June 5-6; New York to Belfast

June 5-6 Friday-Saturday

Prelude

In past travelogues the first day is usually very dramatic, beginning with an all-nighter or close to it, nearly missing planes or trains, or something like it.  But this time, I wanted this trip to go really well; I’d never been to Ireland before, and not sure if I’d ever get back, so I’d spent more time preparing than for any I’ve done in a long time (maybe the “20 cities in 20 days trip I did around the Moodies’ Monaco show in summer 2004).  This trip was long in my mind, having originally planned it for September 2010.  But thanks to changing point schemes by Amtrak and Continental at the time (things like Amtrak now requiring you to expend $200 on train travel every year you wanted to exchange points for Continental, and inserting extra months here and there in making the switch, and Continental adding its own pesky rules and delays) , making it impossible to fly for free as I had in 2004, 2006 and 2008, as well as the escalating real price of air travel, and maybe some premonitions, I just cancelled my trip and sold 2 of the 4 Moodies tickets I’d bought.  Then my uncle died, Aunt Marge left alone for the first time in maybe 55 years, and my Mom broke her hip (funeral and hip break at the exact same time).  But I digress.

This time it made sense to do the final five concerts of the Moodies in the UK (Plymouth, Bournemouth, Brighton, London and Bristol), and fly directly from there to Chicago, where I’ll be speaking at my annual June conference (Air & Waste Management Association), where I’ve been chair or vice chair of a major Tech Council division for over 10 years, committee chair for 10 years before that.

Now that Continental and United merged, the comfy arrangement I’d had all these years with offloading excess Amtrak points to Continental no longer existed.  The new experience of gathering of points (to get free air travel) was a new challenge, so I explored using Points.com, to augment the too few points I had in my United account.  In a couple of weeks I managed to barter and trade with others, minimizing trade fees as much as I could, since I always have a plethora of Amtrak points.  So for about $400 total taxes and fees, I got Aer Lingus Boston to Dublin, 12 days later, Dublin to Gatwick, 7 days later Air Canada Heathrow to Chicago via Montreal.  I’m using free Amtrak for the NY to Boston and Chicago to NY legs.  (Btw, it’s the Amtrak Guest Rewards Mastercard that makes a lot of this possible.  I still highly recommend it, despite the lack of an outlet for excess points for air travel.)

Planning

Somewhere I’d seen an ad for “Explore Ireland”.  I initially thought it was something akin to an official government Irish Tourist Board or Chamber of Commerce.  I eventually found I was wrong about that (they were a travel agency), but in exchanging emails with them, I was able to get some more info on a few places to stay and things to see.  Since I’d done this before, I went back to the familiar.  For weeks I prepared a “Trip Bible” including a detailed itinerary for each day, contact info, reservations, maps, info on ferries, car rental, transfers, places of interest.  The first step was to determine where I wanted to go in Ireland, in what order, fitting driving distances that were doable with the sightseeing I wanted to do, adding some wiggle room, then to make room reservations.  Booking.com has been good in the past for finding good B&Bs and it was this time. 

I figured to rent a car for the whole time in Ireland, to allow flexibility in where to go and how long to stay there.  That would give me the most control over photo opportunities.  The train system in Ireland is not that extensive, as it is in England and I wouldn’t have been able to cover anywhere near as much ground without a car.  I had, in previous trips, driven a car in Scotland, England, and Wales, so I knew the rudiments of UK driving (on the left became second nature.. most of the time.. learning the cooperative driving and weaving around parked cars that occupy most of a travel lane, driving narrow roads, even one lane or single tracks as they call them).  I even learned how to read and navigate with the rather lengthy and sometimes confusing signs at each of the ubiquitous roundabouts.  I put together maps for each day’s drive, a cue sheet using map.google for each day’s drive, reservation pages and ferries/other sightseeing info, and an itinerary.  I made a copy of this and brought it with.  I had already purchased a very large format spiral bound map set of England, Scotland, Wales and Ireland, so brought that with a couple of books that I’d bought in preparation for the trip (Backroads of Ireland, Lonely Planet).  So I didn’t think twice about renting a car.  I initially put in for the smallest car I could get with Avis, figuring I’d make a few more along the way and choose the best before the trip began.  I did make sure that it would have an automatic transmission.  Those cost a lot more, but if you need it, You Need It!  

