Off to a less-than-perfect start

Aer Lingus can kiss my ass. We called in advance (since they wouldn't let us check in online) to reconfirm our flight before leaving for the airport. Their automated system ("Agent Aiden") said everything was set.

When we got to the airport, we were told that our 9:40pm departure was cancelled. Instead, they were putting us on a charter flight with an outfit called Omni Air. That flight would be departing at 1:15am!!! In the end, even that flight didn't leave on time, and we were "Number one for takeoff" (like there's any competition for takeoff slots at that hour!). But no, why be on time when you can further fuck up our schedule and help us miss the first day of the rugby tournament that was our initial motivation for this trip?

When we finally got to Dublin, we found that insurance for our rental car was going to cost more than we usually pay for the entire rental of a car on trips in the States! Now normally I let my Amex card cover rental car insurance, but I vaguely remember being told that such a move is unwise overseas. That may be wrong, but I just didn't want to take any chances.

It took us until the end of the day to find our hotel. That's another joy. It's a gorgeous new hotel (the room is lovely & the bed is very comfy!), and it's much cheaper than staying in the city center, but it was a major bitch to find. This was after giving up on finding the rugby pitch (we had hoped to at least catch the end of the day's matches). We found Dublin City University, but not the fields. We will try again in the morning.

So, being exhausted and in really pissy moods by the time we checked in, Marc and I decided that a nap was in order. "Nap" is hardly the word, since I didn't get up for well over two hours, but I needed it! The seats on that DC-10 were torture devices!

Post-nap, we decided to just try to hotel restaurant, Maya-Ché, for dinner. That was the high point of the day. The food was fabulous, from the duck spring rolls to my salmon and Marc's Thai green curry to our Bailey's coffee and the lemongrass-chocolate mousse I had for dessert (plus a fabulous pecan brownie with ice cream that Marc had). It wasn't cheap by any means, but it was excellent, and we needed a nice ending to this day.

So now we're sitting in the business center, doing some blogging. Marc is at the next computer, and I suspect we'll cover some of the same ground. Oh well! It beats missing any of the lovely details. :)

We're going to try to get a good night's sleep and a relatively early start tomorrow. I just hope we can find parking near the DCU sports fields!