Europe 2019: Day 1 and 2 Heading Out

Friday 9^th and Saturday 10^th August

Robyn and I had decided to take the whole of Friday off work given that our flight didn't leave Melbourne until a bit after 9pm. We always have a few jobs to do, final things to buy and the last packing to finish off, but Robyn is never satisfied with having 95% of her time filled up, she always likes to push it just that little bit further. So on the Friday we had a handyman coming over to install the new clothes dryer (it's a European style laundry in a cupboard so the dryer has to be hung off the wall above the washing machine), and the plumber in to fit the new bathroom fixtures (well, not new exactly as they had been purchased in March).

In other words, a hectic day became just a touch more out-of-control. But it all finished in time and we were able to get the packing done – well I did – before the taxi arrived. A bit of nudging got us finally into the car and off to the airport.

Our luck with plane seats, or lack thereof, continued when we found ourselves in the last row of a section next to the galley. I didn't find this too bad but Rob felt that her seat didn't recline back far enough, and later had trouble with the galley light shining in her eyes. I opted for the noise-cancelling headphones, ear plugs and the eye mask and generally did better than I normally do. In any event it was a decent flight to get some sleep, leaving well after dark and not arriving in Dubai until just on sunrise local time. Even so it was still 35C outside.

I thought the whole flight was rather uneventful really: watched a few movies and an hour of a Brian Cox documentary that I'd missed, and a few hours sleep. Still felt like crap when I got off the plane, though it was a slightly less crappy sense of crap than I generally feel. Maybe it was the Dreamliner plane that did it.

The usual shuffle in Dubai airport (10 minute walk, 5 minute train ride, and another 5 minute walk) got us to the Emirates lounge for a coffee and a second breakfast while waiting for our connection on to Dublin. The Boeing 737-800 just isn't up to the standard of the Dreamliner: the seats aren't as good, there is less leg-room and the flight attendants seem much less attentive. The first leg was about 14 hours and the second a bit over 7. You don't really enjoy either, you just endure them.

Customs and baggage pick up was no problem, though we did have a bit of a wait at the car hire counter. First amusing moment of the trip happened when I realised that I had booked a car with a manual transmission. I can't remember the last time I'd driven a non-automatic – maybe ten years ago – so it took me a bit to realise that I had to have feet on both the clutch and the brake for the car to start. Car started, transmission conquered, and 45 minutes later we were at our hotel for the night. As for Stockholm in 2017, this trip was just on 30 hours front-door-to-hotel-room.

Wish the car hire guy had forewarned us about the tolls on Irish motorways though. It wasn't a big problem as I didn't actually have to pay anything anywhere, but the tolls were based on electronic tagging and I didn't want the car rental company to handle the penalty because I knew they'd throw another hefty fee onto the bill by way of an administration charge.

Robyn had booked us into a large country hotel which used to be a Roman Catholic school in a previous life. It had been abandoned some time in the 1980s before it was acquired in the 1990s by someone wanting it for an hotel. Massive renovations and extensions ensued.

A Guinness, a brief walk in the cooling late afternoon, dinner and we were in bed by 6:30pm. I was shattered. I hadn't set up my phone with its new European SIM card, hadn't paid the toll over the internet, and barely figured out where the light switches were. All I wanted was a dark room and sleep.