Airplane Adventures

In the past 24 hours, I've traveled from St. Paul to Washington D.C. to London and finally to Cork. I've also eaten only two granola bars, had my luggage lost and encountered more screaming babies than I ever need to encounter again.

Yesterday at 7:30 am, the family packed up the van with my luggage and headed off to the airport. Everything at MSP went smoothly until we actually got on the plane. The airline had oversold the flight so after some manuevering of some people to different flights and cramming of people into ours, I thought our full plane was finally ready to go. Soon after we found out that because of the high winds on the East Coast, we would be delayed an hour. Of course, being the anxious person that I am, I immediately wondered if we would make our connecting flight to London. After an hour of sitting in a completely packed plane with several screaming babies and smells of foods from different origins, we finally pushed off of the gate. The last 20 minutes was when the real fun began. The high winds created a ridiculous amount of turbulence and our flight seemed to take forever to descend. Needless to say that the turbulence was bad enough that I haven't eaten in the last 24 hours for fear of a similar situation.

We arrived at Dulles International at about 6:20 and the gate for our London flight closed at 6:30. Megan got directions from the flight attendent, so we were able to shuttle over to Terminal C. The shuttle for terminal D wasn't running, and of course our gate was the last one in Terminal D. So we ran through 32 gates at both terminals. Literally we boarded the plane and took off 5 minutes later. It felt a little bit like the amazing race!

The transatlantic flight went very smoothly. There was little turbulence, and except for the cramped leg room, the ride was almost enjoyable. We landed in London at 6:45 their time and had quite a bit of time before our final flight to Cork. Megan and I entertained ourselves by people watching, crossing the incredibly huge airport to get to our flight, and playing a game of scrabble on her computer. The final flight could not have gone smoother.

Since arriving here to Cork, Megan and I have settled into our apartment. We are leaving with two other girls from St. Ben's and two girls from Washington College in Maryland. We explored Cork a little bit and settled down for an afternoon nap (ahhh, jet lag!) So the long and short of this post--I made it!