The Day We Finally Reached Ireland

32 hours after our first flight became airborne in Melbourne, our third flight touched down in Dublin. It was still eerily light for 10:30 pm, having flown for two hours towards the sun which seemed to perch in the same position, neatly balanced on the horizon, for the duration of the flight from Frankfurt. 

The 13 hour stretch from Singapore to Frankfurt had elicited quite a bit of screen watching interspersed with brief periods of nodding off on my part. Again, we were all seated separately, so I can’t vouch for the amount of sleep anyone else managed to accumulate. 

Wallsy did pop up from his aisle seat to my aisle seat a few rows in front, to do occasional food drops of bread rolls, cheese and biscuits, which he had saved from his meals, knowing I wouldn’t have been able to eat any of the main hot dishes they served up.

 

Unlike Singapore, our stopover in Frankfurt was quite brief, only allowing us time to walk from our arrival gate to our departure gate, which was some distance away, but we weren’t rushed; the timing was perfect, thank you Genine. 🙏

Arriving in Dublin we queued for customs where the encounter was unusually pleasant and friendly. The only trace of officiousness was the man  wearing the high vis vest which had the words, ‘I’m here to help you’ printed on the back, who herded us into the lanes in a shouty manner!  

Brief questions about the reason for our visit and an outline of our itinerary (at which point I expected Wallsy to whip out his spread sheet), was the extent of the vetting we received. 

We walked through to the luggage carousel in time to see all four of our cases coming through together and then proceeded to the hire car counter. 

We are now on the road to Belfast, hoping to avoid any of the rioting we have been hearing news snippets about, and safely reach our home for the next three nights, or I should say 2 1/2, given it will be 2am when we arrive. 

Tomorrow we begin to explore in earnest.