We got started on our trip by flying directly from San Francisco to Dublin. This is the first time we've done this, in the past, there wasn't a direct flight and we had to go through LA. This is so much better! One clear sign of the recession was how quiet the international terminal felt (although admittedly this was a Wednesday, probably a slower day). Another sign is that our flight was nowhere near full. We walked right up to the checkin, no line at all. We ate lunch at SFO, Aisling and Gordon played chess in the airport, and then we headed to the plane. It was an uneventful flight. The extra seats meant that Aisling could lie down and get some sleep. I didn't sleep much, instead suffered through three of the worst in-flight movies ever, Nights in Rodanthe, Igor and City of Embers. We left on Wednesday, lost eight hours and arrived on Thursday morning. It was grey and chilly. My sister Orla met us at the airport. She took Nan an Aisling and much of the luggage to my mother's while Gordon and I went to get the rental car from Hertz. What an ordeal that was. I look at the nametag of the person who was helping us, a very nice guy, but I was a little perturbed that his name was "trainee". Slowly, he got us our car and walked us out there, when he noticed a wire hanging from underneath the car. He tried to re-connect and couldn't and got someone else to try to reconnect it also, but he couldn't. So he went in to get us a new car, which seemed to take a while. When he finally brought us our paperwork, I noticed that the price for the new car was about 1,000 euros higher than what I paid for the first one. Not okay! So we went in to get that fixed. Poor little trainee guy couldn't fix it, so he called his supervisor, who also couldn't fix it, and eventually it had to be fixed by the manager (or at least some guy in a suit). So after an hour or so, we finally got our car, a Toyota Avensia (sort of like a Camry) and headed to my mother's house. I think they thought we just got lost on the way as it took us so long.
When we got there, we met my newest nephew, Daniel, Orla's son. He was very cute and he likes the same games that my grandson Aidan likes, so he seemed to warm up to us right away. We also met my newest great-nephew, Lewie, the son of my niece Hannah. He warmed up to Aisling very fast because she plays football (or soccer for Americans). We decided to have a fairly unambitious day. Gordon and I took Aisling down to the Omniplex, where she and I skated on their indoor ice rink, quite possibly the worst ice rink I've ever been on! But it was good to get up and move around. We headed home, ordered Chinese takeout for dinner and went to bed early. Unfortunately, it was an eventful night, as the food, or maybe the travel, didn't seem to agree with Gordon and he was sick for most of the night.
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