It’s travel day! When Gizmo got me up at 5:30 am, I very intentionally stayed awake, hoping this would help me sleep on the flight tonight. Sleeping on flights is NOT a strength of mine, but the flight was at 9:30 pm, which is basically past my bedtime. So maybe? Hopefully… I’ll be doing the driving when we arrive in Ireland.
Nick headed off to work and I dropped off some Amazon returns, did last minute trip prep around the house, went out for lunch with a friend and then packed up the dogs and brought them to my in-laws’. Kim and John were (bless them) taking care of the dogs for a week, before dropping them off at the kennel for the final weekend, so they could go to Connecticut for their class reunion.
Dogs dropped off, I headed for dad’s, where I was the final person to arrive. We stashed car keys and monitored the car service with the tracking link that I’d been sent. Our driver showed up promptly at 5:00, 15 minutes before the time I’d booked, just as expected. Pro-tip…if booking with Axis Car Service in NH, book a time that is 15 minutes after you want pickup, so that they’re not showing up earlier than you want. The driver, Mike, showed up in a big old Chevy SUV (Suburban?). He loaded up our luggage, we piled in, and it was off to Boston!
It was a surprisingly traffic-free ride into the city. Mike chatted with us and got us to the airport unscathed, about 6 pm. We headed inside from the curb where he dropped us off, and had essentially no wait to check in at Aer Lingus. Check in was easy enough, and pretty soon we were headed for the pre-check line. Aer Lingus DOES now participate in pre-check when you’re leaving the States, but you might have to call them to add your information to your reservation. That was the other thing I did when I called to select seats.
Pre-check had basically no line, and was reasonably uneventful, although my dad, who is actually very well-traveled, looked…not well traveled…tackling security. But…we made it through, and then after a bit of debate, chose a lounge to visit. Dad and Laura had lounge access with their business class seats, and both dad and I have Priority Pass through various cards, so we had plenty of lounge eligibility among us.
In Boston, most international flights go out of terminal B or E. But Aer Lingus uses the same gates as JetBlue which basically owns terminal C. So most lounges are in terminal B, which connects to terminal C. There’s one in terminal C. In the end, we chose that one since it was very close to our gate. And, honestly, regretted it. We got our free drinks and some random light foods but we weren’t really impressed. We all hung out for a bit.
And then Nick and I ditched dad and Laura who stayed in the lounge longer, to find some food of actual substance. Turns out Nick hadn’t really eaten all day, because of weird schedules at work. So, we went to the pseudo food court area and got bagels. These tasted good.
Eventually we headed back closer to the gate area which was completely mobbed. The Aer Lingus trans-Atlantic jets are a LOT bigger than the jets that JetBlue flies, so the passengers for our basically full flight had taken over about 3 gate areas. Nick and I found seats along the wall near the lounge Dad and Laura were in and they actually emerged a few minutes later. We all hung out a bit longer, and then dad and Laura headed for the gate, since they got to board first.
Once boarding really began, Nick and I headed for the gate, which was just a wall of unorganized humanity. No one could actually hear the boarding announcements, so everyone basically just made their own rules. We boarded eventually and easily found our seats, 11 A and C, window and aisle on the jetbridge side of this 2-4-2 configuration aircraft.
At our seats we found wired earbud style headphones, pillows, and fleece blankets. We settled in as best as we could, and got ready to fly.
The flight pushed back a few minutes early, and pretty soon we were airborne. By 10 pm they were serving dinner (why?), with choices of cheese tortellini or chicken. I had the tortellini and it actually was decent. So was the cheesecake mousse served with it for dessert.
After dinner, I tried to get some sleep. Unfortunately, this is where things really went south. Just across the aisle were some toddlers. They weren’t traveling together, but they took turns screaming for basically the rest of the flight. I felt for them (and their parents). They were totally inconsolable, so I assume they were screaming out of exhaustion. But it was miserable. One would settle down and the other would start up. Over and over again…for hours. Nick is positive that I did at least sleep a little, but it sure didn’t feel like it. He didn’t sleep at all. To be fair, though, the professional sleeper in all moving forms of transportation had had Starbucks before the flight.
About the same time the kiddos both paused their screaming, the flight attendants started coming around with “breakfast snacks”. Blueberry (I think…it was dark) muffins and orange juice for everyone. By now, there was about an hour and a half left until landing, so, that was the end of any attempt at sleep. This was probably about 1:30 am body time.
We landed in Dublin about 8:15 am local time, which was 3:15 am to our bodies. Deplaning from row 11 (about the 3rd row in economy) was quick, and we found Laura and dad soon after. While bathroom trips were made, we all got connected to the airport wifi. And then we headed for customs.
A lot of flights had come in at once, so the customs line was LONG. It probably took 45 minutes to clear customs. When Nick and I got to the agent, said customs agent asked Nick the requisite questions: “how long are you staying and where are you going?”. Nick looked to me, and I answered, rattling off the very simplified itinerary. The customs agent was like “is this with an organized tour group?”. No sir, I planned this myself. The customs agent then looked at Nick with a smirk and a chuckle as he stamped our passports (my first passport stamp!) and said “and you’re just along for the ride huh”. Yeah, pretty much.
