Long Travel from
May 2 – 12, 2010
- Updated May 14, 2010
Ten photos mainly
taken by Betty Nolan are posted at www.kodakgallery.com
in an album entitled “
By LEWIS NOLAN
May 2, 2010 – Sunday –
Travel from
Betty and I were up early in our home near the middle of
Betty Nolan on
grassy, stone wall on Dingle Peninsula in Southwest Ireland near Slea Head
It has been a very wet and rather cool spring. Parts of our
home
Our friend Linda Ray, a home health care professional who
had expertly provided care for me three years ago during my long recovery from
a brain aneurysm, had offered to drive us to the Memphis International Airport.
She picked us up at 6 a.m. and helped load our two big suitcases packed by
Betty into her car. Check-in went smoothly, in no small part due to the
splendid travel arrangements made so meticulously by our agent, Erin Bobbit of Gullivers’s Travel in
Our Delta flight on a regional jet departed on time for
We took the early flight to
Our flight to
We had so-so salads for lunch at an airport eatery, deciding
we’d hold out to enjoy a firs-class dinner served in Aer
Lingus’ overnight flight to
The airline operates a similar VIP Lounge to that of Delta in a separate terminal. There, I enjoyed a small portion of sliced salmon with a small glass of tonic water (the quinine in tonic helps prevent night leg cramps caused by my blood pressure medication effectively sucking potassium out of my system).
Interestingly, only bottled water was available at the
We had splurged on this trip by paying a premium to fly Business Class on Aer Lingus on both transatlantic crossings. With both of us now retired and experiencing some health issues, our financial status helped by the run-up in the stock market the last year or so enabled us to pay the extra charges to enjoy the comfort and service offered in the airline’s Premier Class service. It also afforded us a better chance to get at least some sleep by not being crammed into the tourist class seating in the airplane.
The Aer Lingus
jumbo jet was only abut half full. The empty spaces were probably a function of
relatively hard financial times in
On the positive side, the reduced number of passengers on our flight gave us and a few others upgraded to Premier Class the undivided attention of the youthful, cheerful and oh-so-polite Aer Lingus flight attendances. They were generally attractive, young women in the front of the airplane. Betty and I had two very large, reclining seats in the first row behind the flight attendant service bulkhead. The seats reclined with the help of motors to several positions including to a nearly flat bed. Available were real pillows and warm blankets.
The head flight attendant was a cheerful woman perhaps in
her 20s by the name of Gillian White, who told us she had grown up in
Even before the airplane took off, the flight attendants offered – and we accepted – glasses of champagne while the passengers who paid much less boarded in Tourist Class. The few of us in Premier Class were also given nicely printed menus to select our evening meals. Betty and I chose filet mignon, served with assorted vegetables and wine. Also offered was a dish of bro8led duck, cooked codfish and a special meal for vegetarians. The small steaks were heated to our well-done preference and were surprisingly good.
We passed on the availability of movies and other
entertainment on small TV screens mounted in the bulkhead to the front of our
seats, in favor of trying to sleep. The first hour of so of flight was a little
bumpy due to coastal winds. But once the Aer Lingus jet got to altitude, it was smooth flying all the
way to the coast of
We landed at
We felt no need to “declare” a few souvenir, tiny bottles of liquor served at no charge to Premier Class passengers on the flight including Bailey’s Cream for Betty and Irish whiskey for me.
The only disappointment we had at
Continue with Part 2 of Ireland Trip / Return to Nolan Travels Home Page