Travel Day

Our first day went reasonably well, but was not without a few hiccups. Dad dropped us off at the airport about two hours before the flight was due to depart and we spent the next 45 minutes waiting in line to get our boarding passes. Our flight was delayed about 45 minutes, which required us to book a new connecting flight from Heathrow to Dublin. Lucky for us these flights are not infrequent, so our connecting flight was only a short time after the original. During this time we also managed to purchase a $50 upgrade to seats that had about four inches more legroom, which was money well spent. This upgrade also meant that Pauline and I would not be sitting together, but since sitting beside each other would mean that someone would get an uncomfortable middle seat anyway, we opted to both get windows, which ended up being one row away from each other on opposite sides of the plane.

The flight was very full, although I was very lucky to not have anyone sitting beside me, so I had a particularly comfortable flight. Pauline sat beside a mother-son duo who seemed to behave themselves, and did not make the flight unpleasant for Pauline either.

We both managed to get nearly five hours of sleep on the plane, which was more than enough to get us through the next leg of the journey from Heathrow to Dublin. After getting our boarding passes we only had a few minutes to spare before boarding the flight, so the timing couldn't have been better. By the time we got to the hotel it was 4:45 PM, which meant we had no time for naps, but rather would power through into the evening with dinner and would stay up as late as we could in the hope of sleeping through the night. We crashed at about 8:30 PM and remarkably slept all through the night until 6:30 AM.