There's really only one reason the last day of our trip deserves an entry: breakfast. Otherwise it would be: "We got up. We went to the airport. We flew home." I mean, I'm way more wordy than that, but that's the essence.
But breakfast! The breakfast spread, to continue the theme at our B&B, was great. There was a table containing juice, milk, cereal, yogurt and granola, and Pauline brought us some tea, which I promptly dribbled on the tablecloth. James made fun of me and then he did the same thing. I had smoked salmon scrambed eggs (which I feel guilty about now since smoked salmon is BAD! for pregnant ladies but I didn't even think about it until later) and James had the Irish breakfast. Ron mentioned that they had good black and white pudding, and so many people did it wrong. He also said about 98 percent of Americans wouldn't even try the black pudding. It's not something I'd eat on a regular basis but I'm glad I tried it. Anyway.
Ron is cooking breakfast. Apparently part of the traditional Irish breakfast -- which we've managed to avoid up until this point -- is fried mushrooms. James and I HATE mushrooms. Since I didn't order the full breakfast, James is the one who gets the bowl full of 'shrooms. We look at each other in horror. We can't eat an entire bowl of mushrooms, but we can't leave it there. This is the best B&B we've stayed at, and the nicest hosts, and we can't leave the mushrooms there.
"You eat some," says James, pushing a large amount on my plate. I eat one. It makes me gag. James winces. I try to swallow a couple without chewing. It doesn't go well. James attempts a mushroom. We are looking around desperately. There is no way we can do this. (Clearly Couples Fear Factor and shows of that ilk are not in our future.) Finally we come up with a plan: I will take the mushrooms and flush them down the toilet in our room. This has to be done before Ron comes back to say goodbye. It is not. I am still in the bathroom when he comes back, but James just says I had to go, and since I have the "pregnant" excuse, it works. Ron and Pauline both come out to send us on our way, and they say we will have to come back and bring our new little one.
They have assured us that the airport is just five minutes away and we will have no trouble making it, so we are only going to arrive about 90 minutes before our internaltional flight. Which will give us plenty of time to shop for the souvenirs we still haven't bought. (Even after all of our minor disasters, I still thought this would be no problem.) The first hitch in the plan comes when we go to drop off our rental car and there's a sign in the window that says "Back soon." Eek. Eventually we make it to the terminal, but there are a few people ahead of us in line and it's not moving very fast. As we check in, the ticket agent mentions that we will actually be going through US Customs there at Shannon, so we'll need to get our asses up there. So we make it through security, have just enough time to mail our last postcard and do a mad dash through the duty free store for cheesy souvenirs (although -- success!), and get to customs for the flight back.
This ends up being convenient, as we don't have to go through customs at JFK, but also confusing, apparently, because the gate agent in New York thinks we've arrived at the wrong gate, until some other agent tells him that we're a domestic flight. No, really. The flight home is a smaller plane than the flight over, but the slightly cramped feeling is offset by the fact that we have individual movie screens and a wide selection of movies to choose from. They fed us pizza. We arrived early back at RDU (from JFK) and had to sit on the runway, which was not fun, as I really wanted to see Patrick. He seemed pleased that we were home.
