Pages

Tuesday, May 28, 2013

Blogging is tough when you are having fun!

It's only May 28th and now, for the first time on the vacation, I have a little time to write. I'll try to catch up as quickly as possible.

In the early morning of May 23 we drive to Miami airport to board our flight to Newark, then Dublin. All went well until we were ready to board; then the United Gate Agent said there was a "ground stop" due to bad weather in Newark. We might as well sit and read for a couple of hours. No problem, thinks I, we will have a three hour wait after we land for our connection to Dublin. Wait in Miami vs. wait in Newark... I'll take Miami. We board the plane a couple of hours later, settle in, open our magazines, buckle up, prepare to nap, when the gate agent comes on the plane and gives us the news that Newark is stopped again and it will be hours before we leave. We must de-plane.   :-(   OK, I was sad we might miss our connection to Dublin, but we would at least not be landing in a storm. I prefer being late to crashing and being dead. Now we have to wait for several hours to finally get to the agent who re-defines our flight plan. We will spend the night in the very comfortable Double Tree Inn at United's expense, dine as lavishly as the two $10 meal vouchers allow, and try again on the 24th. Actually, our travel insurance kicked in with an extra $150 per day each of additional funding of our pastime of eating and drinking. Yeah insurance!

After good sleep and much food we repeat the process, this time through Newark, London Heathrow, then Dublin. we arrived in the late afternoon of the 25th. One and a half days late, but OK.

We had reserved a car from EuropeCar and when we tried to pick it up, our $172 price quote had grown by another $270 for insurance! I politely told the lovely rental agent that we had insurance through our regular car policy and the Collision Damage Waiver by way of our exalted status in the credit card world. Not so fast says she. Many cards don't offer CDW in Ireland and we must have a letter from our credit card bank saying we do. Slightly irritated, but not defeated, I walked over to my favorite rental counter, Hertz, where a helpful agent said he only knows of one card that worked for sure in Ireland and it was the rare, Bank of America "World Card". Well, being worldly travelers, and with a slightly smug smile on my face, I quickly produced said plastic from a dark recess of my wallet. Oh joy! How much will your car be Mr. Hertz man? The reply; only a little more than double what the first car would have been! Drat! Curses! Foiled, like other mice and men's best laid plans. I checked with Alamo too; no Joy.   :-(

Then I saw Darren Byrne smiling behind the Budget counter. For the sake of completeness, I might as well be tortured by him too; but no! Darren had a heart of gold! He appreciated my predicament and offered help. Not only did he call my bank and allowed them to send the requested letter to his fax machine, he even suggested I take it back to EuropeCar as he was afraid I would lose my deposit with them. All charity! The letter came and I learned after a second call to my Capital One Visa Bank, that not all cards work, Band of America did, Capital One's Spark Card did not. I asked if any money had indeed been charged by EuropeCar and it had not. I had only reserved. So I went back to Budget where a still smiling Darren not only rented me a car, he beat the price of EuropeCar! I will sing his praises for a long time. Darren, if you are reading this blog, thanks, I really mean it.

Next stop, the Leeson Bridge Guest House, http://leesonbridgehouse.ie/ where Emma and Mary delivered superb service. If you want a nice place to stay in Dublin, with a great location, breakfast, and service that rates 5 stars, this place won't dissapoint. They even had secure parking, the better to protect our coveted Budget rental car! I'm looking forward to writing a glowing review in Trip Advisor. When we didn't have any euros for bus fare, Emma even dug into her pocket to help us get to some proper Irish Pubs for dinner and drinks. We love Emma!

Dublin has a very cool bike rental system.
For a 150 euro deposit, on your credit card, you can rent a bike for almost free. OK, the three day contract is 2 euros or only 10 for a whole year and when you use the bikes for more than 30 minutes, there is a modest hourly fee, but it is cheap. I thought this would be a great way to get around so I put my American credit car into the machine only to find that our cards don't have the little chip embedded in the plastic that the European cards have. My cards would work in the ATMs and restaurants, but not the bike machine. Oh well... we walked; burning enough calories to justify a pizza, several beers, an ice cream and a bottle of wine. Pretty good deal if I did my caloric math right.

Short list of what we have done so far:

Hop on Hop off tour of city for two days
Visited Trinity College and the Book of Kells http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Book_of_Kells
Ate and drank in many Temple Bar area bars... big fun
Had a good dinner and saw a great song and step dance show at the Arlington Hotel
More eating and drinking and singing and pub crawling... great fun, walking off the calories between pubs!
Did the factory tour for Waterford Crystal. Very cool and a great place to take pictures!
Now we are in Kinsale for an evening of dining, singing and drinking... we walked so it's OK.

I should warn you of some deceptive marketing we encountered. Yes, I fell for the free beer trick. Always read the fine print. You know what the lawyers say..., "The large print giveth and the fine print taketh away".

I could go for hours writing about Ireland and the nice people we met, however, it's almost 1 AM and I have to drive to Blarney tomorrow to kiss some rock or something so I'll try to improve these musings at the next opportunity, add some photos, and tell more tales of our adventure. For now, goodnight.

No comments: