Monday, July 8, 2019 Dana Flies Back To Denver Mark Departs Ireland And Flies To Glasgow

This morning Dana and I packed up, policed the apartment to make sure we were not leaving anything behind, and then took a cab to the Dublin airport. Dana checked into her Delta flight from Dublin to Atlanta with a connecting flight to Denver. Dana has a one hour and forty minute layover in Atlanta and has been worried that this would not be enough time to gather her bags, get through customs and check in for her connecting flight to Denver. Dana and I were discussing this potential problem in front of the Delta gate agent. She reassured Dana that she had plenty of time in Atlanta to make her connection because she would clear Irish customs in Dublin and would also clear US customs in Dublin. What a brilliant idea. Do customs all at once at your departure airport as opposed to waiting until you arrive in the US and you are so jet lagged you don’t even know your own name and you can’t find your passport. I love the Irish.

I have had so much fun traveling with Dana and spending some quality time with her. What an amazing young woman she is and what a splendid daughter.

After I said goodbye to Dana at Terminal 2, I proceed to wander around the airport for an hour trying to find my terminal, Terminal 1. I could see Terminal 1 but I could not find a walking path to Terminal 1. I got desperate and almost took a taxi, but I finally pulled my head out of my backside, looked up and saw a sign pointing the way to Terminal 1. I need to start paying attention to what I am doing and where I am going.

When I finally got to Terminal 1 it was time for lunch. I have been eating some pretty exotic fare lately so I decided to dial it back a bit.

I almost never eat at the Golden Arches, but I decided that I couldn’t go wrong having lunch at the McDonald’s at the Dublin airport. Boy was I mistaken.

I ordered the Chicken Sandwich Happy Meal. I was happy until I took a bite out of the chicken sandwich. If you remember my adventure in Europe last year, I ate chicken almost every evening and got unbelievably tired of Euro chicken. 🐓 I trusted that Mc Donald’s would import their chicken from the good old US of A, where we use massive doses of growth hormones to plump up our chickens and use a toxic stew of chemicals to enhance the flavor. In Europe they prohibit the use of chemicals and hormones in food production. As a result, the Eoro chickens are skinny, scrawny and taste like cardboard. I am not complaining and I don’t want to sound like an ugly American, but the Euros need to do something to make their chickens edible.

After lunch I ambled over to the RyanAir baggage check station.

RyanAir is a bare bones, cheap as cheap can be, Euro airline. I think my one way ticket from Dublin to Glasgow was 48 Euros. That really is dirt cheap. You all have heard the old adage that you get what you pay for. RyanAir expects you to weigh your bag, scan your boarding pass, print out a label, affix the label to your bag and drop it on a conveyor belt that will hopefully take your bag to the plane on which you will be traveling to your final destination.

I was able to weigh my bag, no problem. I had my boarding pass on my cell phone and I had a very hard time getting the scanner to read my cell phone boarding pass. When I finally got that done, I printed off my baggage tag. The mechanical voice in the kiosk that printed off the baggage tag told me to affix the baggage tag to my bag but: “Do not remove the sticky!” What is a sticky? I have no idea. I tried to peel the paper off the sticky part on the back of the baggage tag but I could not get it to budge. All the while this mechanical voice is repetitively telling me not to remove the sticky. I finally figured out that there is no paper over the sticky part of the baggage tag, just sticky part. And you’d better not remove the sticky part! After I got my baggage tag on my bag and put it on the conveyor belt, I negotiated security and went down to my gate.

When you fly discount airlines in Europe they don’t have a lot of amenities, like jetways from your gate at the terminal to the door of your airplane. You walk down the stairs in the terminal and out onto the tarmac and then you walk out to your plane and walk up a set of stairs to get to the door of your plane. This would be no fun if it was cold or raining. ☔️

This is the plane to Glasgow. I hope it isn’t a 737 Max!

After a short one hour flight we arrived in Glasgow.

I took a bus from the airport and checked into the Radisson across the street from the train station.

They brought up this nice welcome basket 🧺. Isn’t that special.

I am going to grab something quick for dinner and get to bed as I would like to hit the bricks early tomorrow morning and explore Glasgow.

Before we leave Ireland in the rear view mirror of the blog I have an Irish prayer to share with you.

“May the road rise up to meet you. May the wind be always at your back. May the sun shine warm upon your face. May the rain fall soft upon your fields. And until we meet again, May God hold you in the palm of his hand.”

I hope everyone had a great Monday.

Goodnight from Glasgow, Scotland.