Thursday: class until 1:30 p.m., 3 p.m. leave for airport, 6 p.m. get on plane to Ireland, 8 p.m. arrive in Dublin, Ireland and go to our first hostel, and the rest of the night was free for us to eat in an Irish restaraunt, shop and see the locals!
Friday: Start our 3 day Southern Ireland tour...arrive in Kilarney.
Saturday: Complete 2nd Day of tour...arrive in Doolin that night.
Sunday: Complete the end of tour, arrive back in Dublin and fly back to London around 9 p.m.
Sounds like a pretty fun and exciting weekend, right? Well here's how the story went:
We all, including myself, stay up super late Thursday night trying to complete our first assignment (a paper) for our British life & culture class, while also trying to pack our whole weekend belongings into a backpack (not easy), and making sure we have everything including our e-tickets, booking confirmations, passport, euros, etc. Wed. night I am up till 2:30 a.m. trying to get everything done and I have class at 9 a.m. the next morning.
The next day everything goes fine. We get through another day of class, get Euros, get our stuff together, get everyone together and leave. We get on the tube to the Victoria station, take an express train to Gatwick airport and finally arrive at the airport with plenty of time to spare. I even say to the group, "Wow you guys, this is going way too smooth. Something has gotta go wrong!" Well, knock on wood! Something DOES go VERY wrong! We get to the Aerlingus counter where we are suppose to check in and we see a sign that says: all fights to Ireland cancelled until tomorrow. WHAT?!?! Apparently, Dublin's airport had snow the 2 days before and although some areas the snow was melting, by the airports it was really cold and the runways were icing over.
So, I myself don't really worry much so I just think, "Ok now what do we do?" while others in our group, not all but some, go straight into panic mode. After running around in circles we get directed to another counter to find out our flight options. Somehow I get nominated to call the tour guide company we are suppose to meet at 8 a.m. tomorrow and talk to them.
After many phone calls to Irish people, discussion (including a little grumpiness and complaining because we all are loosing money on this trip) and weighing out our options we figure that we can either:
a- Book a flight for tomorrow morning, meet up with the tour group by catching a train from Dublin to Kilarney, miss a day of the tour and still have 2 and 1/2 days.
b- get our airline ticket refunded, lose money on the tour and stay in London.
So...we stayed in London. Not the weekend we had planned for =[ Although it's a day later many of group are still grumpy but what can you do? We couldn't plan the weather so we might as well just get over it and remember to check departing flights before we leave our flat. Anyways, that's my first traveling outside of London adventure. It ended before it began! Well, at least there is a lot to do in London and now I have time to catch up on sleep!
Oh and I already have my homework done so now I am footloose and fancy free the WHOLE weekend =]
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