Getting There

It is 6:30 in the morning and I seem to have escaped jet lag entirely, waking up at my normal time, thanks to an Irish friend and frequent traveler's advice to "sleep as little as possible and stay up late the first night." We flew over on MaxJet, a business class only airline that initiated direct flights from Vegas to London last winter. The flight was elegant and fun with champaign with a sweet strawberry on arrival, a canape a few minutes later and a very decent dinner a few hours into the flight. Part of the pleasant experience was deparating from Terminal 2, a human scaled terminal that was significantly less crowded than the domestic one. While the almost fully reclining seats weren't exactly comfortable after sitting in them for 9 hours, at least my bones weren't screaming like they usually are after a long flight. In fact, the flight was such a contrast from the usual cattle car that I almost expected to see Cary Grant walking down the ailes to stretch his legs. "This is what travel is supposed to be," I said to Alan. So this is how the other half lives.

Ryan Air, the only airline with a connecting flight from Stansted to Dublin, brought reality crashing back. Their reputation of customer non-service holds in our experience. We were hours early for our flight and when we tried to check our bags, were told that we couldn't check in until X:30. Got in line a few minutes before that and tried to check our luggage. Ended up being charged 135 pounds for additional weight, even though we had already paid extra when buying the ticket to check two extra bags. However, by the time that was all settled, the check in person (who actually did seem to want to help us) looked at the time and said that we were five minutes past check in time for our flight. Apparently three previous agents that we talked with misread our ticket and thought we were catching the following plane. By the time we went back to the ticket counter, paid another hundred pounds to change the ticket, rechecked our bags and ran to the gate, we barely made the new flight in time and didn't even have time to call the Dylan, where we were staying, to let them know that the transfer to the hotel that they had arranged wouldn't be needed until the next flight. (Apparently they waited for an hour at the airport, thinking that they had just missed us.)

The Dylan is lovely, in a residential sectioin of the old part of Dublin, from what we understand. The suite is spacious with heated tile floors, a rain shower, indirect lighting, a large closet and lots of nice, very high tech touches like a space age phone, flat screen TVs (inlcuding one in the shower) and modern pop decor as well as lovely silver antiques scattered about in lighted niches. We ate at the restaurant last night and found the staff very friendly, young, all from other countries including Poland, Brazil and Argentina. Cirque du Soliel had given us one inch pins from their newest show, Love, that we gave to most of them. ("We'll scatter Love buttons all over Ireland," we told Cirque.) The chef is Irish, we were told, who had created a very impressive menu. Alan had rabbit, served in a dozen bite size pieces of various bits of rabbit artfully prepared and arranged. I had halibut with a creamy artichoke sauce. The multicourse meal lasted a little over 2 hours and we noticed, unlike Vegas restaurants, that seemed to be the standard dinner experience. Afterwards we walked around the block, finding a variety of pubs, lots of old stone and brick and a variety of wonderful designs on doors and windows. It was midnight here and we had started our trip at 5 pm the previous day, so it was time for some sleep after asking for an ice pack to put on my painful shoulder, wrenched at the airport. Slept like a baby.