This final blog entry will round out my Dublin research trip studying my KEEFFE and MEADE ancestors in my maternal family tree. If you've somehow landed here first without reading about days 1-7, go ahead and flip back to those articles for the full picture! I warn you, it's very genealogy-focused, but I bet if you're at this website at all, that's what you came for. So read on!
Most importantly, I want to give a shoutout and wholeheartedly thank Donna Moughty for organizing the excursion and lending her expertise during our family history hunt in Ireland. This was my first time traveling internationally solely for the purpose of genealogy, and I'm so glad I did. I found so many pieces of history to add to my family tree that I would never be able to discover online! It was a very different vacation from ones I've taken in the past.
DAY 8
Saturday, October 14th, 2023 was a sad day, because it meant the vacation was over! There was no more research to do. Unfortunately, I hadn't signed up for the second leg of Donna's retirement tour, heading up to Belfast for family history research in Northern Ireland. A good chunk of our group, including Donna herself, was headed up north by train. Instead, I had to catch a plane home.
But first, I had made plans with one of my fellow researchers, Anne, to head down the street to grab "a cuppa" (a cup of coffee) from a local shop. But when we landed at their door, they were closed! And so was the pastry shop around the corner. I guess, since we were in a more business-like district, a lot of the local eateries were shut down on the weekends due to low traffic flow.
So, that was a bust! We settled for one last breakfast in the downstairs restaurant of our hotel, Buswells.
And then after saying our farewells, I checked out of my room and lugged my suitcase a couple blocks over to the park where the Aircoach back to the airport had a pickup stop (about every 20min I believe).
I got there right in the nick of time and hopped on! They accept Leap Cards, which I had already pre-loaded with enough for the trip (about 8 euro) and simply tapped my card upfront and snagged a seat. The bus made a few stops through the city (didn't take very long at all), and I think we made it to the airport within 30 minutes. It was a light traffic time for Dublin (plan for an hour, I'm told!).
This was my first time flying out of Dublin. It's interesting for us Americans. Instead of clearing customs once you land back in the States, you actually do that security dance in Dublin.
First, head to your airline to check in and/or check your luggage as you normally would (I flew Aer Lingus which did everything via a self-service kiosk). Then, you'll get in line for normal security check (where you can only walk through if you've got a boarding pass). Choose your line carefully! I chose wrong, and mine took at least 25 minutes to get through when I saw all the other lines breeze right through. And once you've picked a line, the security guards will not allow you to change (that seemed quite odd to me). Standard stuff here - placing your bags and belongings in buckets to go through the X-ray machine. Then, you're dumped into the terminal where you can shop and eat to your heart's content (duty-free, anyone?).
I would have loved to explore, but I was honestly not sure how the customs process would work, or more importantly, how long it would take! So I thought I should find it first and then head back to shop. Wrong again! Take this time to do your shopping, because once you start heading through customs clearance, you can't go back, unless you want to do it all over again.
It's tucked away in a corner and then you flash your passport and boarding pass to go down a set of escalators to another round of security and X-ray machines. This line was super fast (at least when I went). It took the longest time to just walk through the maze they had setup. If you have liquids or anything else that you separate for security, guess what, you need to do that all over again. That was frustrating.
This is where you go up to the TSA-like person (maybe it is TSA?) and give them your passport. My lady was nice and quick, and guess what? She let me bypass all of the security lines and go through an "express" line. So, all those liquids I had prepared again, kinda wasted haha. But whatever, it was quick!
Then, you turn the corner into another room and here's where the lines split into those who carry U.S. passports and those who are visa holders (and there's a separate area off to the right for Global Entry, which not a single person was using). I dipped into the U.S. passport line (which was much shorter) and then waited for a border patrol agent. His only question to me was whether I was traveling with a group to which I replied I was traveling alone but had met up with a research group in Dublin for the past week. He then stamped my passport and sent me on my way.
I wish I had watched him stamp it more intently, because I only noticed once I got home that he stamped it SO lightly that you can barely see it unless you know it's there. So, really, my passport now looks like I never left Ireland. Oh well.
Now, I was officially in the terminal with my gate, and sadly, there was only one cafe in the entire terminal, one convenience shop, and one coffee stand. That's it. So, again, don't miss your duty-free shopping opportunity before customs!
I grabbed a coffee and walked several laps throughout the terminal to kill time before my flight. We finally took off mid-afternoon.
I happened to be sat next to a British guy around my age who was fairly sure he was of some relation to WINNIE-THE-POOH author A.A. Milne (his surname was Milne)! How cool is that? It was an eleven hour flight home and we talked for 10.5 hours of it! It went by really quickly.
What didn't go by very fast? The amount of time it took for our luggage to plop back out on the carousel after our flight landed! Eventually it did arrive though. Then, it was on to a shuttle bus to a local hotel where I had left my car, and then on home!
All in all, a wonderful trip, though I did seemingly lose my headphones somewhere in LAX that night. Bummer. (They have since been replaced).
And these blogs have fully covered what transpired on my entire journey, including all of my finds. Soon, I'll be writing more in detail about my most important discovery, the 1754 map of Pharihy, County Cork!
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