We are back in the United States. What you’ve missed since last I wrote. I drove us the 180 or so miles from Malin Head, the northernmost point in Ireland, back to Dublin, which is situated in the southwestern part of the country. Our GPS sent us through Northern Ireland, which was fine but for the detour, the rush hour gridlock and the slower speed zones. When we finally got back into the countryside the roads opened up, and so did the speed limits. Somehow I kept losing time to the GPS, and I’m still not sure how that was happening, but there I was, driving that rental like I stole it, in the dark, in a car I don’t know all that well, on roads I knew not at all, and driving on the left. I drove that car hard because we had a deadline for returning the car.
We just made it to the airport hotel in time, but had difficulty getting there and getting in. We dumped the luggage and then had to get the car to the airport. The Irishman talking about American politics in the elevator thought I was getting agitated with him, but I was twitchy because of the clock. And if the parking lot in the hotel was tough, the drop off at the airport was worse. We were 15 minutes late. It was nothing.
We took an Uber back to hotel, had dinner at the closing restaurant off the lobby and then went upstairs for the evening. I had the sleep that didn’t feel like it, and then it was a shuttle to the airport. The Dublin airport is large, but the process works efficiently there — which is more than you can say in some American airports at the moment.
A funny thing happened at the airport, though. Just as I passed through security I tore a great big hole in my jeans. Just moments before I had submitted all of my clothes in my checked bag. So now I have two planes, three airports and the best part of a full day in three different countries trying to not cause a scene, shall we say.
We flew into the Amsterdam airport, which is the size of a medium city. Some 71 million passengers go through Schiphol a year. They say 67,000 people work there. Almost 500 alone work on snow clearing in the wintertime. We dined in an underwhelming, but crowded, lounge. We walked and shuttled several miles to our next plane and flew back to New York. And there’s nothing that just moans “Welcome to the USA” like the JFK airport. And nothing says “Get out of here!” like the inherent structural inability to physically get out of there. This was complicated by our pickup driver’s complete inability to find us. So we walked to two or three different spots, dodging the cars and the rain and the hundreds or thousands of people also desperate to be there no longer. Finally we linked up with the old man, who was kind and courtesy and apologetic and praising God for every little thing, and driving like he was intent on meeting him that night. Getting out of that car, at my in-laws an hour later was a great relief that is difficult to describe.
Look who was excited to see us.
We have a little bed at my in-laws, and the kitties were intent on dominating it. And here they are, doing the same thing, freaking me out.
We drove home today. Classes tomorrow. Back to the grind, making up time and picking up speed in the back half of the semester. It’ll be a hugely busy two-plus months.
Despite having published 178 photos and a handful of video montages from the trip there’s still a lot to show off. So I’ll be doing that here for the next however long. I’ll put them at the end of the posts, with the Wild Atlantic Way logo. It’ll be a lot of fun. Here’s a panorama, the ninth one I shot. This is from Malin Head, where we looked north of Ireland. If you could somehow see just 700 miles into the distance you could look into the Arctic Circle.
But if you can’t do that, just click to open the image in another browser window. And keep coming back for more of the scenic videos.
