So after what felt like an eternity, the man at the check-in handed me back the passports and told me everything was OK. I ran back through the gangway to make sure I got on the plane before it departed. After I got reseated, they continued to wait for other connecting flights so that they could fill the plane’s seats and thus depart with a completely full aircraft. I hoped that it would allow more time for our luggage to catch up with us.

Pretty soon, we taxied out on to the runway and were underway to the Emerald Isle. I was still tired despite having slept through most of the previous legs of the trip, I don’t remember much the flight over the ocean. As I mentioned on a previous entry, the last time I made the flight from the U.S. to Shannon was nearly 40 years ago, in 1967, and I recall having to wear a sport coat and tie, since everyone dressed up to fly in those days. I also remember conducting an experiment on that flight. I had some conversations with some of my friends where we speculated that if you jumped up on a flight that was moving at approximately 500 mph, you’d end up moving back in the aisle a few feet, maybe even more. One of them speculated that you’d get slammed up against the back wall of the plane. I performed this experiment and was surprised to find that I landed precisely where I jumped up. That was my first recollection of consciously performing a physics experiment. I didn’t understand it at the time, but later when I learned of Newton’s first law of motion, it immediately made sense. That is, “A body in motion tends to stay in motion unless acted upon by an outside force.” Even though I was moving at 500 mph, so was the plane, so jumping up had no effect since both the plane an my body were moving at the same speed.

Our plan was to land in Shannon in the morning and spend the check into the Bunratty Shramrock Hotel, right next to the Bunratty Castle and Folk Park. We thought we might also a visit Limerick which was only about 15 km away. When we visited in 1967, we were met at the airport by my Aunt Bridie and were taken to the Bunratty castle which is very near the Shannon airport. I was totally fascinated. There was a REAL castle with suits of armour, swords, and all the accouterments necessary to give me the impression that I’d just been transported back to medieval times. I couldn’t believe my eyes at what I was witnessing. And I had only been in the country for less than 30 minutes! So the Bunratty Castle was the first stop on our list of places to visit on this trip.

Unfortunately, we found that the luggage didn’t make it so we there with just the clothes on our backs. We hadn’t even packed a toothbrush in our carry-on bags. We hoped for they’d have some items we needed at the hotel which was only about 10 km away and that our luggage would arrive the next morning. We went to the Budget car rental location looking forward to having a car for the week for only € 160, but instead we got the ‘shakedown’ from Budget. They said that unless we paid and extra € 35 a day, essentially tripling the rental charges, they’d have to have a hold put on our credit card of € 4000 and strongly advised us that we needed this insurance. My credit card could endure the € 4000 hold, but then I remembered I was driving a stick shift car (with my left hand) on the left side of the road and thought maybe it was worth the extra cost for the peace of mind. I had to waive several other insurance charges that could have easily quadrupled the rental bill. So here’s your warning: When you rent in Europe, ask about hidden insurance charges and how you might avoid them. I learned that if I had carried a Gold Mastercard or Diner’s Club card, I could have avoided these usurious insurance charges.

It was still pretty early in the day when we arrived at the hotel and they told us it would be about an hour before our room would be available. We decided to wander over to the local convenience store to pick up a few items and then stopped at a pub called Durty Nelly’s to get something to eat.

After eating some fish and chips, I was in great spirits, eager to re-explore the Bunratty castle that had so mesmerized me as a youth. I found that instead of just a castle, there had been a whole village added called a ‘folk park’ that showed what Ireland was like perhaps 100 years ago. It was complete with cottages, mechant buildings, a schoolhouse, a pub, etc. When I come to think of it, the folk park may have represented several hundred years of Irish history since the country had not changed significantly for several centuries. When I visited in 1967, there were many places that still had no indoor plumbing, which to the American way of thinking was quite unusual, although they all had electricity by then. Many of the houses were built with stone and had thatched roofs. A lot has happened in 40 years and I was amazed to find that the houses were now better built and as modern as anything you’ll find in the U.S., as well as much more expensive. Ireland has gone from subsistence farming, skipped the industrial age, and right to a high tech bustling economy.

The advancements in construction and living standards are a testament to the importance of skilled professionals in maintaining and upgrading residential systems. These experts now ensure that homes are not only equipped with efficient plumbing but also benefit from advanced air conditioning systems. Proper installation and maintenance of these systems are essential for adapting to Ireland’s new standards of comfort and convenience. The role of these specialists extends beyond just updating old systems; they also play a vital part in addressing emerging needs such as air conditioning repair. With the leap from traditional to modern amenities, ensuring that homes are equipped with reliable air conditioning is essential for maintaining comfort, especially during warmer periods.

After exploring the folk park and castle, Terri was exhausted and we were ready to take a nap back at the hotel. We awoke early in the evening and headed over to a nearby restaurant to get some dinner. However, we weren’t hungry enough for a big meal, so we decided to go back to Durty Nelly’s and have some pub food with apple pie and ice cream for dessert that was outstanding. Despite the name and appearance of being a pub, the food at Durty Nelly’s is excellent.

