A long day's journey home

I love traveling, but I really wish I could just snap my fingers and be instantly transported home at the end of my trip. If I could be like Dorothy in her ruby slippers in the Wizard of Oz: "there's no place like home, there's no place like home..."

It was a smooth travel day, but it certainly was a long one.

Breakfast at Mercer Court started at 7:30, which gave me a chance to get a bite to eat before catching a taxi to the airport. As we got close to the airport I started to tell the taxi driver that I needed to go to international departures, but then I realized that unlike my home airport, most of the flights leaving Dublin are international departures! I arrived at the airport and found the check-in line for my flight. I was standing in line when I looked at my ticket. Uh oh - something just doesn't look right here. It turns out that when I flew over the agent pulled the wrong ticket coupon. The coupon I had left was to fly from Boston to Dublin. But, but... I left the check-in line and went over to the Aer Lingus purchase tickets line, which luckily had no one in it. I explained my problem to the agent there. She looked at my ticket - which clearly had the second coupon pulled and not the first, shook her head, showed it to the agent sitting next to her, and then wrote a change sticker for me. Whew!

Back in the line to check baggage... I was all checked in a good hour and a half prior to my flight, so I wandered upstairs for a cup of coffee. No need to sit at the gate for that long! When I finally got to the gate, I saw a swirl of flashing lights outside, luckily surrounding the plane next to the one I was supposed to board. It was a Bulgarian Air Charter plane, and there were five fire trucks and numerous security cars around the jet. For all the vehicles and the fire personnel, there wasn't really that much activity. Two of the fire trucks left after about 15 minutes, and they made an announcement that the flight would have a half hour delay due to technical problems. Technical problems? A fire? Or? About 15 minutes after that they told people on that flight to come back to the gate at 11 (another hour away) for an announcement - which I didn't hear because I was on my own plane by then. I'm glad I wasn't scheduled to depart on that plane - I think those passengers were in for a long delay. Before I boarded my plane they pushed the problem plane away and wheeled up an Air Canada jet. Time for a different flight.

We left Dublin for a 30-minute journey to Shannon. I figured it would be just a quick stop there to pick up more passengers - but I was wrong. We all had to disembark in Shannon to go through US Immigrations! OK, so it was longer than I thought it would be. Painless, but an hour-long stop.

We took off from Shannon for the real flight - and the plane was totally packed. We arrived in Boston 5+ hours later, a full half-hour ahead of schedule. That was nice - but the baggage handling in Boston wasn't. Getting checked bags at Logan Airport is usually slow, but this was the worse I've ever seen. After a while we just had to laugh. It seemed like the airplane unloaders (or whatever they are called) took a few bags off the plane, loaded them on the baggage conveyor, then took a break. Five or ten minutes later, another cluster of bags, then a break. Five or ten.... well, you get the picture. I waited almost an hour for my bike and duffle bag. They finally appeared though, went through customs (no purchases, no duty, no hassles...), and walked outside to a beautiful, sunny 70+ degree day.

Home...