Round The World and other travels

The six Shannon runners arrived at Dublin Airport in two groups of three - one from the city centre and one from the nearby Crowne Plaza hotel. After a trouble-free check-in, we made our way through security and managed to find the Gold Circle Club lounge. We were somewhat alarmed by the ranks of concourse-style hard seats, but managed to pull together a group of much more suitable soft armchairs. After a caffeine top-up, it was soon time to make our way to our A330, which had operated overnight from ORD (Chicago) and was now, in a bit of back-tracking, continuing to the West of Ireland.

I boarded St Maeve and made my way to my allocated seat (21A) and was soon joined by PhilH in 21C and nonsoloinglese in 21D. Although I had known exactly what to expect, the cabin presentation was just about the poorest I had ever seen, with no attempt made to clear up discarded blankets, pillows, newspapers and heaven-knows-what-else from the ORD-DUB overnight. As if this wasn't bad enough, the cabin crew had that totally zonked, just-get-me-home look   "Ah well", I thought, "just shut your eyes and think of the 12K"

We left ahead of schedule at 0808 and were actually airborne by the scheduled departure time of 0815. It was an uneventful short hop, punctuated only by the seat belt sign going off for 10 minutes, which led to a short visit from Brian_1 to bemoan the lack of cleanliness, zero service and the fact that he had a mere one window to call his own

We touched down in SNN at 0842, allowing an ahead-of-schedule 0847 arrival. We were happy to desert the extremely dishevelled St Maeve and repair to the nearby Great Southern Hotel for a well-deserved full Irish breakfast, followed by a round of Irish coffees