Lights are on and we are now awake while on the Dreamliner to Ireland! I neglected to mention that we almost did not stay in Business Class, where we had booked our seats for our flight to Dublin. At about 4pm on Sept 28th, day of departure, we received a phone call from Air Canada, which I thought it was another call from the Mobility department about my walker, and instead it was an Air Canada agent telling us we have been downgraded to Economy – not Premium Economy, but Economy. I asked her why and she said the plane that they were going to use had to go in for maintenance and instead they were going to use a “smaller” Dreamliner – 787-800 instead of the -900. That plane change only has 20 people in Business Class instead of 30. So they had to downgrade 10 people to Economy, as Premium Economy was full. I was tired of dealing with Air Canada at this point so I said that they had broken my walker and that I did not think I was able to be downgraded as I do fly with medical information on my file. She said we probably would be downgraded but she would call back. Well, she did call back and told us that everything was fine – we can stay in our 1K and 2K seats. Yipee! Lie flat seats so my back does not get sore!
We got through customs and found our bags pretty fast and we were escorted to the coffee shop next to the Arrivals area, which was where we were going to wait for Anne and Richard, as they were coming in on the WestJet flight from Calgary. It worked our really well – we ended up getting to the coffee shop at about 9:45am and then I looked up their flight, which was due in at 11am and it was arriving early at 10:30am. Sure enough, they popped out of the Arrivals area just before 11am and we then took a cab to our hotel – Dublin One, which I have nicknamed the Matchbox Hotel! The Dublin One would not allow us to check in until 3pm, and it was currently about 12:30pm so we decided to walk to get a spot of lunch! We left our luggage at the hotel and off we walked – about 2km to a local pub which Anne and I had looked up the menu for online. Looked really good – both gluten free items for us and vegan for Richard!
We got there and it was a really authentic Irish pub! Only downside was the menu that was displayed on the website was not being offered – they only offered what was on the whiteboard next to the serving station! No vegan options for Richard! Only suitable item for me was curry chicken – which suited me just fine – that was until she put it on a plate and it was MASSIVE! So Anne and I ended up sharing the dish, I cannot remember what Andrew had and Richard’s food issue we solved on the way back by visiting a Tesco grocery store! As this was late afternoon now, we thought we would go out for a walk, however Anne and Richard were pretty tired (8 hour time change for them) so we all just rested for the evening and were going to connect the next day!
As for the Matchstick – the room was so small that I could not take a realistic picture! The bed was against the wall, so Andrew had to climb into it, there was limited floor space with only a very small desk and a stool and luggage rack, no side table for the bed, and then a huge wet washroom with roll in shower! The accessible washroom was almost the side of the bedroom if folded up! Cute but no where to put one’s luggage other than on the floor and then if we did that, no where to walk or roll a walker around!
Time to get some rest – we are off to the Guinness Storehouse tomorrow morning! The number 1 tourist attraction in Ireland! Probably the 1st Guinness of many for Andrew too!