May 13

May 13 Ireland 2016: A Day of Transit

I've taken the train to Chicago and walking off the platform reminds me why I love this city. The architecture is inspired by the ancients and everything is relatively clean. I looked up a good breakfast spot near Millennium Park and I'm excited to try it. I'm thinking pancakes sound like a plan this lovely traveling morning. After this, I'm off to the drug store to buy batteries (my keyboard is dead) and then onto the Blue Line to make my way to the airport.

Wildberry Pancakes and Cafe next to Millennium Park in beautiful Chicago

The chocolate milk is not as good as I hoped it'd be and the eggs leave something to be desired, but the bacon is out of this world and these are the best damn pancakes I've ever eaten! And I grew up eating La Pines and they made an appearance on Diners, Drive-ins, and Dives.

Wildberry Pancakes and Cafe on Randolph At near Millennium Park in Chicago

The Blue Line is showing delays, so I'll skip the batteries until the airport. It's worth paying a little extra to not miss my flight. I love hearing the buskers in the subway. It's one of my favorite parts of traveling in a city. There's a guy here singing the blues quite well, I might add. It makes me smile.

I made it to the airport on time, although I was stuck in the security line for over an hour (and a blog post about security line tips was born). I finally made it to the gate only to find that there was one functioning power outlet in a hundred-foot radius of my gate.

After a flight to Charlotte next to a fellow vet and much storytelling, I met up with my mom and sister. Here we are ready to go!

I'm so excited!

There's an 8-hour flight with a meal and drinks in my immediate future and we're lucky to have the built-in entertainment system, but of course, my sister's is broken. After much debate over the extent to which the stewardess had control over this and the 2-hour delay, she got the screens working.

We made it on the ground here and we're setting up for our road trip!

I hope you enjoyed the transit day, it's certainly been a long one for me. 23 hours straight from various forms of travel. I'm glad to be here.

Thanks, y'all!