Mmmm-hm, London, you sure know how to sweet-talk a girl.
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| Duty-free chocolate bar the size of an iPad? Yes, please. |
Oh, did I forget to mention that? When the chipper young lady who was re-arranging our flights said we'd have an hour's layover in Heathrow, I did ask her if that was really going to be enough time to make our AerLingus transfer. Oh yes, she reassured. London Heathrow was very organized. We'd have no problems.
Except, ya know, that even an organized airport still has a fair bit of distance between terminals, and requires time to get through customs. AerLingus made flights almost hourly to Dublin, however, so we quickly were set up for the next flight by a polite check-in employee who reiterated the line that our luggage would be automatically transferred as well. Given the amount of complications we'd had at that point, I had serious doubts about this. Which turned out to be well-founded.
We took off from London in beautiful sunny skies and I gazed over the green patchwork below in raptures. Britain! A place I'd wanted to see for decades, a place we'd be returning in a few days. I scrutinized every large building visible, and told myself they were castles, though they were probably just banks or high-rise hotels.
The jets hummed, and I drowsed, waking a half-hour later to this view:
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| Ah. I see we are now over Ireland. |
Dublin, ho. Grateful to bid flying farewell for a few days, we arrived in bag claim with faint hopes, and watched the other passengers gather their luggage and leave. The empty conveyor belt slid by, uncaring, malignant. I groaned, exhausted, frustrated, and bitterly disappointed, and we stumped to the service counter.
A truly lovely, sympathetic woman took our information down and promised to do everything possible, while contradicting everything we'd been told up to that point, as it turned out we should have collected our bags in London and transferred them ourselves to AerLingus. Not that this would have helped, I suspected, as my own gut instinct was that our luggage had never left Toronto, and thus, was still under Air Canada's jurisdiction, most likely completely unbeknownst to them. It was this, rather than the prospect of delay, that bothered me most, for I did not see how it could be corrected. I could not stop the slow seep of tears as we left the counter and headed out of the terminal, clutching our backpacks. We grabbed some food and found our way to the buses, where our Galway reservations for the previous day were honored - not without some amusing banter from the leprechaunish driver, who conferred with his copilot in eldritch chuckles and pretended to be breaking all sorts of rules. He cracked the first sincere smile out of me since leaving Canada.
The bus was a luxury double-decker, upholstered and dark on the inside, like a gypsy wagon. We took seats in the front upper deck. The Artist and I conferred. We were both still wearing the clothes we'd departed in, suitable for a USA southern summer and most definitely not for the fine Irish chill and mist outside. There was unlikely to be any decent shopping in Inisheer; we'd have to find somewhere in Galway to buy, hopefully, a sweater; perhaps a few changes of underclothes; we'd have only an hour to do so before catching another bus to the ferry port. Anxiety over whether there would be anything available kept me from relaxing completely, and I dozed fitfully, too exhausted to take much notice of the green country rolling by the window, which didn't look much different from any bucolic, lush land in America - it could have been Tennessee, or Virginia, at brief glance.
Galway, however, made itself quickly known as a place one could never mistake for an American city.
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| Though a few of our bars probably do fly Guiness flags. |
I found myself regretting I had not reserved a day for exploring this place. Next time, Ireland, next time. To our delight, there was a T.K.Maxx (not a typo, that's how they name it) a couple blocks from the bus station, and we had a 45-minute power-shopping spree, yanking warm clothing, socks, underwear, and toiletries off the racks, wondering if our travel insurance would reimburse us. We emerged, large bags in hand, many Euros lighter, and found our way to the next bus stop.
Another double-decker ride, this time to the coast, with scenery that did not masquerade in any familiar guise.
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| Oh, yes, this... |
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| Um... |
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| All right, now you're just showing off. |
The Artist and I drooled on the window. Ok, not really, because that would be gross. But we exclaimed over every new vista, bemoaned the employment state that tied us to our geographical location, and clutched each other's hands in excitement. Now and then I shed a tear over our luggage, but our adventure was, at least, finally on the upswing.
I remember nothing at all of the ferry port, and spent the ferry ride like this:
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| There was water and mist outside, okay? Nothing else. |
I was vaguely aware that the ferry stopped at Inishmore and Inishmaan, and was obliged to sit up on the final leg of the journey, when the swells became so large the pitching of the boat bounced me out of my makeshift cot. And then, at last, we were docking at Inisheer, stepping up the dock. The air was misty and smelled like fish. Above a collection of small boats, cottages, and the detritus typical of a fishing harbor, a giant green gum bared ancient stone teeth at the woolly clouds.
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| With a view like that, do we really need luggage? |
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| On our way back "home"... |
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| The welcoming committee. |
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