Saturday, July 28, 2007

Crossing the Pond - THEN

Donald had left several weeks earlier for Scotland. Emanuel Gorres, Tony Watson, David Levite and myself were headed for Dublin, Ireland all leaving on the same day. Donald would be coming over to Ireland as we and the Scots contingent all emerged on Portrush.

As it turned out Tony and I were on the same flight from BWI to New York. As we prepared to take off I started a conversation with a fellow passenger next to me. As I explained what we doing. The passenger in front of me turned her head to hear the conversation.

She exclaimed how exciting! I'm Roman Catholic and I know about St. Columba. (Most Americans don't.) She said her neighbor was part of senior management of the Discovery Channel and she would tell him to send a crew to cover our adventure. (Never saw them, but many UK correspondents did.

After landing in New York in disembarking from the plane, the female passenger stuck out her hand to shake mine and said, Bless you, Ern Malcolm! I felt something in my palm which turned out to be a tightly folded fifty dollar bill!

I believe Tony and David were on the same flight, Emmanuel would arrive before us. The flight to Ireland was uneventful and as we three picked up our luggage, Emmanel showed up.

We took a bus to the train station and there we encountered our first difficulty with a divided Ireland. We didn't see on the train schedule boards any trains that would take us to Portrush. We asked the ticket agent and he just shook his head and looked away. Two more agents gave the same response of can't help you.

We were really perplexed. Then another traveler came up to us and said he overhead our conversations with the ticket agents. He told us to take the #XX train that will go to Belfast, NORTHERN Ireland and there you can get a train to Portrush. On the schedule board that train showed no stops in Northern Ireland. He followed his advice and got to Belfast.

Belfast City Hall

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