Weary, and Slightly Hysterical, Travelers

Dad dropped Mom, Carla, and I off the Des Moines International airport at roughly 5 PM CST Tuesday June 29th and we arrived at the Brookfield Hotel in Cork City at 5:30 PM local time (11:30 AM CST) on Wednesday June 30th. That’s just over 19 hours of travelling. I had to count that out on my fingers, that’s how exhausted I am. The flights were pretty standard, the longest being the one from Chicago to London which was about 6 hours long. It was easy as pie compared to the 18 hour marathon my family pulled in a car driving to Maryland earlier this summer though. Also, I got to watch the new Clash of the Titans and play Sudoku on the little screen on the back of the seat in front of me. You should probably be jealous Rachel. :D

The real entertaining part of the traveling didn’t come until it was time to load up our rental car and drive to the hotel. After we spend 10 min figuring out how to load all of our luggage and the three of us into the tiny car we proceed to spend 15 trying to figure out why the gas pedal isn’t working (emergency brake...it was kind of like that part in Star Trek when Zulu can’t get the Enterprise to go into warp speed...geek out finished) and then performing a several point turn in order to get the car out of the itty-bitty parking space. Once we finally had gotten on the road we managed to take about an hour and a half to get to the hotel, a drive that should have only taken about 20...tops.

Here’s the scene in the car: Mom is becoming reacquainted with driving a stick shift, except now she has to shift with her left hand (as she said “Thank god all the pedals were in the same place!”) and navigating narrow roads and roundabouts while staying on the left side of the street. Carla is in shotgun alternating between having her head buried in the map and screaming at my mom to stay in the right lane and not drive off the road. I am sharing the backseat with the luggage sleeping, as my attempts at helping to navigate were really only hindering progress. All of us at one point or another were terrified because a huge bus is hurtling towards us IN THE WRONG LANE. Did I mention that none of the streets are clearly marked? They are definitely not in grid formation!

We did finally make it to our hotel in one piece and spent a little bit of time resting, recuperating, and unpacking. We went down and got a map and some directions from the very nice lady working the front desk of a hotel to City Center, the area where many of the pubs and restaurants are located. She assures us that it’s just a 15 min walk. After walking for about 30 min in the rain we finally decide on a restaurant called Soho which, and I list only some of its many charms, can boast of a bright blue neon bar, some excellent deserts, and toilet paper that comes out in squares like Kleenex.

But now it is absolutely time for me to get some sleep. Tomorrow we plan on going to the Old English Market and discovering all the other delights that Cork City has to offer us. Night!

Amelia

PS. I ordered my first drink in a bar tonight!!! It was called the Hurricane Soho. Also there are tons of snails in Cork. Just FYI.