Ward Words

Today was our last day in Ireland. As previously mentioned, we did not have access to an alarm clock and were counting on Kelly's ipod, the sun, and our bladders to wake us in the morning. The bladders obviously failed, as we were both up at 2:00 to take care of that business; but the sun woke us both up minutes before the ipod alarm actually went off. We were awake, on time!

Since we had packed the night before, we just got dressed and went down for our first "continental" breakfast of the trip. Our flight was early and we didn't want to trouble Marie with cooking so early in the morning. Lucas had one last bowl of his favorite Irish cereal (Shreddies) and we both had some fruit with our tea and juice.

After saying thanks and goodbye to Marie (and Irish Wembley), we returned our rental car to Hertz and took the shuttle over to the airport. It turned out that our plane was delayed due to weather in Chicago, so we had a lot of time to waste. We spent the rest of our Euros on some chocolate and looked around the duty free shops. The airport was packed with all the high school marching bands from the parade. After leaving the shops, we stopped to turn in our tax back refund forms and began walking towards the gate.

Lucas had a near disaster when he left his passport and boarding pass in a gift shop after setting them on the counter while he tried on a sweatshirt. We were nearly to our gate when he realized he was missing them and took off running back towards the shop. Luckily, he did not have to remain in the airport like Tom Hanks in "The Terminal"--he found his passport and boarding pass right where he had left them.

We boarded the plane for our flight (looong flight) back to Chicago. Eight leg cramping hours later, we deplaned and hiked to our next gate for our 2nd flight from Chicago into Dallas. We had an overnight layover in Dallas, so we stayed with Lucas' parents. The next morning we boarded our final leg of the trip and arrived back in Houston on Easter morning.

We don't have any pictures from the last day, but if you check Kelly's food blog, you can read about the Irish dining experience.