Why is it so hard to come home, yet so easy to go? An unanswerable question, although the answer may lie in excitement and anticipation, plus going home you are not fresh, but worn down with travel, different beds, late hours, and yes, too much food and libations.
We left the hotel on the bus for our trip to the airport, which is north of the city. Not too bad a line at United, which did not prepare us for what was to come. First, a line for security, which is pretty normal. Now a stop at duty-free to buy some Jameson Irish Whiskey. Nice system in Dublin; US Customs and Immigration are done here...unfortunately, long lines for both. Customs, the queue snaked back and forth five to six times and we had to do the whole security thing again, plus identify a picture of your checked luggage. Pretty neat, how they can match you at the Customs station with your baggage somewhere else in the building. Now, more long snaky lines for Immigration, finally "on US soil," as we were through Immigration. Now, an interesting part: only two liters of liquor allowed through Customs, and what should appear in front of us but a duty-free shop. Now you could buy as much liquor as you could carry as you were already "in the US," so to speak. Wonder if this makes sense to someone, somewhere.
Trip from Dublin to Newark was smooth, but the video displays in my whole row were not working. The crew tried rebooting several times, but no luck. I had two interesting seatmates, so all was not lost. The girls sitting in my row were French Canadians who had been to England and Ireland to work on their English accents, which I thought were quite good. We had a nice long conversation about many things. Marian had mentioned in Ireland that many Irish had first gone to Canada, and Sophie was living proof of this. She identified as French Canadian, but her last name was O'Shaughnessy.
Arrived in Newark on time, and the gate we were going to leave from was just straight across the corridor. This has never happened to me before: now the bad news. Our flight to San Francisco, which was supposed to leave at 4:25, was delayed to 6:30. The weather across the US was pretty rough this day. The plane finally arrived a little past 6:30, and we were on board by 7 o'clock or so. Then we sat on the runway, and the captain came on the intercom and said that we were not cleared to take off because there was some heavy weather coming in (it was raining at the time). Then, to apologize for the inconvenience, the in flight videos would be free, then he said we could use our cell phones on the plane while we waited. This did not bode well for the flight! Finally we took off for a pretty bumpy flight to San Francisco. We got in about 11:30, and Rob picked me up. We went across the Bay Bridge at midnight in a mist, and I was finally in bed by 1:00 on the 26th. I figure that this was about 28 hours awake, as I do not really sleep on a plane.
And that's why it took me until the 28th to post for the 25th!
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