Destination: Tramore, Ireland

I am currently in a small town, Tramore, Ireland. It’s 8am in the morning, but the day is black as night and the air is just as cool. I was woken during the night by my two brothers, 7 and 10, running around the house we have swapped with another family of 6.

The flights to get here: Canberra - Adelaide - Dubai - Dublin, took 28 hours including stopovers. Finn (10) and Darcy (7) had never in their living memory been on a plane before (though of course they have been on plenty in my living memory), and so everything was novel and exciting. Finn loudly declared to the entire flight staff that the toilet flush was “really scary”, which they bemusedly relayed to one each other throughout our entire first flight.

Darcy quickly grew accustomed to sky high luxury. Our first take-off was the most thrilling ride of his life, but by the last he was in tears because he wanted to go in first class. We saw those privileged alien-people whilst boarding on the plane. They left the curtains tantalisingly open so we could glimpse at their thousand dollar a flight perks: a lamp, a desk, a TV, and fully reclining chairs.

During the stopover we gained a glimpse into another life. It started off when we were ushered into a shuttle bus, where - like docile sheep - we compliantly stood. Where were we being shuttled too? Mum suggested we stage a protest, exit the bus and potentially die whilst power-saluting in front of a Boeing 747. Instead we were finally released. We plundered our way to the next gate, dodging non-sensored lift doors intent on trapping the vulnerable (me), and abandoning the slowest (mum) on the first floor while the rest of us ascended to the third. The pressure got to us. I could feel us all breaking apart. In between the 6th and 7th terminal, our weakest link, Mother (40-something), choked Finn. The ‘angel’ of the family, Darcy, also randomly attacked Finn. It is still not clear what their motivations were, and why Finn was their target.

We finally got to our gate, but for me, the nightmare had just begun. On that final flight I was trapped between Mother and Michael (nearly 50?) for 8 hours, who bickered over me at each other, using their festy, unbrushed mouths. Finally, I succumbed to the darkness, using 5 herbal sleeping pills.

It was all worth it when we entered Dublin. Angels greeted us in the form of a school choir, their sweet voices gliding in formation when we arrived. We drove to Waterford through storybook streets practicing our Irish accents. The mainstream radio featured classic and not-so-classic Christmas carols and limericks, without any sense of irony. We speed across the map, passing a bazillion empty paddocks that appeared to serve no other purpose than to just be classically Irish in their greenness. We stopped over at the ‘Reg’ in Waterford after traipsing through the world famous Waterford Wintervale Wonderland: a market consisting of 5 stalls and some epic rides, such as a slippery dip and a super fast ferris wheel.

Due to the bizarre absence of street signs, it took us an hour to find our new home. By then it was 8.00pm, or in other words - 7.00am according to Finn and Darcy’s body clock. And so began the evil perils of jet lag.

#Travel #Ireland