Off to visit our neighbors.

This past weekend, four friends and I decided to do a little island hopin.  We went to Ireland. It was a trip I will never forget...

We made it to Dublin with no problem at all.  The one hour flight was over before I could finish a chapter of my book.  The bus ride to Galway was a bit longer, but it was completely worth it when we got there.  Perfect weather allowed us to enjoy our drinks from the most famous pub in Galway, The Quays (a recommendation from my Irish flat-mate), outside on the streets where we were able to take in all the people, shops, and night culture.  

Saturday we explored the town.  We went in the shops, ate delicious crepes, walked the dock by the sea, visited a market, and went to the Galway Halloween Festival (which included a re-make of MJ's Thriller video). 

         

  

Saturday night, Halloween, was great. There was a party at our hostel with lots of free snacks and drinks.  We played games with other travelers and met people from Australia, Finland, and all over-even a Michigander (who worked at the hostel). After that, we went back outside.  We heard there was some more of the festival activities, but we didn't really know what.  As we were walking down the streets, we somehow got swept up into this MASSIVE parade! There were people with these huge orange masks on, hundreds of different costumes, musicians, and just people dancing down the streets.  We joined them.  We danced for what seemed like hours and just had the best time ever.  As it was happening, I couldn't really believe I was dancing down the streets of Ireland in a halloween parade.  It was so good.

Now begins the series of not-so-fortunate events...

It all began with a curious look given to me by the man with a braid in his beard who asked me where the rest of my details were on my boarding pass as I handed it to him before entering the gates to walk to the plane.  I replied, 'what details?'  'Right here', he said, as he pointed to a few lines on my boarding pass that I didn't give a second thought to.  As a confused expression formed on my face, he started talking to the other Ryanair worker who was scanning the other line's boarding passes. After being told that I was missing some crucial information on my boarding pass that I really should have, the other worker told my braided beard friend that he should just let me go. As I again showed my boarding pass to the lovely flight attendant at the door of the plane and received no such scolding, I sat down and got situated on the plane.  When my other friends sat down and Andy told us that one of the flight attendants took his ticket, we were a bit confused.  We talked about the fact that we were missing the so-called 'crucial' information on our boarding pass from Aberdeen to Dublin, but absolutely no one said anything to us about it.

Just after we had fastened our seat belts and got comfortable after concluding that it was just a strange thing that happened, a lady with a too-tight bun and painted on smile said, 'You five need to come with me and talk to our captain.' I don't even know what I was thinking at that point.  We went up, were told we had to get off the plane, tried to argue a bit about the fact that this situation was being handled in two completely different ways since no one in Aberdeen told us it was a problem, being told that was their fault and they could all be fired, we got dropped off in the middle of the runway. We were let back in to the airport by a man in a bright orange vest that usually handles the luggage.  We wandered around the deserted hallways, talked to as many people as we could about the situation, ended up spending way too many euros on internet usage in the airport and way too many euros buying a new plane ticket and bus ticket for the next day.  

The following pictures document our airport camp sites for that evening as we had about 14 hours to kill until our next flight....

Truth of the matter is- the night was spent with a lot of reading, writing, good conversation, card playing (with guys from Finland that we met in the hostel who coincidentally had a flight at 1 AM that morning), i-pod listening, and humor.  Julie and I formed a new language and laughed at pretty much everything.

As I mentioned earlier, this is a trip I will NEVER forget.  Mostly for unbelievably wonderful reasons and a little because of some silly events that went down in the Dublin airport...