on this and off to dinner at the pub - yet again. Tomorrow I'll tell you about the food.