May 17th

Ryan - Freak out on day 1. Sara says "oh no" minus the pot hole. The flights to Dublin today were canceled, but luckily (at least for now) we are flying in tomorrow. Bumpy ride to Chicago, and 2 hours into a 11 and a half hour layover. No internet at the moment, so this will be posted later. Met some of the players from Crystal Palace, they are in the States to play Rochester out of the USL (United Soccer League). Crystal Palace is a Champions League team from England (one tier under the Premier League) and they were walking through the airport about as noticeable as a high school club team. Stalked them for a little while before finally catching up to a few of the players to speak with them. Really nice guys, though I think they were surprised to have someone actually recognize them.

Sara - This morning right before we were leaving, I decided to check the Dublin arrivals to see if anything was canceled and sure enough, the entire page is CANCELED!!! I called upstairs to Ryan and had a minor freak out, until Ryan pointed out that all those times were for this morning, not tomorrow morning. According to the site, the cancellations were not due to the ash cloud stuff from the volcano, but something else. They said they expected flights to continue this afternoon (and hopefully tomorrow for us!!) The host on our first flight was demeaning to me for no reason. I woke up to him holding a trash bag wanting the can of my drink with half left in it. I figured I could take it with me, but apparently - and rudely put - "All service items must be thrown away, everything. Anything we serve to you is a service item." As Ryan said, someone must have peed in his cheerios this morning. Anyway, meeting the soccer players was cool. I saw their uniforms and by their age, I figured they might be a little more important than a regular team, especially since we were in the international wing. I told Ryan and finally got him to look at the warm-ups they were wearing and the crest and he identified the team. I convinced him that we should follow them and say hi, and that Ryan was a big soccer fan and so we did. It was pretty fun trying to spot them in the crowd. I felt like a total creeper, but it paid off and was neat.

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May 18th

Home - 6:33 am

Dublin - 11:33 am

We arrived safely in Dublin! Our 12 hour layover in Chicago was long, but not too bad. We played cards and yahtzee and I attempted napping. We walked ALL OVER the place there (my legs are getting in shape FAST) and exchanged a good deal of money for Euro because they had a special thing where there was no exchange fee if you did a certain amount. At the Chicago airport, just before our flight, we met a nice lady named Joan who was raised in Dublin, but has lived in Washington state the last 50 years. She came over with no education and was very poor, but got through school and received her high school education and then became a nurse. She was on her was back to Dublin to visit some of her 10 siblings, I think 8 of whom still live in Ireland. We ended up seated right next to her so I got a lot of advice from talking to her. I thought the food on the plane was ample and pretty good (though I was REALLY hungry!) and I have lots of packaged snacks left over to munch on later.

We had made reservations at Paddy's Palace on Lower Gardiner Lane for the first three nights so that we could take advantage of the free day trip (usually costs 28 euro per person) to Kilkenny and Glendalough you receive if you stay two nights. Paddy's Palace was about $19 a night for each of us. We took the "Paddy Wagon" - the hostel's free shuttle from the airport - to the hostel and it's looking pretty decent. It's certainly not sparkling and brand new, but it's not dirty, just worn in some :) I looked at the shower when I went to the bathroom and it is very small, and I am pretty sure there's only one!! We'll see how that goes. There are a lot of people our age and lots of backpacking packs at the airport, so we didn't look as silly as I thought we might. Of course all our luggage got here safely and nothing is missing so far. We had to wait until noon to check into the hostel, so we walked around a while and found basically the center of all shopping in Dublin, according to the hostel workers. We also found Moore street which is a whole street of farmer's market and fruit vendors. We found small grocery stores and meat stores as well as a lot of mall-type clothing stores and souvenir shops. We still had to kill an hour, so we're back at the hostel and I'm blogging while Ryan sleeps on the couch.

- Sara