Barcelona to Dublin to Malahide

---

Geo: 41.3879, 2.16992

We woke-up to pouring rain in Barcelona early-early this morning! It had rained so hard, in fact, that the Barcelona port had electrical problems and the gangway to walk off the ship was not working. Kamie & I had to leave at 6:15am to take our Carnival transfer bus to the airport. We were delayed about 45 minutes waiting for the gangway to be fixed. We had a morning flight back to Dublin, Ireland today. We saw the last of some of our onboard friends as we were leaving this morning and it was nice to say happy goodbyes and best wishes! :-)

Then... something sorta funny & sorta sad happened (but not to us, thank goodness!). I had read that last year in Europe Carnival had all sorts of problems with the luggage getting from their transfer buses to the airports and several people's luggage was lost between the port and the Barcelona airport and never recovered. Based on this, we decided to pull our own suitcases from our cabin...off the gangway...straight to our Carnival transfer bus...watch it be loaded...and get it off the bus at the airport and be on the way. Pulling your own luggage is easy breezy. We get on our Carnival transfer bus and it's a huge, nice bus with seats for 50, at least... and in the end, a grand total of 11 people are on this transfer bus - because we are going to Terminal 2 (a lesser used terminal). We watch other people walk to our bus...no luggage with them! To make a long story short... we get to the airport.... we get off the bus...the driver opens the luggage vault and pulls my suitcase and Kamie's suitcase off....there was no other luggage!! The look on those other people's faces were priceless. Kamie said that one lady's mouth just dropped. Well.... DUH. Pay attention people! We left and they were all surrounding the bus driver. I'm sure they all went back to the port and got their luggage and were okay because about an hour later we saw one of the couples in the terminal with their luggage. I did feel sorry for a family of 3 because they were already running late for their flight. Still.... do people thing their luggage is magically going to show-up??!! Hmmmm

So, we finally flew from Barcelona to Dublin... then checked-in to our hotel... and took the shuttle back to the airport and took a bus out to a Malahide... a seaside coastal town of Ireland. This is the side of Ireland everyone talks about and the countryside cottages and townhomes I expected see all along. The curtains, the windows, the courtyard-type-places... all of it... what I always thought of Ireland. And, yes... Ireland is very green. The airport is like a big green field. You know what??? It looks like Missouri. Drive to Caulfield and back and you will see what Ireland looks like... no kidding. I suppose the difference would be in August or September when everything is dried-up and brown/yellow here and it's still deep green and rainy in Ireland. Still, it was pretty but not overly impressive to someone from this area of the world. Just my opinion, of course.

We finally flew home and the flight home had four good movies in a row, I typed on my laptop until the battery died, and Kamie used my headrest as a butt pillow (really honey???). Overall, it was an uneventful flight and was okay. We were delayed in Atlanta over 2 hours due to a plane/mechanical problem so we didn't get home until late (11pm-ish) Friday night. It was wonderful to see Simon!! He kept me awake for the 4 sketchy hours I slept Friday night... kissing me every few minutes!! :-D He's the best dog in the world.

So, this is farewell...
Thanks for reading friends and family. Kamie & I saved and squandered away for this trip and used our hard-earned money to pay for every single moment of this trip by ourselves. We are proud we were able to take it and we felt like we really needed a vacation by the time we left. Now that we have taken this trip we've had a good time but we are soooooooo happy to be home to our fur babies.

We are not going to take a trip this long ever again. EVER. 10 days is our max and that includes pre and post travel hotels if we take a cruise again. Also, I want to see all 50 states and a few special places we haven't seen yet – Alaska, New York City, Key West, etc. I believe I'm about 11 states short of visiting all the states and Kamie is much further behind than me. I also think if we ever take a two week vacation again it will be a week away and a week at home. If we could travel with Simon, it would be different but we cannot so our place is at home with our baby. For now, I'm not interested in even thinking about vacation. I need some time to adjust to all the changes happening in our life this year, first!

Again, thanks for reading. I could have written for hours more about some of the little quirky things that happened in the ports or things we did each day but then my blogs would be ten pages every day. It's the strange things you're not expecting when traveling abroad that make it exciting and entertaining – like the odd public toilets in Venice, the ladies hairstyles in Dublin, the $19 per nail repair on the ship, the mafia in Italy (yes,they are still there & they are still wealthy), the different dogs everywhere, the excessive smoking by men & women in Italy & France, the odd food in Greece, the smell on some of the trains, and the general habits & attitudes of the locals everywhere. When you add to it the odd couples we met – like the young husband/wife team that oddly seemed to looked liked TWIN brother/sisters…. or the older black man who walked for miles and did everything everyone else did because this was his trip of a lifetime (we loved him)…. or the emotionless couple who neither smiled, frowned, or said a word for 12 hours straight on our Rome tour, and and and. We had a fantastic journey and I hope you enjoyed going along with us via this blog! Chao!

---