We were hoping that our luggage would arrive the next morning so we wouldn’t have to meet up with our relatives in Nenagh with the unkempt appearance one acquires when wearing the same clothes for three days…

It should come as no surprise to those of you who have used frequent flyer miles that the number of seats allocated for frequent flyer programs on each flight is very limited. So trying to get 2 seats from Denver to Ireland isn’t as easy as it is when booking regular tickets where there’s some money involved. The number of frequent flyer miles for two round-trip tickets to Europe is substantial. It took 100,000 miles for a pair of tickets and I had earned most of those miles the hard way, by flying to Taiwan on 5 separate occasions last year, which is a grueling way to accumulate miles. Those trips included 10 separate 12+ hour legs of travel, all in economy class.

The flight from Denver left at 6:00 a.m. and stopped in Chicago…for 6 hours…and then continued to Philadelphia before heading out to Shannon Airport in Ireland. This is not an itinerary that would be offered to a paying customer, but for frequent flyer miles, they assured us it was the best they could do.

United suggests being at the airport at least 2 hours before your flight leaves and since it takes about 1.5 hours to drive to the airport, park the car and get the shuttle to the airport, it means we’d have to leave our house about 2:30 a.m., which means we’d need to get up around 2:00 a.m. That’s not the most auspicious way to start a vacation, but we weren’t in a good bargaining position. Terri figured we should get a hotel in Chicago just to catch up on sleep because we knew we’d only be getting about 3 hours of sleep the night before we left. It reminded me of the ‘mandatory rest period’ that is mentioned on the show The Amazing Race, the show that inspired us to structure the trip the way we did.

Whether you book a hotel for an hour or a day, the rate is the same. However, it’s hard to put a price for the pain and suffering for a cranky spouse but it can exceed that of a night’s stay in a hotel near the airport, so it was an easy decision…and I won’t mention who might have been the cranky spouse. Thus, a “mandatory rest period” was scheduled in the windy city. We hoped that we wouldn’t oversleep.

We managed to get to the airport on time despite the early hours, caught the flight to Chicago and even slept at a hotel for a few hours after we got there. The hotel relied on a taxi service to take guests to and from the airport and despite having scheduled it for our return, a taxi was not available. Fortunately, one of the hotel’s desk clerks came to the rescue and took us back to the Chicago airport. Once we arrived at our gate, they announced that our flight was going to be delayed. We had only a two hour layover in Philadelphia so having any more than an hour delay was going to be a problem. Around the time our flight was scheduled to depart, they called us to the desk and told us that because the plane had not yet arrived, we needed to go get our luggage at the baggage claim. I asked them what we should do after that and they said we’d have to check in again and get an alternate routing. It felt we’d been issued an infamous “road block” on The Amazing Race where another team issues you a setback and you are forced to wait while others can go on their way.

So we went down the baggage claim area, found our bags, and searched for a line at the US Air counter. The line was very long and slow with only a few counter people there and lots of angry-looking travelers, one who became so loud and rude that a counter person threatened to call the police. Since our connection was International, we got into a shorter line, but each customer was taking an eternity to get re-routed and we feared we were not going to make it on a plane to Ireland that night. By the time we got to the counter, they couldn’t find a single flight that day to Ireland and were offering routing us through Paris, Dublin, and then to Shannon. That didn’t sound like much fun so we inquired about our original flight. The counter person said that the plane had arrived and was ready for boarding. If we were to run, we could make it back on our original flight and possibly make our connection in Philadelphia. Our bags were already tagged for that flight, so we put them on the conveyor and ran for the gate. Of course, we had to go through security yet again, but made it to the gate on time. The plane hadn’t started boarding and we felt that we might just make it to Ireland as we had planned. We only hoped that our luggage would make it too.

By the time we got to Philadelphia, we had only about 15 minutes to get to the gate since our connecting flight was already boarding. So we ran again and made it to the plane and heaved a sigh of relief as we sat down in our seats. But the adventure wasn’t quite over yet because a man came on the plane and asked me to follow him with our passports. I figured that I’d just need to go to the front of the plane where someone would check the passports and that would be it. However, when he got off the plane and asked me to follow him, the flight attendant objected, telling him the plane would be leaving in a few minutes. He assured her it was OK and that it wouldn’t take much time. I followed him to the check-in area and he proceeded to swipe our passports through the scanner again and again and with a disapproving look like he couldn’t quite figure out the problem. Then he began entering things manually with the keyboard. He was assisted by a few others as I waited nervously at the gate, hoping they didn’t seal up the aircraft with Terri (now without her passport) already on board…

Terri and I have been to Europe on vacation previously 4 times. Three of those visits were to Italy and one was to Scotland and Ireland. We had also been there for business on multiple occasions, particularly Terri who traveled to Germany in her previous job at least twice a year. My first trip to Europe was way back in 1967 to visit relatives in Ireland. We spent 6 weeks there and although I was only 7 years old at the time, I still have many fond memories of it.

