Day 1- Ireland Castle Hotel

Dec 26th,

The people that were staying next in our place showed up. The father didn't speak English so the girl had to translate. They put their bags in the kitchen, and then Mom, Zoe, and I had to scramble to leave before 12.

It wasn't until we in the cab on the way to Heathrow Airport that I noticed I left my London subway passes behind. I had wanted to keep those as souvenirs. The cab, by the way, didn't even look like a cab. I thought I was getting abducted.

My mom was thankfully chatty to fill silence. We found out hat the cab driver is from Ethiopia (I think that's what he said). He used to live in Miami and Tampa Florida. And he's been in London for 24 years now.

We gave him plum pudding, some hot chili stuff in a jar, and some chocolate.

The airport ordeal was different than America. We first of all had to change our flight since we were there like 5 hours early. It ended up being free since "friends" were flying to Dublin too. Otherwise we'd pay 40 pounds and another fee just to switch flights for each person. We flied Aer Lingus, and had seats 7A-C. I had the window seat!

Before all that though, I had three forms of potatoes(hash browns, Zoe's fries, and chips). Mom had a burger with fries. Zoe had an omelette and a brownie later.

Also,
security was crazy.
Thank goodness we got the nice immigration lady. She asked us why we were staying:too see family; and stamped our passports. The other lady was taking like twenty minutes with each person.

Hmm
Okay so Mom got her baggage checked because her I-pad was in it, and my tube of toothpaste (oops)- which got taken away!
Zoe got stopped and "lightly touched" because she was wearing a tampon,
And I got stopped and had my bag swabbed to check for a bomb.
What the heck.

As soon as we got to Ireland we had to wait a whole hour (after changing Pounds to Euros) for us to get the rental car. We had to get on FaceTime with Dad and ask him about which car service it was, and yadda yadda yadda. I got grumpy and had to pull out my last London Cadbury chocolate bar, a shame, I know.

We got it, and well…
We didn't know how to open the trunk
two lights wouldn't turn off
the roads were on the other side
and mom had her shoulders tensed up the entire time while driving.

Eventually we got to the castle hotel. It was only 5 miles, but it took us longer.

The castle looks like it was built up recently.
They have a gymnasium.
And they put butter or goat cream or some mysterious cream on my smoked ham, lettuce sandwich.

Hopefully tomorrow's drive to Gaulway will be better. PS. I WANT TO GO TO PRIMARK HERE!:)

Sorry, no photos for this blog. It was dark and the few photos I took were craptastic.

Also PS. The castle was thankfully not haunted (at least my room wasn't).