The sun is shining on this our first day of our island holiday. Oh, no it isn't. Ah, yes it is again.
After the 6 hour flight, during which Ms. Hegan celebrated her last year as head cabin attendant for Aer Lingus (applause all around), we headed to the passport desks.
When we reconvened at baggage, Joan expressed her humored dismay that mom's and her passports were stamped with a 30 day limit, vs. the usual 90 days.
At that point it ocurred to me that I should check what my passport said since I was in a different line than they were....
After having spied a just illuminated "ALL PASSPORTS" light, I managed to be first in a new line. I would have stayed put had I known that my passport agent was having a not so good passport agent day. I later decided that it must have been because someone moved him from his prefered spot in a damp basement with a naked lightbulb, single metal chair and instruments of torture, to his current and rather pedestrian spot in a passport booth where he struggled to really shine.
"Good morning. When are you leaving."
"Oh. Uh, April. 6th."
"Why are you here."
"Visiting family."
"What family."
"Oh. Uh, family in Tipperary and Derry."
Incredulous look: "No - who is this family."
"My mother's cousins?"
Staring at me with the stamp poised over my passport: "When are you leaving."
Next to "Permission to Remain in the Country until" he scrawled: APRIL 6.
Joan compared the rental car desks to the New York Stock Exchange - hands waving, people shouting, general chaos and malay as the next wave of tourist passed their way. We had a successful time pitting them against one another - Joan working the Hertz guys while I played hardball with Budget.
Minus 70 Euros later we had scored our beauty bargain: a lovely gold Nissan Something That Begins With An A that I found in the parking lot after only 23 minutes of walking up to each one in the fleet and clicking the unlock button. (Once I even got myself completely settled with mirrors and seat adjusted before realizing the key didn't work and someone had just accidentally left the car unlocked.) I then spent the next half hour taking a not so leisurely ride around and around the airport while repeating "on the left, on the left" to myself as I navigated roundabouts and traffic cones. I
finally had to use a "bus only" lane and my hazard lights in order to get back to Mom and Joan so we could load the luggage.
Out on the M1 headed north, lorries barred down on me in the
rear view mirror as the wind blew the
daffodils flat against the fields. Lack of sleep is apparently an amazing sedative because mom clutched nothing on our drive and even offered that I was doing, "a very good job" with my driving.
We arrived and got settled into hotel number 1: Scholar's Townhouse Hotel,an old CB boy's school in Drogheda (DROCK -HEH -da). It is no longer a boys school, however there is one next door. Over breakfast Joan kept looking up from her plate of fruit with an anxious look to ask, "Doesn't anyone else hear screaming children?!" We didn't - and thought she was hallucinating (triplet flashbacks now rising to the surface with some distance) but turns out she was right - recess was on next door and a game of football was going on in the school yard.
We settled into the one of our two rooms. Mom got into her PJ's and tossed a bit and smiled at us occasionally while we all waited for the other room to be ready.
Downtown after the naps. Through the smallest allowable alleyway for our vehicle to get parking. Our man at the lot was quite understanding about our not having any money yet. "Ah not at all. Ye's pay when ye's come back."
In line at the BankLink, a snapshot of the butcher, and then a side stop at an art gallery with a personal tour of sorts from the security guard:
"Ye see, some of this is surreal art, and some of it is realistic, the difference being some is real and some is...is...."
"Surreal?"
"Yes. Exactly."
The whole town seemed torn concerning where to recommend for dinner in that there didn't seem any place to recommend ("Ah, no, ye'll not send them there..."), and we finally took the advise of the cashiers at Boots Pharmacy: The West Court Hotel Pub. Which was kind of nice, other than the big screen TV's with VH1 "The 80's" videos that completely mezmerized Joan, and the large group of teenagers that came into drink, refused to leave and told the manager, "We'll finish our focking drink so fock off." When Joan and I said, "We didn't know you had live entertainment tonight," the waiter didn't laugh.
A nicely dressed 20-something young man passed our table tsk-tsking, and - in what I guess was an effort to relate to three yanks - knowingly said, "This would never happen in the Bronx, right?"
A drizzly post pint walk up uneven sidewalk found us facing a locked car park.
"But it says on the door, "parking, night and day." Joan would repeat this with several times while we laughed until we realized there was a "no" at the front of the phrase - at which point we just laughed more.
Suleman to the rescue with a 6
euro, 4-block cab ride home. "I didn't know we were riding in a Mercedes," Joan laughed as we said goodnight to our money and his smiling face.
Back at our hotel and snug by the fire in the pub.
The manager tells me the best place for internet
reception is "in the bar" - how lucky.
We settle in leather chairs for our nightcaps. Nana settles into a big leather couch. Joan checks the progress of her Brownie troupe's Girl Scout Cookie sales online. I stare at the tumbler of Jameson's I got in place of the hot toddy that I ordered. I wish I was the gal who tossed back her whiskey neat with a bang of the glass on the table, but sadly I am not. It takes me 45 minutes and Joan and mom's help to finish it.
Onto Belfast in the morning. The Troubles are supposedly past, but hard economic times may explain some recent flare ups by the IRA. Joan says Ireland's economy is the 2nd worst in Europe. The plan is to take a Black Cab Tour once we are settled. It will be my first time in Belfast since I passed through on a bus in 1993 and got my only glimpses of armed soldiers on bustling street corners.
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