Chicken Soup for the Traveler's Soul

I ♥ airports. Lines: lovely. Stressed travelers: super. Walking 6 miles: wonderful. Being frisked at security: I just can't wait! In all actuality, the trip from the plains of Indiana to the hills of Ireland was quite boring and with minor episodes to keep it a little interesting. Security in Chicago was the first small hiccup, as Eric's bag was pulled from the scanner for a search. The good folks of the TSA took their sweet time in determining that the powdered vitamin supplement he had really was not a hard-core narcotic. Then walked a decent way to our gate. Now starving, we prowled the long hall for food, finally finding the best deal around, a $7.50 6 inch sub.



The flight to Toronto was short, and disembarked to find the customs booth unstaffed. We after 20 minutes the passengers were herded to another area for check in. We were last in line, and the customs agent, obviously bored out of his mind, took great pleasure in asking us every question he could dream up about our trip. Where are you going? Whatever for? Where are you staying? How long? How old are you? Why are you dressed like that? Are your parents paying for this trip?...(Insert 20 other questions)...Let me see your itinerary? Why are you going again? If you eat ice cream on a Wednesday, what kind of toppings do you prefer? All the meanwhile we were sweating in our suits that we were going to miss our flight and be stuck in good ol' Canada and forced to train for the curling team 23 hours per day. Our good friend David finally decided we weren't up to anything sinister and less us pass. Security once again tagged Eric, and once again they weren't to happy about all the drug paraphernalia he was supposedly transporting. After another marathon walk we made it to our gate, where Eric saved a passport for someone. ( We were expecting a bump up to first class for this wonderfully kind and responsible act, but no dice). Eventually we were taxiing off into the velvet Toronto night; the city was once of the best looking I've seen from the air. Maybe i will come back to provoke David's paranoia again.



The flight across the pond was nice, the in-flight entertainment was very good. Each seat had touch screens with a large selection of movies and TV shows, so How to Train Your Dragon kept us occupied for awhile. (Don't laugh, it was good) The meal was very good for airline food: Beef and pasta, corn veggie salad, and a fantastic brownie dessert. This was one of the best meals I've had on a plane. (Yes dinner was excellent. But breakfast was a little bit less. Cold grainy muffin, orange juice, coffee; seems they were planning that we would all be alseep. But sadly we were awake. -Eric) After what seemed 3 days later we touched down at London Heathrow. Here Eric learned that even when there isn't a sign for it, it's still always good to pull out your liquids. After 10 minutes of fussing we were off again, (Hm lets please move on with the me always slowing us down and have my mysterious "vitamin supplement bottle" searched the man frisking me, none to gently I might add, was enough punishment. -Eric) and had the grand privilege of staring at people we didn't know for 4 hours. We once again got to heat up our shoe soles, as London airport is spread over several buildings, quite far apart. Finally in the evening we jetted off to Dublin. After arriving and finding the right bus, we were off to the center of town for the adventures to come.