Questionable Intelligence: England: Day One

This is Day 1 in a series. You might want to start at the introduction.

So, day one of the England trip is actually spent in Ireland. Imagine that. But before I get to that, let's go back a bit further in time.

It's Tuesday, and we're in the Minneapolis airport. Immediately after coming through security, we see this:

A piano set up in the middle of the airport, with a guy playing very lovely songs for the people walking by.

Unfortunately, I didn't give him any money.

Yes, that is a guy playing piano (very well I might add) in an airport. This is one of the many reasons that MSP is hands down my favourite airport. The biggest reason is probably the fact that there are chairs located next to wall sockets all over the place. And in the food court. Plus the design is nice, it has a solid walking path, the colour scheme is great, and there are cool tile drawings on the floor, like this one:

A map laid out in tile on the floor of the airport, at a junction between two major walkways.

It's kind of hard to get your bearings on it though.

In case you can't tell, it's a stylized map of all the airports around Minneapolis.

So, my dad and I boarded our flight, and as we were taxing out onto the runway, the Captain informed us that Philadelphia (where our connection to Dublin was) had suspended all flights in and out due to bad weather, and we would have to sit on the runway for an hour, waiting to see if our flight would be cancelled. It ended up being an hour and a half wait (just enough time to solve a "Challenging" level 3D Sudoku), but we eventually took off.

When we reached Philadelphia, they informed us that our flight was boarding at a different terminal, and that it wouldn't wait for us, so we had better run. And run we did. We made it onto the plane (out of breath) just a few minutes before it taxied off, but we were sure that our luggage hadn't made it. After watching Crazy, Stupid, Love and Rise of the Planet of the Apes, we landed in Dublin and were pleasantly surprised to find our luggage waiting for us. My great aunt (who lives in Ireland, which is why we're here) was there waiting for us.

She took us back to her house, and our first order of business was to have breakfast at 2 AM CST. This is actually the view of her little garden that she has:

A tiny garden on the roof of the garage, due to the house being on a hill.

Europe's a bit cramped, isn't it?

It's quite nice, isn't it? Anyhow, we then went to the National Botanic Gardens to check out the different plants that were there. This is a view of the gardens:

Just some flowerbeds outside, nothing too special.

Yeah, I didn't get very good pictures...

After the gardens, we went to the National Museum of Ireland, to the Archaeology building. They didn't allow cameras in there, and I didn't feel like getting yelled at, so no pictures. However, it was cool. There were all sorts of gold artifacts, and different relics from the different eras of Ireland's history, such as the Vikings era.

Next we took a very brief tour of a walking shopping district in Dublin. Unfortunately, I was so tired from being jet-lagged that I fell asleep during lunch, and I can't really remember if we went anywhere else. We went back to my Aunt's place, and I took a nap. We had dinner, watched some BBC, and now the day is winding down.

So, that's it for today. If all goes according to plan, I'll be posting again at around this time tomorrow.