I got up this morning at 6 am and woke up the girls before I got in the shower. A lot of good that did. After I got out of the shower and got dressed the girls were still not out of bed. Due to the rather urgent need to keep to the schedule today I made a second effort at getting them up. This time with the information that we were leaving in 10 minutes and they were still in bed.
We made it out the door a few minutes late, said our thank you and goodbye to Linda, and David drove us in to Cambridge to catch our 7:15 train. We made it to the station about 7:05, just in time to pick up the tickets from the machine and get on the platform about 2 minutes before the train. If we had missed the train we would have been able to catch the next one but then we would be a little bit rushed in London to switch trains.
We made it into London Kings Cross about 8:05 where we walked the approx. 3 blocks with our packs on over to London Euston station. We had about 40 minutes before our train so we grabbed a couple breakfast sandwiches. By the time we finished those our train was boarding, so we made our way down to platform 4 where we found coach D and hopped on board. The train was very busy and if not for our reserved seats we would not have been sitting together. And the luggage was a bit of a problem too. As it turns out, the gap between the reverse facing seats and the next set of forward facing seats was actually enough for us to stuff all three packs in. By the time were were a few miles down the track we were sitting comfortably in our proper seats.
The train ride was 3 hours 40 minutes to Holyhead in Wales. So the brief period on the train going through Wales and our short stay in the ferry terminal was all we got to see of Wales.
The ferry checks your luggage so all we had to carry around was our day packs. Our first stop was the brasserie, where we got fish & chips, and chicken and fries. For nearly 40 euros!! The food made BC Ferries look pretty good. Fortunately for me the Guinness on tap was only 4.75 euros.
The internet on the ferry is also very expensive. The best deal was 8 euros for 1 hour. Two hours would have cost more than a whole month at home.
We went on the top deck for a few minutes just to look around and feel the fresh air blowing on our faces. I don't think this ferry is quite as fast as a BC ferry. I might have been deceived as it is definitely bigger. But the whole crew sounds Russian.
Shannon and Shayla obviously didn't get enough sleep as it didn't take long for them to start napping after I pulled out the netbook to write this blog entry over a cold pint of Guinness. We did look around the ship of course, but that didn't take anywhere near 3 hours, so they both had a bit of a nap in the lounge.
When we got off the ship in Dublin we had a very brief check through customs and then met Kevin outside. I hadn't seen him for 25 years so I didn't recognize him right away and neither did he recognize me. But it was pretty obvious with Shannon and Shayla along with me wearing their Canadian jackets.
Kevin drove us back to his house through the tunnel down the M1, followed by a few small detours through town when we hit Drogheda. It was some time after 6 pm when we pulled up to the house and were met by Ann and 3 very excited dogs, which remained pretty excited until bedtime.
Ann made us a nice dinner and we sat around having a nice chat while the girls did some major Facebooking again. We had to force them to give it up by 11.
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