Too Many Buses
Aug. 27th, 2019 08:36 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
kevin_standleeNeither Lisa nor I nor Kuma Bear like long bus trips. We conceivably could have avoided the long bus ride to the airport by taking the now-reinstated Enterprise train back to Dublin yesterday, then a short bus ride to an airport hotel, but that would have meant throwing away our day of Belfast tourism yesterday. (We got a like back from Vicki Pipe, which makes us happy.) And the bus ride from Keflavik Airport was unavoidable.
I was up at 4:30 AM so that we would be able to get out of the hotel by 6:30 for our 6:45 AM bus to Dublin Airport. The Europa Bus Centre is just across the street from the Holiday Inn, and we got our final packing done faster than I expected, so we had time to wait.
The bus ended up only half-full, so Kuma Bear got his own seat.
It was a misty morning in Ireland, and I fell asleep several times on the trip to the airport, which is unusual for me on buses.
At Dublin Airport, we were once again very early for our flight, which gave us plenty of time to make our complicated way through Terrorization and on to the airport lounge to which we were entitled by our Saga class upgrade. The flight was running slightly late. When we got to the gate, the inbound equipment was only just arriving. Then issues with boarding several people who needed special assistance (no jetway, stairs only) slowed us down more, but eventually we got going.
Kuma Bear had to hide in the book bag.
But soon enough he had his space in Saga Class between Lisa and me.
And he had a look at a nice fish lunch served up front. This was nice shrimp, salmon, and herring with a dill sauce.
The flight to Iceland was only two hours long, and was one of the most comfortable ones I've ever had.
Arriving at Keflavik, we had to board another bus for the 50 km drive to Reykjavik. Both Lisa and I think that Iceland has missed a trick not trying to build an electrically-driven high-speed-rail connection from KEF to Reykjavik, power it with the country's vast reserves of electricity and financing it by all of the fossil fuel they won't have to import to run the large fleets of buses that run between the airport and the city.
After what seemed an eternity, we got to Reykjavik, where we transferred to a smaller bus to take us slightly closer to our hotel, the City Centre Hotel. It's much more conveniently located than the Hotel Leifur Eiriksson at which we stayed last time we were here. The first room they gave us didn't have a bathtub, and Lisa really wanted a tub, not a shower. They hunted around and offered the room from which the picture above was taken. It's a nominal downgrade, but rather than working out a refund (we'd already been charged roughly $900 for three nights), they offered to throw in breakfast for the three days we're here, and that's a net upgrade. The room has a mini-fridge and nine storage drawers. We really wish we'd had a room like this in Dublin.
Lisa is not feeling well at all. She worked so hard in Dublin and got so little sleep that she was dehydrated and run-down and susceptible to whatever might come along. She's been hacking and coughing for days now. I don't think it's a cold, but something allergic. Ireland is beautiful and green, but it's too much like Oregon for Lisa, where she always had terrible allergies. By the time we reached Iceland, her nose was red and raw. After we got to the hotel and got moved in, we found a nearby drugstore, got her some cough drops, overnight cough medicine that should help her sleep, and a big bag of super-soft tissues.
Lisa also found herself short one European connector. Rather than go buy another plug adaptor, she had us go to the hardware store we shopped at last time we were here and where we were going to go anyway because they sell heavy work gloves not made in China and that don't wear out like the cheap gloves I can buy at home. Besides the gloves, Lisa bought a European power plug. We also picked up some groceries from Bonus (an Icelandic grocery store chain) and went back to the hotel. Lisa then disconnected the UK-style connector from the cord she needed and wired in the European connector.
With equipment rewired, Lisa took a long bath, then (after taking a dose of cough medicine) went to bed. We hope that a good night's sleep, cough medicine, and some of the best water in the world may make her feel better tomorrow.
Finally, we got some excellent news for our trip home: our bid for the Saga class upgrade on the last leg has been accepted, and so we'll have a far more comfortable ride back to California on Friday.
I was up at 4:30 AM so that we would be able to get out of the hotel by 6:30 for our 6:45 AM bus to Dublin Airport. The Europa Bus Centre is just across the street from the Holiday Inn, and we got our final packing done faster than I expected, so we had time to wait.
The bus ended up only half-full, so Kuma Bear got his own seat.
It was a misty morning in Ireland, and I fell asleep several times on the trip to the airport, which is unusual for me on buses.
At Dublin Airport, we were once again very early for our flight, which gave us plenty of time to make our complicated way through Terrorization and on to the airport lounge to which we were entitled by our Saga class upgrade. The flight was running slightly late. When we got to the gate, the inbound equipment was only just arriving. Then issues with boarding several people who needed special assistance (no jetway, stairs only) slowed us down more, but eventually we got going.
