Sausage Splatter & BMI Baby Baggage Bust

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Today was sort of a slower feeling day, although we did do a lot. We started with breakfast/coffee at Caffe Nero again, and then moved on to a sausage factory outside of the city. We had a brief introduction to the company, and then started shooting. The smell was pretty nasty, and I felt really sorry for our vegetarian guide, Lisa. They showed us the smoker, the butchering, the injecting brine into the veins, the sausage filling, some boiling stuff, and this one machine that you put the ham into and it packed it into netting. While shooting that, some sort of pork/ham/pig juice splattered on me and everybody was impressed how calm I remained. We went back into the city and toured the Roman ruins, which weren't too much, but then walked over to an area of Manchester along these canals that in recent years is seeing a lot of rebuilding and development of housing and restaurants and shops, and it seemed like a great place to live if you wanted to be close to the city and be part of a neat community. In 10 years it is going to be something really special I think. We had some lemonade and shot a little footage at a very modern pub called Duke 92, and then walked to The Ox Noble Bar and grill where we had a light lunch of sandwiches and more lemonade. We relaxed there for a little while, and then went to the downtown area to get more footage of the old vs. the new in the city. We filmed the oldest building in the city, where we had eaten a late lunch yesterday (The Wellington I think it is called) and then got footage of Urbis, which is a fantastic looking building that resembles a transparent ski slope. it was my favorite building in the city to look at. We had a bit of time to burn, so we took a break in a Starbucks across from Urbis until our ride to the airport came. We said our goodbyes to Lisa, and got our luggage from the hotel, and then we were off to catch our flight. As soon as we got to the airport, we found that our flight had been delayed 2 1/2 hours, until 10pm. That meant we'd get into Cork, Ireland after 11pm and have to get our rental car and find our way to our hotel a bit later than we'd planned. Then in the check in line for BMI Baby, we learned that we were a total of 47kg over our weight limit of 60kg, and we'd be charged the equivalent of $10 per kg, and this would be for each way, meaning a total charge of over $900. Rick was extremely displeased, and he ended up calling our guide Lisa and she came back to the airport with her husband and they took 3 of our bags to keep for us until the end of our trip in 2 weeks (we shifted bags around a bit and kept what we really needed). If our flight had been on time, we would have missed it. I tried to learn more about the luggage restrictions in the UK and Europe, and I won't go into the details about everything I soaked in, but the bottom line of the lesson I took away was that when traveling abroad, make sure you read about the restrictions for your ticket and print it out so you have it in writing. I got different information from a British Airways ticket agent and our British Airways e-ticket itinerary. Also, in the UK you are allowed ONLY 1 carry-on piece. A small purse is considered a 2nd piece. This is a security rule, and has nothing to do with the airline you are flying, so don't even bother trying to talk your way out of it. In terms of checked luggage, unless you book all of your flights throughout your whole trip all at the same time, on the same itinerary/ticket from the US until you get back to the US, don't ever expect to be able to carry more than 1 piece of luggage per person, and nothing over 23kg, or about 30 lbs. Blah blah blah, do your homework before you travel. So after we'd figured that all out, Kate and I also had found out our return flight was booked for May 29th instead of April 29th, so another $400 later Rick was even happier about BMI Baby, and then when we tried to find something to eat (and I was really hoping a pub at the airport would have Boddington's on tap, because I wanted to have a Boddington's in Manchester because that is where it was originally brewed), the only thing open was Burger King, so sure enough we had good ole' BK. Then once we got to our gate, there was a bar open, but they didn't have Boddington's, unfortunately for me. I will still have a chance to have one in Manchester though, because we'll be spending 2 more nights in Manchester as we travel back from Cork to London and then from Marseilles back to Chicago. We landed in Cork after a short flight, got the rental car, and were to our hotel a little past midnight. I didn't get to bed until 2am though, because I was using the free wireless internet that I wasn't able to use in Manchester because our hotel charged $9 an hour for it.

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