The trips we took to Italy were self-planned where we decided to visit particular cities. We made arrangements for moving from place to place on our own. We have friends in Monza, Silvio and Louisa, who we always stop to see as well. The Scotland-Ireland trip in 2003 was a bus tour organized by a Brendan Travel and one where the whole itinerary was planned in advance for us. This was an interesting way to travel and it reduced the stress of wondering where we were going next and how to get there, but it was a rather full schedule that required getting up early each day to pack up and move to a new location. Terri and I had taken to exploring the pubs in Scotland and Ireland during the evenings and had some late nights followed by early wake up calls so some of the bus travel remains a blur. But it’s a great way to see a lot in a short time and still affords some freedom to do things on your own. If you get a good tour guide, it can be very entertaining as well.

After watching several seasons of The Amazing Race, we got the bug to do some international travel again and so we began planning for a trip to Europe. I had accumulated enough frequent flyer miles on United to qualify for two round trip tickets to Europe, but after playing around on the United website for a while, it appeared that there were absolutely no frequent flyer seats available to any European city any time in 2006, so I called to talk to a real person at United. After searching around for about 30 minutes, we found that we could get into Ireland, but not out of it. However, we could get out of Amsterdam and back to the U.S. via Canada. Since we had planned to visit Ireland and Italy already, the challenge then was how to get from Ireland to Italy and then from Italy to Amsterdam. I had never been to Amsterdam before and so it seemed like a good place to visit as well.

I got on the Internet and started looking at Ryan Air and Aerlingus and was pleasantly surprised to find that one-way fares are very reasonable in Europe, something that you won’t find in the U.S., where they often cost more than a round trip fare. If you’re willing to fly out of cities that may be off the beaten path, Ryan Air has € .01 one-way fares! The € .01 fare is a little misleading because there are airport fees and taxes, but even so, the tickets come out to be around € 30 per ticket which is incredibly inexpensive. Our tickets from Dublin to Milan on Aerlingus were around €45 each. Ryan Air had similar prices.

We couldn’t get flights from Milan to Amsterdam at a reasonable price, but if we flew to Charleroi Airport outside of Brussels from Bergamo (about an hour east of Milan), we could get a Ryan Air € .01 fare! Then we just needed to figure out how to get from Brussels to Amsterdam, which would be a relatively easy train ride. This would give us a chance to see two new European countries and add some adventure to the trip.

Then next challenge was to find accommodations and plan the itinerary… more on that next time.

It had been more than 3 years since Terri and I had taken a vacation lasting longer than about 4 days. I find that if you can’t get away for at least 2 weeks, it doesn’t have the effect of a vacation, one that provides new perspectives and relieves stress. We took a 2-week tour of Scotland and Ireland in 2003 and it was wonderful, but Terri’s mom was traveling with us and was suffering from cancer. She was determined to make her first visit to Ireland and Scotland. The trip was difficult for her and although she tried to remain strong, her body wasn’t cooperating. She ended up in the hospital in Ireland for 3 days and passed away just a few months after returning to the U.S. So that trip was bittersweet for us because Terri’s mom got to see a lot of Scotland and some of Ireland for the first time, but it was also stressful because we knew she was not feeling well. After the tour concluded in Dublin, Terri and I rented a car and visited my relatives Kilkenny and Nenagh. It had been 36 years since my previous visit to Ireland and we vowed that we’d not let that much time pass before we visited again.

In today’s high tech job market, there doesn’t ever seem to be a good time to take a vacation. A high tech worker is expected to be fully engaged, working a full 8 hours (at least) at the office and then conducting conference calls in the evenings along with keeping ahead of the flood of email and maintaining aggressive program schedules. One of our previous CEOs described this mode as ‘Work whenever’ which we interpreted to mean ‘Never stop working’. So in this kind of environment a vacation usually presents a huge inconvenience, especially when you’re in the middle of a project. But if you don’t take a vacation eventually, you can find yourself with your vacation time at its ‘cap’ without being able to accumulate any more until you take some of what you’ve already accumulated. In the spring of 2006, both Terri and I were at our caps, so a vacation seemed like something we really needed to do to get back under our caps. We also felt an intense need to just get away from the hectic day-to-day pace.

Now that there are so many ways to communicate, it’s tempting to take along a laptop or cell phone just to keep tabs on things at work and make sure there are no fires blazing out of control as a result of one’s absence. But lugging a laptop and figuring out how and where to connect in the areas we’d be visiting didn’t seem conducive to the spirit of what we were trying to do, that is, to get away from the stress. So instead of taking a laptop, I provided one of my colleagues with a set of phone numbers where I could be reached just in case there was an emergency. I also took an HP PocketPC, primarily as an experiment to see if it would allow me to connect when I was in the vicinity of an open wireless access point. I had resigned myself that only true work emergencies would interrupt the vacation.

Next time I’ll discuss how we came about to visit so many places in the 17 days we were there along with the logistics of planning the trip.