An Irish Vacation: An exercise in public transportation.

Wednesday November 11

Ok. So Wednesday was always supposed to be a travel day. Trigg and I were headed to Ireland and we had bought plane tickets from Beauvais airport and train tickets from Angers to Beauvais. Silly us, we had thought that this meant only two legs of travel that day. Boy were we wrong.

While waiting in the Angers station for our train I realized that our tickets listed a layover in Paris of an hour- ok, not something we planned on but whatever. Our train left at about 2:00 pm and thanks to its wonderfully speed we were in paris by 4:00. At that point we realized our tickets listed Gare du Nord as the departure station for our second train, where is the Gare du Nord you ask? Why all you have to do is take the 4 metro line 8 stops north...easy enough right? Well after our first experience- thank goodness successful- with the Paris metro we made it to Gare du Nord and boarded our second train and 3rd leg of the journey.

When they train dropped us off at around 6:30 we were expecting to emerge into the large crowded airport of Beauvais.....clearly this was not our day, and we discovered that we were indeed at Beauvais but at the train station only- how do you get to the airport you ask? Well all you have to do is take the 4 euro shuttle.....too bad we missed it by one minute and had to wait an hour and twenty minutes for the next.

Finally after our 4th leg of the journey we arrived at the airport- only to find it the busiest place in paris at 8:00 at night- it took us nearly 2 hours to get through tne lines for passports and security. We finally got on our 10:30 flight to Ireland haggard and swearing to never fly out of Beauvais again- with the added bonus of having to take a bus to where we would be staying upon our arrival. Thank goodness for once again being in an English speaking country because I made friends with the nice grandpa sitting next me and he offered to give us a ride because his wife was picking him up and would be driving right past the college where we were staying. Turns out they were both wonderful people and kept us entertained throughout the 30 minute drive to the college. I was overjoyed to finally stop moving, my stomach absolutely could not take anymore because I get motion sickness nearly every  time I enter a moving vehichle.

Lesson learned- if you ever want to take 6 legs of transportation in one day- train, metro, train, shuttle, plane, car, feel free to fly out of the Beauvais airport....no thanks, maybe that's why the tickets were only 20 euros?