The Marvelous Ferry Ride

The 2 pictures above are the before and after behind where our van was. The cars are just jammed in. We're at the front of the hold. You can see that the cars are starting to aim towards the left in the 2nd picture - we're at the apex of this curve.

The picture just above shows what was in front of us when we docked. We drove out that little door on the left. Steve wanted to get a picture of the cars up on the 2nd level. We're not quite sure how they got up there or how they got down, for that matter. The cars directly below those on the 2nd level are actually facing us.

When we got on the ferry, as I said earlier, we found a spot in the kids' area. Not as nice as the other ferry, but what choice did we have at this point? Got breakfast for us all sorted and by the time we finished and returned our dishes and trays to the cafe, the ferry was ready to set off.

Now comes the horrible "seat neighbor" thing.

Mom: Petite 40-something with dyed hair and barfly voice wearing snug denim capris and too-high wedge sandals. Would disappear for stretches of time and come back in a cloud of smoke. Didn't even have the sense to appear embarrassed by her children. Didn't seem to even know if they were around.

Dad: Didn't see until the last 15 minutes of the 3 1/2 trip. He laid on the floor in the kids' area and played with the baby while ignoring the other kids.

Daughter: Early teenage girl. Mostly watched after the baby while Mom took smoke breaks and read her tabloid. Takes up 4 spots on the soft seating area for the little kids by laying down. About an hour before we dock, she pukes in the kids' area, then gets up and returns to her table next to ours. Mom does nothing. Steve flags down a ferry employee and says, "Some teenager got sick over there and left it" rather loudly hoping she would at least have the good grace to blush or something.

Son #1: Early teenage boy - younger than the daughter. Broken arm. Could be a bit rambunctious, but didn't see much of that. Laid around the kids' area and watched "Bug's Life." Not much of a bad neighbor.

Son #2: Pre-teen boy. At one point Steve sent him the evil eye because he was pulling on Caleb's balloon sword. Other than that, not too bad.

Son #3: Early elementary-aged boy. Typical early-elementary aged boy. Had tendency to be wild at times.

Wild Child (a.k.a. Son #4): Hellion. Brat. Ran around poking other random kids with his balloon sword. Finally another dad got up and asked him to stop poking his rather lovely little red-headed daughter then gave him the evil eye. Couldn't sit still for more than 3 seconds.

Baby (a.k.a Son #5): Baby about Julie's age. Spent most of the trip in his car seat. Was not a crying baby.

This whole family was a train wreck. Enough said.

There was a magic show in the middle of the trip. The magician was a young-ish guy - maybe early 20s. He was good with the kids. His over-the-top reactions were perfect. Towards the end of his act, he asked for a volunteer. The first boy he chose didn't want to go up, so then he asked Caleb. Our little eager beaver was up front before I could blink. Here are some pictures:

Caleb was an awesome assistant. The top picture is him catching all the colors in the air with the magical color catcher. The next picture is him flinging the colors onto that black & white drawing. Notice the umbrella the magician is using. The 3rd picture is the result of a magic trick where Caleb somehow changed the umbrella into just a wire frame with scarves around the edges. When I asked him how he did it, he said, "I'm just magic, I guess!" The 4th picture is him with the 5 wands the magician gave him to change the picture from black & white to color. The umbrella trick came in the middle of the black-and-white-to-color trick. Anyway, Caleb is wiggling magically while all the kids watching are saying, "Wiggle your fingers, wiggle your thumbs, that's the way the magic comes." Except the "th" in thumbs sounds like "f." It's just the way they say it here. And the last picture is one of his prizes for being the assistant - a bike made of balloons. It lasted all the next week until he decided to take it apart.

They did balloon things for any kid that wanted one. Audrey got a dog. This is what she did with it when we got back to the van:

I kid you not - SHE STUFFED IT IN HER BAG! Now, 11 days later, the same dog is upstairs in her bedroom (but looking deflated). She pulled it out and stuffed back a couple of times, but it stayed in there until the following Monday. So from Friday to Monday it survived life in the bag. Did I mention that I found a huge rock in her bag the other day?

Anyway - back to the ferry. Since I didn't really get a chance to shop for stuff in Ireland, I placated myself by going to the gift shop on the boat. They had tons of perfumes - all the usuals that you find in any store. One thing I really wanted from this trip was a new perfume. I wanted something unique with a nice smell that is from the UK. I found some nice Ralph Lauren fragrances at Harrod's, but I can get that back home. Anyway, none of these perfumes tickled my fancy, so I just wandered around looking at all the cheesy touristy stuff.

I almost didn't wander over to one side because it was mostly alcohol and that doesn't tickle my fancy, either, but I did go over. There was one little display that ended up having 4 different "made in Ireland" perfumes. One was truly nasty, one smelled like soap, one was OK, and the last one was LOVELY. And not expensive! Yippee! I had found both my perfume and my Irish souvenir! http://www.perfume.ie/

I will have to conclude our trip (just the drive through Wales) later. It's time for us to go fetch Steve.