Tag: tour

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You Call This a Shower?: Part 5

Riding the tram into Dublin.

So, remember that phone tree I told you about in an earlier installment? Well, when we got set up in that first hotel outside of Shannon I took a minute to call my wife who was the first branch of the tree, and she sent it on to the next person, and so forth and so on. However, unbeknownst to me there was a breakdown in the process after the fourth person was called. Of course what that meant was that all of the parents on the bottom part of the tree didn’t get the word that we were there safely. And they were incensed, but I knew nothing about it until that next day while we were on the bus heading to Limerick and Killarney. One of the students had gotten in contact with her mother who was lower on the phone tree, and she had gotten an earful about not letting anyone know she was safely there; then I got on the phone with her and received another earful.

And I could understand what she was saying. I too was frustrated by what happened on the tree, and I promised her something like that wouldn’t happen again. The only way I thought I could do it was to call her as the start of a second tree, effectively ending the first tree with the person who hadn’t called along. It was a pain, but I knew the most important thing was to make sure parents were informed or I would get another earful. It was the burden of being a leader. Like Spider-Man said, “With great power comes great responsibility,” or something like that. I was learning as I went. As our bus pulled away from Killarney in the wee hours of the morning on the third day, headed to Dublin, I was deep into planning our “free day” in the capital city, a place that had been one of my favorites during my honeymoon.

Three days without rain was more like it.

We were also starting to gel as a group, forming some inside jokes and being more relaxed with each other. Intermittently our tour guide would give us some information on some obscure facts and historical notes. He would also lead us in some rounds of songs. About halfway to Dublin we stopped at some ruins that were beyond amazing. It was a series of buildings in massive disrepair, but they were obviously old, and we took a bunch of pictures there. And get this: it hadn’t rained at all during the first three days of our Irish journey. It made me think of the old Enya album, A Day Without Rain, which was ironic because it rains nearly every day in Ireland, so yes, it was strange, but we were enjoying it immensely, being able to sightsee without that over our heads. Our tour guide told us we had only an hour in the ruins, so we took off in separate groups to explore. I went with one of my other chaperones and eight students to the ruins farther off and we took some amazing photos there. It was easily one of the highlights. Continue reading “You Call This a Shower?: Part 5”

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You Call This a Shower?: Part 3

I almost fell right after this photo.

After such a long transatlantic journey and an introduction to so many new people, it was easy to forget that I was responsible for 12 students across the world from where we lived. We arrived at the Shannon hotel in the early morning hours and were given our rooms. Now, instead of being able to sleep for eons like we all desperately wanted (we were a scraggly looking crew after the long bus and plane rides, and it being early morning), we had a grand total of one hour to clean up and get ready for our first bus tour. I used the time to make sure I knew where all my travelers were bunking, to call the first person in the phone tree to let them know we were there safely, and of course to get clean.

Now, I had been to Europe before, on a trip to Ireland with my new wife for our honeymoon in 2003, so I had been introduced to the “shower culture”of the Emerald Isle, but it had been so long ago that I forgot what it had been all about… until I turned on that water in the hotel room in Shannon. Then it all came flooding back, no ironic pun intended. To say the water pressure was lacking would be putting it a bit accurately. If it had been dripping on me, drop by drop, I would have probably felt the exact same way I did standing under what was called a shower, and I had my doubts. But I didn’t have much time and had to keep moving, not at all feeling refreshed yet on the move anyway.

Then back to the huge bus, one of those that settled down before the door opened, and to our clearly Irish bus driver and clearly British tour director. But our group was clearly American so we started talking and we didn’t stop until we got to a roadside cafe in the Irish countryside, a charming little place that served “breakfast & lunch” on a regular basis, but I remember thinking they would make more money if they served dinner too. We were responsible for our own lunches, so each of my group members went into their previously concealed fanny packs (I made them wear those) to get out those new Euros that we all still didn’t quite understand the value of. Which brought us to one of the biggest debates I had with the parents and students before we even left for Europe. Alcohol control. Continue reading “You Call This a Shower?: Part 3”

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You Call This a Shower?: Part 2

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The Heathrow shuffle.

I knew I was still crazy, but it felt like a good kind of crazy the closer we came to getting on that airplane for a six hour trip fast forward in time across the Atlantic. And then the day had arrived, the one I had been waiting for an entire two years, or even since I first left that booth at NCTE (the national English teacher’s conference) in late November, 2005, and we were loading up on the Greyhound bus headed for New York City: me, 12 students, and 3 chaperones. The bus was a concession we had to make because I had unwittingly secured us a tour out of the NYC without first finding a way for us to get to the NYC. We somehow got sixteen seats on the bus, though, and made our way to the city that doesn’t sleep, with our plethora of bags, ready for our great adventure.

Part of the crew.

When we got to New York City it was a quick trip from the bus station to the airport, but our times were really close so we had to hurry. Little did we know then how much of a story rushing would be for us during the rest of the journey, but we made our first flight with no real problems. It was the changeover I was most worried about, however, as we had to fly to London first, then cross through the airport to board the plane to Ireland, all in a matter of two hours. The biggest problem was that we would have to go through customs in London, then all the way across the airport to the Ireland terminal and through security before being able to board the next plane. Our tour guide would meet us once we arrived in the Shannon airport and take it from there.

But our plane got into Heathrow late, and the queue for customs was longer than the line for a Justin Bieber concert, not to mention that two in our group were waylaid at customs for whatever reasons. Passports were in order, we weren’t even staying in England, and they had to put our trip on pause while the rest of time moved on. I kept checking my watch while the customs agent tried to explain something I would never understand anyway. Eventually we kept moving, but by that time our group was champing at the bit knowing how little time we had. Once we left customs we sprinted for the Aer Lingus counter to check in and get our boarding passes, and when we were about halfway there we heard that boarding had started. Yikes. We picked up the pace, got there in record time, got our passes, and headed through security. Where we had another issue. Continue reading “You Call This a Shower?: Part 2”