Our trek to Limerick began at O’Hare’s international airport. Katherine arrived and checked in first. Katherine was asked to weigh her carry-on to see if it met the 13lb. weight limit. She knew it didn’t so she took her laptop out right in front of the ticket agent, handed it to her dad, and then weighed it. It was underweight! She then put her laptop back in and waited for me to arrive. Why do they weigh carry-ons?

I arrived half an hour later, met the checked baggage weight limit, and wasn’t asked to weigh my carry-on. We said our goodbyes and headed through security. But wait, we needed some ice cream to calm the nerves first. Then we headed through security and waited at our gate for 90 minutes.

We got on the plane, our seats were in the second row of the non-fancy section (we could have upgraded for $1,039 each way). Every seat had a little TV in front where we could watch TV episodes of Scrubs, Grey’s Anatomy, The Sopranos, Boston Legal, and others; movies – most of which we had never heard of; play games including sudoku, battleship, and Who Wants to be a Millionaire; and see our trip progress via GPS. Pictures are included below.

Dinner included our choice of chicken and rice or beef and potatoes. Katherine chose the chicken and I chose the beef. Pictures are included but Katherine’s looks like vomit. It tasted better than it looks. She ate my veggies and I ate her cheesecake.

Nighttime came quickly since we were traveling east. After several hours of movies, sudoku, music videos, and random TV shows, we were given breakfast. It consisted of cold ham and cold cheese on a cold croissant. It was less than tasty.

The sun rose (after only a few hours of nighttime) and we eventually saw the shores of Ireland and its extensive greenery. Irish farmers don’t divide their plots with fences – they use trees – and their plots are of every possible shape but square.

We landed in Dublin, sat there for an hour, and made our way back to Limerick. It should be noted that I asked Katherine what she thought of flying several times while we were in the air and her response each time was “this isn’t bad, at all.”

Getting through customs took some time. It took a lot of time, in fact, because all the students at UL and whatever school is in Galway had to wait until everyone else was processed. There are a lot of seats on an Airbus 330 so we waited for a long time. Once half the students were processed another plane arrived and the second half (of which we were a part) waited an even longer time. We finally grabbed our bags and followed the Limerick guides to the bus.

–Mark