The Adventure Commences...

Wow. I've finally arrived. The trip itself was long and boring. I got up at three am in order to catch my 6:30 flight out of Minneapolis to JFK in New York. Once I got to New York, I had to wait until 5:40 to begin my trans-Atlantic journey. This was not a problem--or at least it wasn't supposed to be. I figured, based on previous experience with JFK, that it was going to take at least an hour and a half to disembark, get my bag, find the correct terminal, etc. What I didn't count on was what happened. The plane from MN was only half full so it took a full 13 seconds to get off. For once in my life, my bag was one of the first off the plane and Aer Lingus, my next airline, was in the SAME terminal as Sun Country!!!! Basically, it was quarter to 11 in the morning and I couldn't check in until 3 that afternoon. Ick. I sat and waited in the terminal with my suitcase, violin and backpack and was sooooo bored. There was this lounge of sorts with concrete benches that a whole bunch of people my age were sitting in with their luggage so I joined them. Basically it was a huge pile of bags and 10 or 20 kids laying around taking naps for the lack of anything better to do. Boring, but not horrifically unpleasant.

Once I finally got on the plane to Dublin (where I had a 2-hour layover) I was delighted to see that the plane was HUGE. I've only ever been on a plane that size twice before, so it was a cool novelty. It was seated two, four, two and everything was upholstered in this evergreen color. The wings had huge clovers on the tips and all the flight attendants had wicked Irish accents. It was fabulous. Then my seatmate joined me (I had the aisle) and he was wearing ORANGE jeans. Yep, orange. And, his shirt matched. It looked like those gross wacky colored candy canes you can get at Christmas that have absolutely nothing to do with Christmas colors. Orange, pink, yellow, white and blue striped. I almost lauged out loud but I restrained myself because I felt a little bad.

The flight was alright. Due to my nap in the airport, I didn't sleep very well on the plane, but I was overjoyed when the pilot announced that the flight would be an hour shorter than I thought. That was nice to hear. The movie showing was.....drumroll....Prince Caspian, which I love, and which was appropriate because C.S. Lewis wrote The Chronicles of Narnia here in Oxford, but I needed to sleep so I didn't get too jet-lagged. In hindsight, I suspect that I probably could have just watched the movie because I didn't really sleep anyways....

The Dublin airport was pretty cool. It was ultra modern and sort of industrial. The benches were really comfortable but since I was tired and semi-delirious, the sparkly bits in the floors did nothing to help my brain. I kept getting distracted from my people watching by the shiny things. My flight was 1/2 an hour late, but at that point, it didn't really bother me. I was honestly too tired to care. I slept the entire hour from Dublin to London Heathrow.