Customs cleared, we walked…not far at all, and found our suitcases on the baggage carousel. All were there, and we had them all in hand within minutes. And then it was off to the rental car counter.
Emerging into the arrivals hall made it clear just how big an airport DUB really is. But, we found our way to the National rental car counter easily enough. Here, the process was quick enough, but then I was sent to wait for a few minutes “while the car is brought over”. As a credit card perk, I have some semblance of status with National, so they were apparently supposed to be putting me in a car in the attached garage, rather than putting me on a shuttle to the rental car facility.
After…more than a few minutes of waiting…I headed back to the desk, where the associate quickly got on the phone. Turns out the assigned car had been brought to the wrong terminal. So she and one of the other associates quickly reassigned me with an upgrade to a Volvo XC90. We had rented a 7 passenger automatic SUV, but this was a higher level category. We were then directed down to level zero of the garage, and a specific space number where the car was parked.
We found the car easily enough, a plug in hybrid Volvo XC90, in the far corner of the garage. We loaded it up, I climbed into the right side driver’s seat, we programmed the GPS, and we were off to northern Ireland!
Other than not really knowing where the passenger side of that vehicle was, and therefore hitting lots of rumble strips on the motorway, it was an uneventful, roughly 3 hour drive to our destination. Even the roundabouts weren’t bad…well, the real ones anyway. I just followed traffic. The little roundabouts that didn’t actually look like roundabouts were more of an adventure. The other 3 took turns sleeping, while I drove. Laura was kind enough to somehow make sure someone was always awake while I was driving.
Under the direction of dad, who is used to staying in bigger hotels, we headed straight to our hotel, the Causeway Hotel, even though we were quite early for check-in. The approach to the hotel was chaotic, because it is right next to the Giant’s Causeway visitor center. However, there was a small army of people directing traffic and pretty soon we were parked and headed inside, where, sure enough, we were told we were “a wee bit early”. But they did check to see if any of the rooms were ready. They weren’t, but we were able to do the bulk of the check in process and use the restroom before we headed back out.
From here we made the 10 minute drive to Bushmills, the world’s oldest whiskey distillery. This place reminded Nick and me a lot of Buffalo Trace in Kentucky. It took a few minutes, but we found the bar and gift shop, which were the priorities (“we know how whiskey is made, we don’t need a tour”). While Laura and I found seats, dad and Nick got set up with a tasting flight. I think they enjoyed their tasting, particularly knowing that it was only 9 am at home. After they had tasted their flight, it was off to the gift shop, where Dad and Nick each got a bottle of whiskey with a personalized label to show that it had been purchased on our “Ireland trip 2025”.
By now it was late enough to try hotel check in again, so we headed back to Giant’s Causeway. We were once again impressed by the traffic direction taking place here, and pretty soon we were parked and headed inside. Check in was completed very efficiently, and after getting our luggage, we headed upstairs to our rooms. Nick and I were in room 7.
We settled in, changed into warmer clothes, and then met dad and Laura downstairs. It was time to visit the whole reason I’d included Northern Ireland in this itinerary: The Giant’s Causeway.
Staying at Causeway Hotel actually gave us free admission to Giant’s Causeway, and either a free guided tour or free audio self tour. We picked up our wristbands and audio tour sets at the visitor center, and headed back outside.
Giant’s causeway is basically a giant nature-made pile of hexagon shaped rocks. It's quite a walk down to this, but it is beautiful. Honestly, the hexagon rocks were cool, but the cliffs were even cooler. We were pretty blown away by the scenery (and maybe literally by the wind).
Once we’d gotten our fill of the scenery, we headed back to the visitor center where we returned the (mostly unused) audio tour sets and did a little shopping in the gift shop. Then it was back to the hotel rooms to ditch jackets before we met for dinner.
We had planned to just eat at the hotel bar, but when we came downstairs the woman who had initially checked us in (who I think was a manager) seated us in the dining room, and told us she’d make sure Laura (who showed up after the rest of us) found us. She clearly remembered us, right down to the detail that we’d landed in Dublin early this morning. This woman was a class act. Truly.
Dinner was surprisingly good. Dad had salmon, I had a chicken sandwich, Laura had chicken and mashed potatoes. Nick had…something with fries (sorry…chips). We all enjoyed our food, and our beverages. Service was a bit lacking once we were turned over to the dining room staff. But…we got fed and didn’t have to drive anywhere.
Once we’d finished eating, we headed back to our rooms after agreeing on a time to meet for breakfast in the morning. Nick fell asleep almost immediately. I did some texting and eventually decided I was too wide awake to go to bed yet. So, I headed back outside to walk some of the trails up above the Causeway and alongside the hotel. It was cold and windy, but it was a beautiful evening, and we were in an absolutely beautiful location!
After walking for a bit, I headed back to the room, where I finally settled down enough to get some sleep. When I actually crashed, I crashed hard, and slept well.
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