Plane Trip

I've landed in Dublin, Ireland. I'm currently writing this the next morning after the flights. After getting a good night's sleep but while this is still fresh on my mind.

Overall the flights went well. The first flight, which went out on 3am in the morning, was at about a third capacity. Which was good since the plane looked like it was designed to cram as many people together as possible. I don't think I would have gotten a single hour o sleep i someone was next to e, but was able to sleep for a little but my laying on my side with my head on the other chair.

After about an hours sleep though I couldn't do it anymore, but since the guy on the other end wasn't using the seat next to him, I decided to use it so I could lie down properly. That was probably a life saver since I got a solid block of sleep, which was probably what kept me together for the rest of the trip.

It was reasonably uneventful until the plane started approaching London. It had left a little late, but it stayed in a holding pattern around Heathrow long enough for me to start worrying about by connecting flight. Upon landing, the flight attendant gave an announcement that the people grabbing my connecting flight should report to the connecting flight desk before going to a gate, confirming my worries.

A guy was there on the ground holding a sign for people with my connecting flight. He directed my to the right terminal to ensure there was no lost time from confusion. I was hoping he was there to streamline our passage to the next flight, but he only ensured we boarded the bus to go to the next terminal.

Little did I know, London is where the major immigration, customs and security checks are done, with Ireland having a minor, separate immigration checkpoint. So I went through these checkpoints stressing and sweating, which probably didn't help my chances of being picked out for a thorough check, which is what I was also fearing.

Afterwards, I broke out in a sweat trying to get to the departure gate, which was ages away. When I got there, they was the plane-load of angry travelers I was fearing, but thankfully they were on my side of the gate. Boarding hadn't started. The same weather that had delayed our flight was causing delays across the board, so I didn't actually need to rush.

Other than that my flight was fine, except the worry about my BO, which I had noticed had gone downhill after the second flight, but now had an actual breakout of sweat added to it. It was a short flight though.

After that the real panic started after landing. Most other airports I'd been to, it was usually a simple matter to get a bus to take you to the hotel or you just take a taxi.

Instead, I took a bus into the city with directions to the hotel. This was getting me worried as I hadn't had the foresight of getting a map. I got lost very quickly, which wasn't bad since I did have fallbacks, afterall I was in an English speaking country.

My first fallback of asking people failed as nobody knew of my hotel, other bus drivers included. My second fallback of getting a taxi fell through when the couple that stopped (though I think I got the meaning of the top indicators of Irish cabs wrong) didn't know where it was either.

I started to panic as it was getting later and later, but finally found a taxi that knew where it was and got to the hotel. I was fantasising about the shower I was going to take when I got to the hotel all day, and was planning to write this down before going to bed. But the first thing I did, after getting to the hotel and looking around my room a little, was go straight to sleep.