I’d heard a lot about the Giant’s Causeway and had seen pictures, and being a PhD in earth (and environmental) science, this was the first scenic wonder that I wanted to make sure to see.  Nearby (15 minutes away) was the Carrick-a-Rede rope bridge, connecting the mainland with an offshore island; that was also a “must do”.  So this meant a swing through the northern coasts (the Antrim coast), which I thought would be quite scenic.  I located some of the other most scenic spots, strung them together, knowing that I’d be coming back to Dublin to pick up Lorraine and drive with her for the rest of the Ireland tour (before we started our Moody Blues southern England tour, that is).  Though I printed out maps and routes, I would leave some of the precise routing to the day before and each day on the road, based on advice from locals and B&B hosts.  The hardest part would be figuring out, on the fly, how long to spend in each scenic spot, historical site or town, so that I might arrive at the B&B at a reasonable time and get a reasonable amount of food and sleep.  I realized in the planning of this trip, I think it was on TripAdvisor.com, someone had divided the universe of travelers into two camps: 1. Those who pack in as much as they possibly can, and 2. Those who travel to a nice place and plop themselves down for the duration.  I’m obviously in the former camp.

Photography was one of the major interests for this trip – both landscape and concert photography.  This required that I make room on my laptop and have enough SD cards.  Though I already was bringing a 32, a 16, a 4 and two 2 gb cards, I’ve recently gotten caught short, and wasn’t sure how many I would need, so I got an 8 at Kmart in Penn Station anyway.

A final note on planning, communications has become a very important part of travelling in the 21^st Century.  While in the pre-internet, pre-cellphone era, one would often not be in that close or frequent contact, now one is.  In my case, I felt very nervous about my 95-year old Mom and 97-year old Aunt Marge back in New York.  So I found and bought an international phone (Mobal).  They had a few different models, all of which would charge you per minute, in addition to the cost of the phone, along with a free set of electrical converters.  Since the cheapest phone “only” worked in 170 countries, But Not Canada (!), I bought the next one up for an extra $50 which includes Canada and most cruise ships.  Hmmm.. might come in handy. 

The Start

The day of leaving for the trip, was fairly uneventful.  Though I hadn’t had time to put together my presentation for the panel I’m speaking at on zero waste economics / return on investment for the Chicago conference which is to follow immediately after the Bristol show, I did put a powerpoint together on the train to Boston, very pleased that I could do that.  Wifi on Amtrak is a Godsend. 

Aer Lingus had said to arrive at Boston Logan airport 3.5 hours early.  I found this highly suspect, never having been told to arrive anywhere more than 2 hours ahead.  I managed to get there 3 hours early, using, for the first time, the MBTA’s Silver Line (newest “subway” line to get to the airport from Amtrak’s South Station).  This actually passes by a venue that we’ve seen the Moodies perform at a few times, and part of the route is electrified bus running in a dedicated tunnel, and part is regular bus.  I realized my trip to Ireland was about as intermodal as one could get..  subway to Amtrak, to subway/bus, to plane, to car.  I even had a bike tour of Belfast lined up for my first day in Ireland.  The only thing I didn’t go on was a ferry.  But I digress. 

Back at Logan, there was no one in line for check in (!), so that went fast.  The line for security was short too, so I found a café and spent time on the phone and online.  Spoke to my aunt Patty (father’s sister, who I’ve met only a couple of times) who had been to County Tyrone looking up the ancestors who left for Quebec in 1826 (but not finding).   The flight was gentle enough, but I only got about an hour’s sleep, just sound of Greenland.  I could not sleep.  The lady next to me was reading all night, light on, and windowshade open (morning light coming in after 5am).  There was a crying kid now and then as well.  Of course they feed you 1.5 hours after takeoff and ¾ hour before landing during a 4.75 hour flight.  This lack of sleep made for an Awful start to the trip.

Ireland!

Arrived early at Dublin airport, but there were major lines for passport check.  After picking up my bag, it was confusing… where do I pick up my Alamo car?  All the car hire agencies were listed except that one; I dragged my stuff halfway to the other terminal when something made me go back.  Turned out that Europcar handles both Alamo and National.  That wasn’t clear on the reservation I’d made. 

