Rain, Wind, Lightening, Delays, and Arrival

Tuesday morning I was picked up by the shuttle at 5:45. It took 2 SWA flights to get to Chicago Midway, and then a transfer to O'Hare for the evening flight. It was then that things started to unravel. We boarded as expected and seemed all ready for a 6:45 take-off, but were notified that they were checking the electrical systems since there are no back-ups and they wanted to make sure all was good.

That took until about 7:15 and we were now running half an hour late. The sky was getting quite dark with thunder storms, but we headed to the tarmac for take-off behind 5 other planes. That's when the lightening started. All flights were being held. We were then given the news that we were going to have to deal with some strong winds while on the tarmac for about 30 minutes. STRONG!!! I'm talking 82 miles an hour!! The plane was rocking from side to side. The guys in the tower abandoned the tower it was so bad. At the gate things were blown around like toys. So before taking off, they had to check the runway and have us return to the very crowded gates to have the plane checked.

After all was said and done, we sat on the plane for 4+ hours and left 5+ hours late. So instead of arriving in Dublin at 8:00am, it was 1:30PM. We did not get out of the airport after immigration and getting our rental car until 3:30.

So our plan for the day was a visit to Jame's Joyce museum at the Martello Tower in Dun Laoghaire, lunch in Bray, Powerscourt Gardens, and Glendalough. Then a drive over the Wicklow Mountains through a town called Hollywood (named such before Hollywood, CA) and into Newbridge. Needless to say everything changed and we headed directly to Glendalough and over the Wicklow Mountains and into Newbridge. We checked into our B&B and were having dinner at 9:00 this evening. Both of us are totally wrecked and hope to get a good night's sleep. It's been a very long 36 hours with very little sleep on the plane.

On to better days tomorrow! I've put a small tripline on this blog so you can see where we are geographically. If you look to the right of this posting, there is something that says "Links to Other Travel Sites". The link to the Tripline is there.

Sunny days from here on out! :)