Kuma Bear had to hide in the book bag.
But soon enough he had his space in Saga Class between Lisa and me.
And he had a look at a nice fish lunch served up front. This was nice shrimp, salmon, and herring with a dill sauce.
The flight to Iceland was only two hours long, and was one of the most comfortable ones I've ever had.
Arriving at Keflavik, we had to board another bus for the 50 km drive to Reykjavik. Both Lisa and I think that Iceland has missed a trick not trying to build an electrically-driven high-speed-rail connection from KEF to Reykjavik, power it with the country's vast reserves of electricity and financing it by all of the fossil fuel they won't have to import to run the large fleets of buses that run between the airport and the city.
After what seemed an eternity, we got to Reykjavik, where we transferred to a smaller bus to take us slightly closer to our hotel, the City Centre Hotel. It's much more conveniently located than the Hotel Leifur Eiriksson at which we stayed last time we were here. The first room they gave us didn't have a bathtub, and Lisa really wanted a tub, not a shower. They hunted around and offered the room from which the picture above was taken. It's a nominal downgrade, but rather than working out a refund (we'd already been charged roughly $900 for three nights), they offered to throw in breakfast for the three days we're here, and that's a net upgrade. The room has a mini-fridge and nine storage drawers. We really wish we'd had a room like this in Dublin.
Lisa is not feeling well at all. She worked so hard in Dublin and got so little sleep that she was dehydrated and run-down and susceptible to whatever might come along. She's been hacking and coughing for days now. I don't think it's a cold, but something allergic. Ireland is beautiful and green, but it's too much like Oregon for Lisa, where she always had terrible allergies. By the time we reached Iceland, her nose was red and raw. After we got to the hotel and got moved in, we found a nearby drugstore, got her some cough drops, overnight cough medicine that should help her sleep, and a big bag of super-soft tissues.
Lisa also found herself short one European connector. Rather than go buy another plug adaptor, she had us go to the hardware store we shopped at last time we were here and where we were going to go anyway because they sell heavy work gloves not made in China and that don't wear out like the cheap gloves I can buy at home. Besides the gloves, Lisa bought a European power plug. We also picked up some groceries from Bonus (an Icelandic grocery store chain) and went back to the hotel. Lisa then disconnected the UK-style connector from the cord she needed and wired in the European connector.
With equipment rewired, Lisa took a long bath, then (after taking a dose of cough medicine) went to bed. We hope that a good night's sleep, cough medicine, and some of the best water in the world may make her feel better tomorrow.
Finally, we got some excellent news for our trip home: our bid for the Saga class upgrade on the last leg has been accepted, and so we'll have a far more comfortable ride back to California on Friday.
no subject
Date: 2019-08-28 09:36 am (UTC)Considering the awful mess that seems to be the Dublin airport, I'd also suggest that Ireland install a high-speed rail link between there & Shannon, & have all the long-haul flights go into Shannon. More ambitious, but appealing to my warped sensibilities, would be to have the terminal itself — baggage check, ticket counters, Stupidity, & all — in Dublin proper, & treat the two airports effectively as concourses. They could definitely do that at Keflavik.
An Irish Sea tunnel similar to the one under the English Channel has been in discussion for a long time, without much progress that I've heard of, & now Brexit has really thrown a spanner into the works. Even with a rail link from Holyhead or Liverpool, though, there would presumably still be a lot of European air traffic into Dublin. A Brest–Cork tunnel would be a huge undertaking, something like 10 times the length of the Channel tunnel, plus it would run straight under Penzance. Similarly, the Dublin–Cherbourg ferry has to circumnavigate Cornwall, so even if SNCF were to upgrade the Basse-Normandie line to TGV, I'm not sure how much the trip time could be reduced. The W.B. Yeats, which I was on, has a service speed of 22 kt, over 40 km/h. 35 kt, really the highest practicable with conventional ships, isn't an enormous improvement (say 12 hours vs 18), & the trip is a long one for hydrofoil or hovercraft. Dublin–Cork by rail would only mean more changes, unless a train ferry were used to provide a through Dublin–Paris service — which I like the sound of, but such things seem to have fallen out of favour. And a canal from Burnham-on-Sea to Bournemouth via Glastonbury really raises more questions than it answers!
My observation was that, in addition to the expected Heavy Goods Vehicles, a great deal of the traffic aboard the W.B. Yeats was "caravans", presumably Irish holidaymakers headed for the South of France. This is undoubtedly a highly seasonal traffic, but it does make a good argument (in my mind anyway!) for SNCF to implement something along the lines of an Auto Train, especially if it could be routed around Paris. Certainly disgorging everyone at Saint Lazare & having them make their way through the city would not be a good plan. The Finns have Auto Trains, so the idea isn't unknown in Europe.