The Rocky Flight to Dublin

This post is actually about our journey to Ireland from the 10th-11th (the above date is incorrect due to time zone differences)

Note: Readers will be subjected to post titles containing puns from Celtic folk songs. I apologize in advance.

Also, if you'll forgive some formatting errors, I'm still getting used to the mobile version!

Arrival in Dublin: 6:55AM.

Oh, boy.

Did y'all know that there's a  Dooky Chase restaurant at the airport? We learned that every place to buy food in that airport has to be at least vaguely New Orleanian. From Popeyes to Dooky Chase.

And now, the flight.

So, the morning of the 10th, we all arrived at the airport in time to check in our bags and meet up with with Mr. D'Arcy, who showed up at 11:30 with two people from Uptown Solar to take protonal photos. Uptown Solar actually enabled the funding for our scholarship: the Irish Network population bought  raffle tickets for a solar panel installation, and the proceeds funded our trip.

We took a billion pictures with our families, Uptown Solar, IN-NOLA, and with three separate canvas banners. Three! If you ever open a business or an organization of Irish people, promotional canvas banners are requirement number one. I was appointed keeper of the smaller IN-NOLA banner for the trip's photos. We said goodbyes and began our journey, accompanied by one Mr. Moloney from the Irish Network.

The TSA screenings were easy, if rushed. Our first fight was short and not so sweet, an hour and a half of cramped and hot quarters with not much air moving around. We then had about ten minutes of time to get to our next flight, and we made it to the second boarding area as they were calling different seating zones to board.

The second plane was comfortable and lovely: six seats across and spacious, well air conditioned, in-flight TV, friendlier staff, and meals onboard due to the duratio of the flight (scheduled to be 7.5 hours). Alexis talked Zaire's ear off during both flights until she passed out on the second flight wrapped up in the green UCD sweatshirt. Some highlights of their conversation included Alexis wanting a pet shark and something about riding on a tiger at her 21st birthday, flanked by lions and giraffes. Zaire tried to listen to music and sleep. Erin read though magazines, occasionally tearing out pages with particularly appealing photos or reading material; she eventually took a Benadryl and passed out as well. I people-watched a little and listened to music in between trying to get some rest and half-watching the peculiar choices of shows on the TV screens.

In-flight screen entertainment was strange: the flight began with How I Met Your Mother and then a How It's Made episode on guacamole. Today I learned that Avocado Technician is an occupation. They then played a BBC-related film called The Quartet, a movie with a lot of old rich English people in it and directed by Dustin Hoffman.

Despite the old Jerry Seinfeld joke, this airline food is actually really good - I had pasta with spinach and alfredo sauce for dinner, (at 1am Ireland time) and they served a cranberry orange muffin for breakfast in the morning (close to 6:30am Ireland time).

We arrived seamlessy at Dublin, picked up our bags, and met a very grumpy immigration official. But we made it to Ireland! While we were waiting for the plane to let us off, we saw some rabbits running through the fields surrounding the runways, and they became a warm, fluffy welcome to Ireland.

Image source: crainsnewyork.com