Then if this aggravation wasn’t enough, I was baited and switched at the counter.  Immediately the lady was trying to switch me from the smallest car to a larger one to another and back again, bigger, smaller, bigger, smaller, diesel, petrol, diesel, petrol, meanwhile other parties were coming and going, being processed efficiently by her partner at the counter (gee I wish I’d gotten her!)  My host the first night at the Springfield B&B in Belfast said they probably didn’t even have the small car I had booked.  I ended up paying another 55 euros for a larger car that I should have declined.  

Seems that every time I book a car in England, now Ireland, I learn some things.  Last time it was to bring a copy of the Mastercard-generated statement, dated just before leaving for the trip, that I own a World Mastercard which covers my collision insurance.  In the British Isles they seem to hate this arrangement as they want to sell you collision insurance as well as some extra insurance that we don’t even have in the US, not to mention liability insurance.  I remembered well the agony of having spent hours at the start of a previous rental trying to get the statement from Mastercard.  This time, I learned about the flim flam bait and switch.  All this got me a bit more nervous and tired than I already was, which was considerable.   I also realized later, that they never came out to go around the car with me and note previous damage.  Another lesson learned. 

Out on the road at first I thought I was acclimatizing to driving on the right side of the car, left side of the road thing, riding up the M1.  A motorway is the best place to start, since the road is not narrow and you have multi-lane expressway driving.  This time there was a new thing to get used to:  Gaelic on the road signs.  It’s the first language on every sign.  The English is below in Caps, making each sign harder to read.  But it didn’t take too long to get good at reading the signs.  I got off the M1/M2 in Newry.. had what I guess is the obligatory first missing of a sign or seeing it too late to turn, so I spent a bit of time touring that town.. nice castle!  I had gone off the main road to Belfast so that I could do some driving along the Mourne coast road (named after the Mourne mountains that go down to the coast).  It was very neat that they had brown signs to indicate destinations or roads of scenic interest and made it easy to follow all the turns and roundabout directions.  By this time I was in Northern Ireland (the UK).  There is no border crossing.  I didn’t even remember seeing a sign.  There was a light mist, but otherwise sunny and amazingly lovely.  I knew before leaving that the forecast was going to be unbelievably great .. no rain for a There were green hills, lots of sheep and cows, and gorse, this big shrub with yellow flowers that I'd seen all over Scotland.

I had my first meal in Ireland, a full breakfast at about noon.

So I drove into Belfast… not easy to find where I needed to be, but I’ve been told, and it seems to be true, that the Irish are very helpful.  A guy in a car next to me had his window open sitting at a light, so I got perfect directions to where I needed to go (through 5 lights, turn left).  He even let me cut in front of him at the light, since I was in the wrong lane, and waved, when I made the left turn.  I’d made a reservation to take a Belfast City bike tour at 2pm.  I was late, but I’d phoned when I was grabbing a breakfast) somewhere along the coast, and turns out I was the only one on the tour, so it was ok if I was going to be late.

The guide was good, we were on cruiser bikes with fat tires, for three hours going all over town and even into nearby suburbs to tour the botanical garden, free to the public, and loads of people sunning themselves on the great lawn (it being such great weather).  It reminded me of Sheep Meadow in Central Park, on a smaller scale.  My host treated me to an ice cream.

 We went to the City hall, the Titanic exhibit, along the river, and some historic pubs and locations. One had some murals on a wall. See if you can recognize anyone:

He gave me quite a bit of history too, including “the troubles”.  This still dominates thought in Belfast, and I learned I was a pioneer in being a tourist in Belfast.

After the bike tour, between 6 and 7, back in the car, I found my way along the Falls Road to my digs in the heavily Catholic area.  There was IRA graffiti on the walls, anti-Thatcher stuff, political murals, etc.  Seems they still have a wall between this area and the Protestant area and the police shut the gate every night as a crime prevention measure.  Used to be one side would go to the other side at night, murder someone and return back to their home area.  Not anymore.

The Springfield B&B was not nice.  I should have stayed outside of town or in a nicer hotel.   The owner, Kevin, was nice enough, recommending some places to get food (I was absolutely falling over at this point).  I go to this Chinese takeaway, not wanting to wait for a pub meal (Mom always said Chinese food works all over the world).  In this case, I asked for chicken and veg, and got greasy chicken and noodles, and before I arrived back at the B&B I realized I had a migraine.  I knew I had to eat, but could only take a little of it.  Woke up after 5 hours, still with a headache, but did eventually manage to get more sleep.