BOOM – 7 Sleeps

Today one of my friends posted about a flight cancellation she and her husband had experienced on their return from a vacation in the USA to Ireland. Oh how we know the frustration they must feel.

With a few exceptions, when my Mum and Dad came to stay with us, we always went home to Belfast for Christmas.

We had some memorable travel experiences that you could hardly believe.

We got into storms at sea when crossing from Le Harve France to Rosslare Ireland. What should have taken 15 hours took nearly 48. Free cruise! Except most of the time was spent in the harbor and the ferry even ran out of food close to our destination.

Travelling from NYNY to Belfast on a charter flight we ended up in the Azores because of an ice storm that called for a change of flight path. Sounds lovely you might think. Perhaps if we’d got off the plane. All we did was refuel and take off again.

Krishna and Aaron once had an adventure in Heathrow on the way from Shanghai. They got stuck in a lift, missed the connection and ended up going to a party in the hotel where they were lodged. Aaron was three he started partying very early!

One of the most memorable was when we took the channel tunnel in 2009 with Dibley in tow. The temperature was so low the rails of the tunnel train froze.

Our first trip to Ireland from Ohio was a classic. It was 2010 and the British Isles had been hit by a mega snow storm which is unusual. We were the last flight to land in Dublin and were fortunate because Belfast has closed hours before.

The return though saw another mega storm this time in NYNY which saw us missing our connection from Newark to Columbus. The earliest we could get out was the next evening from LaGuardia. What a hardship that was spending the night at the airport and the whole day in NYNY with a beautiful blanket of snow everywhere.

This year we will dearly miss seeing our nears and dears in Northern Ireland but that travel we won’t miss at all.

Blessing # 549 – Staying Put