Back to the Emerald Isle

Our trip to the US was great, but after 4 weeks away we were ready to go "home". So we headed to O'Hare airport with our 4 overweight suitcases and all of our carry-ons. The flight was scheduled to depart on a Saturday at 6:30 pm. Like good little travelers, we arrived 2 hours ahead of time. As we were waiting in the Aer Lingus line, we heard someone say that the flight had been delayed. When we finally got to the desk we were informed that the flight was delayed 7 hours due to technical issues and we would be leaving at 1:30am! Ugggh! We accepted the inevitable. Then Marco realized we had booked the tickets using American Express and he had enrolled in a travel delay protection program. You pay $10 each time you book a ticket and that turned out to be worth every penny! We called Am Ex and they told us that we could go to a hotel, eat, buy any incidental things we needed during the delay and it would all be covered. Luckily there was a hotel at the airport so we checked in, ordered room service and watched a movie. We also snuck in a little nap and a shower before heading back to the airport at midnight. This was a million times better than sitting in the airport for 7 hours! The flight to Dublin was uneventful, and we were scheduled to fly on to Shannon after a 45 minute stop. Shannon is less than half the distance to Galway than Dublin, so it's much more convenient. Well, when we arrived in Dublin they announced that the flight to Shannon had been canceled. Unbelievable. They wanted to put us all on a bus to Shannon, which would have taken several hours. Then we would have to take another bus to Galway for about an hour and a half. This did not sound fun. So we decided to take a train directly from Dublin to Galway, which was a whole adventure by itself. We took a bus for 45 minutes to the train station, lugging our bags all the way! Needless to say, we were pretty exhausted by the time we arrived home. We got home around 7pm, dumped our bags, ate some cereal and went to bed. We both had to work the next day, so we pushed through the jetlag. The crazy part is that we went straight from work back to the train station and headed back to Dublin. The next morning we had a 7am flight to Portugal!

A Month in the US

It's been a long time since I have written anything because we have been on the road in the US. We've been here almost a month and it's hard to believe how fast time flies! We have had some great times visiting friends and family, eating all of our favorite foods and shopping up a storm. But all good things must come to an end. We leave for Ireland in 2 days and I'm starting to get nervous about overweight luggage. :(

It was super fun for us to be here during the most historic election in memorable history! We were glued to all of the news coverage and were celebrating the fact that the nation spoke loudly about wanting change. It is such a great country and now we have hope that rebuilding is possible.

We will arrive back in Galway on Sunday morning. The funny thing is that we will leave early Tuesday morning for a trip to Portugal! I know, crazy, huh? That means that we'll go to work on Monday, then take the train to Dublin in the evening so we can fly at 7am Tuesday! We won't even be back on Irish time, so I'm sure we'll both be a bit tired. Marco has some meetings to attend in Porto, which is in the North, and I couldn't resist tagging along. Portugal is one of the places on my "list", so I'm really excited. We're flying into Lisbon and taking the train to Porto. After the meetings, we'll head back to Lisbon and spend the weekend exploring. We've heard lots of great things about the city, so it should be fun.

Then we will come back to Galway and 3 weeks later I head to South Africa for the holidays. Marco will come a week after I go and we'll stay through the first week of January. We're both looking forward to the trip and I'm really excited to introduce Marco to Africa!