The Saga continues! (Sunday morning in Dublin)

The line for Aer lingus was HUGE! It was filled with the Illinois State University band and what seemed like a couple hundred people on a CIE tour (an educational based tour company). As we stood in line for ticketing, we noticed a sign that said “for connecting passengers” so we by-passed the line, thinking we fit the bill. There, Paul asked about our tickets, and the lady helping him said we only had ½ the ticket we needed (in other words, we could get to Dublin, but not to London). She then took the tram and stairs to go talk to United herself. She came back about 20 minutes later. We did a LOT of people watching. I was playing a game trying to figure out where people were from and/or going. Nevertheless, finally, the lady came back and then we had to wait in the line (which was, by that time, thankfully much shorter).

Then it was on to the next line. The line to the security check area was massive! We were all funneled into two main lines for awhile, but as we got closer to the actual metal detector and such, we were literally “sorted” into 4 different lines by TSA agents. This was the most surreal moment of the trip so far. I think I got a small glimpse of what it felt like to live through the holocaust and prison camps. I got the giggles watching Paul; he had to take off his belt, put it in a tray along with his coat, his shoes, but he also had our carry-on bag with the laptop (laptop in a tray of course), and his passport wallet and tickets. I had my wool coat, my slip on/off shoes (what a smart traveler I am!) and my tickets/passport. We felt so rushed through the detectors and when we got to the other side, it was just a weird frenzy. Paul was grabbing crap left and right; even with just slipping on my shoes and grabbing my coat from the tray, I had to rush…everyone was coming through it seemed, and piling up on top of one another. We both observed that we felt either like cattle coming out of a shoot. Or we knew what it was like to be a pinball. WEIRD!

So then we sat and sat in a terminal next to the one we would depart from (the other being full of the ISU band members).

When we got on the plane, we were happy to see that our luck had changed; we were seated at the front row of economy so we had a direct line of site to the movie screen. I had the window seat; Paul had his aisle seat. Hurray! The take off was one of the roughest I’ve experienced. The plane was swaying left to right quite a bit before we settled down). We were served either beef or chicken for dinner, and then we settled in for a six hour flight to Dublin. I watched about half of the first movie (Night at the Museum) before trying to sleep. I did not get ONE wink of sleep, though. Once there, we had to go through customs and immigration (so I do not have a second English stamp, darn it).