Dear Rick......

(Tim) First off, let me thank those of you who have posted commented. Except Drew. Those of you who did have validated my blog existence. So I've got that going for me. Which is nice. Anyway, last I left this blog we were headed to one of our big stops in Ireland, the Guiness Storehouse. So we rolled in excited to learn more about this wonderful beer and enjoy our complimentary pint with a view of Ireland. That is until we got there at 5:30 and found that they close at 5pm. Awesome. Stay hot, travelers. Once we got over the fact that we missed the one tour we wanted to take in Dublin, we walked around and saw as much of the Dublin area as we could. We found our way back to the hotel around dinner time, and considering how difficult it was to find food at this time yesterday and given the fact that we were a bit of a walk back to the food places, we just grabbed a pizza across the street from our B&B. We went back to the room and Tom popped on the tv. I had the opportunity to point out to Tom that we were in Dublin Ireland eating pizza, drinking Coke, and watching Scrubs. Can these guys travel or what! We then went back out for a few pints and turned in (relatively speaking) early. We had a big day of travel ahead of us. Turned out to be a bit different than we had planned.
We turned the rental car in, but not before Dublin urban planning had it's last laugh, as we had to circle the airport trying to find the rental car drop-off, only to discover that the directions were on the road, not on signs. Ha! I could sense Dublin's smug grin. From there we boarded a plane to London whrere we would take the train to the ferry, the ferry to Belgium and a short train to Bruges, Belgium. "Would" being the operative word. As in we "would have done it if it were possible. It turns out the ferry had a surprise for us as well. But I must first mention our experience with the London trains. I'm sure Tom will blog about this and make it out to be the dumbest thing ever done in the history of mankind. Don't get me wrong, it was incredibly stupid, I just like to think that someone, somewhere has done something dumber. So we're waiting for the train and several others pull up, hang out for awhile, and pull out. So ours comes by and we grab out things and start walking to it. I had decided before this point to take as many pictures as possible to try to create a sort of photo journal. So I stop to snap a picture and look up to see Tom. On the other side of the closed train doors. One second later it pulls away. With Tom and without me. The looks on our faces were a combination of, well, there are no words to describe our faces at that moment . As it pulled out, my biggest concern was for the two gentlemen working security down there who I thought for a minute may possibly die laughing. So, I caught the next train to the destination and spent the hour I had to wait for it laughing out loud at myself. Looking back I probably did not look sane.
We then got off the train and took a quick bus to the ferry. We pop in to the ferry station and ask when the next ferry to Belgium departs. And that would be............wait for it..............never. Sorry guys, the ferries only go to France. Tom shows me where in his book Rick Steves tells us that these ferries go to Belgium and it's a fifteen minute train to Bruges. The ferry takes you to France, where it is a several hour trip to Bruges. In the words of the immortal Brian Matson, I feel and email coming on. Yes, Rick Steves will be hearing from one Tim Kalita as soon as I get home.
Since we were there, we decided to take the ferry to Calais, France, into a country that was not on our itinerary at all, and make the best of it. More on the trip to France to follow.