Sunday travel day

Here's a link to a Google map of our planned Sunday Itinerary:
https://drive.google.com/open?id=1RZKkcP9FrxIKQd_hwmphaenhRXexXW7T

The flight was largely uneventful. Most people slept through the overnight trip, and what turbulence we experienced was negligible. The sun came up about 90 minutes before we landed. I must say, I found it quite surprising just how quickly the sun rises when you are traveling eastward at more than 600 mph.

According to the captain, we crossed over Ireland above County Mayo, just a bit north of Galway, but looking down, there was nothing to see but clouds.

Nearly an hour later, we had passed over the entire island from west to east. As we transitioned over the Irish Sea between Ireland and England, the clouds broke open and we got our first glimpse of land since leaving North America. The views of Ireland were amazing as we lined up with the airport and came in for a landing at 9:20am

It was a surprisingly long walk from the plane to customs, and when we finally got there we were able to just walk right up to our choice of several available checkpoints.  No need to wait in any lines at all.  A quick look over passports, with a couple of questions about how long we'll be here and where we're headed resulted in a new green stamp for each of us.

Everyone gathered around the luggage carousel and waited. And waited. And waited.  I overheard someone make a nervous joke about the airline forgetting to load our luggage back in Chicago.  The carousel started, and then stopped several times without any luggage arriving. Eventually our patience was rewarded and luggage started to roll off the conveyor belt.  One passenger apparently couldn't remember anything about what his luggage looked like other than the fact that it was black.  He stood right at the conveyor exit, lifted every piece of black luggage off the carousel, looked for tags, checked the name on the tag if he found one, and then put the luggage right back on the carousel.

Lisa noticed there was an ATM right next to the exit from customs, and within view of several customs agents.  This seemed like a safe place to withdraw a few hundred euros for use wherever credit cards might not be accepted this trip. Then at 10:50 we were off to find a taxi.

The cab driver was quite entertaining and knowledgable about Dublin, earning himself a generous tip from two exhausted travelers. I forgot to turn my tracker on until we got out of the cab, so any of you that are tracking us on this trip will have noticed that the tracking web page seems to think that the airplane landed at the train station.

We originally scheduled train tickets for 2:30pm in case of unexpected delays getting out of the airport and through the city.  Fortunately, our train tickets were good for any departure time on that route that day.  There was a train departing at 11:45am, almost 3 hours earlier than we originally expected.  We decided to board that train, and have more time to settle in to the hotel in Galway.

The train seating was certainly more comfortable than the plane. However, the train wasn't without it's own issues.  There were signs on the train indicating free WiFi, but the WiFi didn't work at all the entire ride.  The instructions on what to do if WiFi wasn't working suggested sending an email to their support team? There was a menu on every table suggesting that a snack cart would be by, but when it finally arrived, the only cold beverages they had were sparking and still bottled water.  The were all out of Pringles, plain potato chips, and all beverages other than coffee, tea, and water.

In our exhausted state, it was certainly better than driving the 130 miles, and the views of the countryside were nice.  However, if were weren't saving so much money in airfare I'd prefer to have flown to Shannon Airport instead of Dublin, and driven the 40 miles from there.

On a mildly entertaining side note...  These two in the photo below were sitting across the isle from us.  They boarded the train together at 11:40am, and were pretty clearly already inebriated.  They stumbled into their seats and then proceeded to share half a bottle of gin as they chatted and laughed non-stop for 3 hours all the way to Galway.

The signs in the Galway train station were minimal, so we just followed the crowd and hoped they knew where they were going.  We ended up on the opposite side of the train station from the buses and taxis.  I recognized Eyre Square ahead of us from the last time we were in Galway, and I mentioned to Lisa that I was pretty confident it was only about a block-and-a-half walk to our hotel (and a bit more than a block walk back to the taxis).  We decided to just drag all our luggage down the sidewalk and go straight to the hotel.

Approximately 30 yards before we got the the entrance of the hotel, the handle of one of the suitcases I was dragging slipped out of my hand.  I turned around to pick it up, and as I bent down to reach for the handle, the strap of my laptop bag slipped off my shoulder. I attempted to catch the bag as it was falling, managing only to flip the bottom of the bag up resulting in the bag falling upside down until the strap caught at my elbow.  The sudden stop was enough for the coiled up cords in the pockets to rip open the velcro that was holding in not only those cords, but also all the euros that I had withdrawn from the airport ATM.  A few hundred euros then caught an autumn Galway breeze and blew out into the street.  Lisa managed to put her bags down on a few bills that were next to the curb, and I abandoned all the luggage (entirely blocking the sidewalk that people were attempting to use), and stepped out into the street to grab the bills that were blowing away.  Before stepping out, I quickly glanced to the left to make sure there were no cars approaching. A moment later, after hearing a car horn behind me, I recalled that I need to glance to the RIGHT before crossing the street over here.

I managed to recover all the euros, shoved them crumpled into my back pocket, picked all my bags back up, and covered the remaining 30 yards without incident.  We are now relaxing in a beautiful room (with a rather mediocre view) and deciding whether to eat in the hotel restaurant, or just order room service. Looking forward to seeing the city tomorrow when we are rested, and don't need to carry all the luggage.