We woke up and soon it began to rain steadily again. We had some time to have a breakfast in our room, realized that we hadn’t checked in for our flight today and we’re able to do that and then pack up and bid our host, Lucy a farewell.
We had about a 15 minute walk in the pouring rain. We were grateful for our raincoats, but wished we had brought umbrellas along. We had been advised umbrellas were not going to be necessary and would just get blown away by the wind, but we could’ve used them this morning. The place that the bus took off was literally in the parking lot of the Italian restaurant that we have at the night before.
Both of us got soaked while we walked, but when we arrived, we found we could catch even a little bit earlier of the bus and were able to get right on the bus headed to the airport. It wasn’t so crowded and so we could drape our raincoats over the seats in front of us to try to dry out a bit.
It was an uneventful trip to the airport. We’re driving through a light rain as we sat on the upper level of the bus was interested in noticing the countryside the towns as we went through. Dick was remembering how we had considered renting a car to drive through the UK. But sitting back and letting the driver of the bus get us there while it was dumping rain sure seemed like a smart move.
Heathrow airport is very, very large. And we were grateful that we arrived with plenty of time. Going through security and check-in was mostly uneventful, with just a couple of blips. They needed us to get check our roller bags and Dick and Patti were separated for a while, but we got that worked out. Dick also had a suspicious beard-trimming scissors in his carry-on bag that was totally fine, but needed to be checked.
Eventually, we were in the area by our gate with enough time to work on some photos on our blog a bit. Soon they were calling our flight to board. And we would go on a quick, just a little over an hour domestic flight landing in Belfast, Northern Ireland, still part of the United Kingdom.
As arranged, we called Ellie and David, who would be our Servas hosts for the next couple of days. We met up with David and he picked us up at the city airport. That was just a few minutes from their home in Holywood, a small town minutes away from Belfast.
We were especially interested in having some individual discussions with people in the Belfast area. There has been a long and complicated history there of the conflict between the Catholics and the protestants. This was known as “the Troubles “. Learning more about this would be a focus of our time in Northern Ireland.
After we got a little orientation drive around the community, we arrived at David and Ellie‘s beautiful home. Ellie had made a lovely chicken dinner for us and we enjoyed having some time beginning to get to know each other. We clearly shared a lot of common interests and had some great conversations.
Eventually, we were all tired and needed to go to bed. This was going to be a lovely time together.
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