Connecting All The Way To Disconnect

OH, SWEET JESUS, I DON’T KNOW HOW THEY DID IT. 

Our traveling companions arrived more or less on schedule, but it was a schedule that appears to have been designed by the travel agency of the Marquis de Sade…on a bad day…when his feet hurt.

The “Cousins from Alaska” were coming to Ireland for the first time trusting us and our judgment as to the best way to get from Anchorage, Alaska to Dublin, Ireland without going mad.

No matter how you slice it if you live in Alaska going anywhere takes some serious planning.

For them to get to Dublin their itinerary read something like this: Fly from Anchorage to Seattle. Just about all flights from Anchorage go through Seattle. A layover in Seattle of several hours. Then fly from Seattle to Minneapolis, Minnesota. Several hour layover in Minneapolis. The next leg was the biggie. They then boarded an Aer Lingus plane for the trip nonstop to Dublin overnight. They landed in Dublin at 8:45 AM local time. This made for an amassed time change of NINE HOURS. Their internal alarm clocks must have been screaming by this time.

All of this got them to the other side of the planet, but not yet close to us outside of the crowded town of Enniscorty, county Wexford. Next for them was to come the joy of traveling alone and tired by Irish Rail.

Of course, the trains do not come into the airport. You must go to them. For that, after being relieved that their luggage made the trip with them, they had to get a Dublin taxi to take them from the airport into the City itself and to the proper train station. As they related their story to us they had to admit that, while the taxi driver was friendly and helpful, he was completely incomprehensible. He spoke much too fast and combining that with his thick Dublin accent made him as understandable as if he was speaking Lithuanian or Chinese to them. But they made it to the train station.

Then came the challenge of finding the right train to take. They didn’t. They got on a train. It was the wrong train. They recognized their error and got off at the first stop. Fortunately the wrong train was going in the same direction as the right train, so they waited and caught the right train as it came rolling by soon after.

Then there was the accident.

They were on the correct train still in Dublin and ready to go when there was a traffic accident that managed to block their tracks. Delay. By this time we were down at the Enniscorty Train Station waiting for The Cousins to arrive. A fine gentleman from Irish Rail saw us sitting there looking a bit nervous and told us about the accident in Dublin. He said that they had cleared the way and their train should arrive in about an hour.

When the train finally, at long last, pulled into the Enniscorty station our two travelers crawled out of the last car onto the platform. Not to be disparaging, but those gals looked like they had been rode hard and put away wet. They had left home almost 24 hours before we scooped them up off of the train station platform. Tired? Disoriented? Confused? Yup, all of that.

The reclamation project must now begin.

The Hoosiers in the Front The Alaskans in the Back

 

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