Ireland Day 1
Today I left Nashville. We were slated to go to JFK (in New York), then to Philledelphia, then on to Dublin, but it didn't quite work out that way. We were an hour late getting in the air from Nashville, and so I missed the connecting flight. After standing in line for about half an hour, I got to talk to one of the people at the transfers desk and he re-routed me to go to Paris Charles de Gaul (sp?) CDG, and from there to Dublin. Ok, no biggie, I would be getting into Dublin about 11:30 instead of 8:00 like originally planned. I go find something to eat (chineese fast food, the Wok and Roll), make the half mile hike to the new gate, and wait for a while for the plane to board. So I get to Paris, about an hour late (do we see a pattern here?) and rush to make my flight, but I don't. Ok, here's a little bit about the Paris airport IT ROYALLY STINKS!! When you arrive, your plane stops way out on the field somewhere and a bus comes and picks you up and takes you to one of the 6 concourses. Then you have to take another shuttle bus around the outside of the airport to get to other concourses. Of course, the one I was going to was right next to the one I arrived at, but the bus only goes the long way around. So, after finally arriving at the correct building, I head in to go upstairs to the gates, but I have to go through security to get there, so I take off my shoes and the whole bit and get up to find my gate and the plane is already gone, well, not really gone, but the bus that transports you to the plane had already left, and they don't make special trips, so I try to find the transfers desk there, and figure out that it is OUTSIDE OF SECURITY! So I go out and get rebooked on a flight a couple of hours later and go through security again, only this time they decide that my bag looks suspicious (of course it does, i've got enough techno garbage in there to choke a horse), so they take a bunch of stuff out and look through it and send it through the scanner again, etc, and finally decide that it's ok and they let me go. I went and found some postcards and addressed and wrote them and did some window shopping and then my flight started boarding. Well the plane was scheduled to leave at 12:50, and boarding started at 12:05. At the time I didn't understand why it was boarding so early, but you have to get on a bus and drive 15 minutes to the plane. This plane was delayed as well after we were sitting on it, but it didn't matter because I didn't have to catch another one! So I finally get to the Dublin airport, and all seems fine until all of the luggage is claimed from the convayor and my bag isn't there. So I go to the desk for Air France (yes, I changed airlines. I guess Delta is associated with them somehow?) and explained to her which flights I had taken and she had me fill out a form stating where I was staying and the phone number. Oh, I forgot about the customs stuff. When you deplane you go through the terminal and to exit the international terminal, you go through a line, one side is for EU citizens and the other is for, you guessed it, everyone else. I get up to the desk and hand the guy my passport and my form thingy they handed out on the plane, and he asks me how long I'm staying and I told him 15 days. He flipped my passport open to the middle and stamped it. He never even looked to see if it was me! After I finished with the baggage thing, I was walking out and there are two exits, one for locals and one for foreigners, so I walk through the correct line and no one asks to see anything, very nice indeed. Out in the bigger lobby I found a little travel shop and bought a street guide to Dublin and a bus pass to get to the hostel. The bus ticket was 5euro, as opposed to a cab fare of about 20euro. So i get to the hostel and it's about 3:30 or so in the afternoon, and I get checked in and crash for a couple of hours, then go walk around a bit and see what the city is about, ok I walked several miles. Then went back to the hostel and slept from about 21:00 to about 8 the next morning.
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