Okay, here I am. It turns out that trying to vacation, and work, and attend to the postcard-sending needs of your 5-year old and recover from jet-lag do not pre-dispose one to blogging. Actually I have been pre-disposed, just without time. So here are a couple of catch-up posts to bring you up to today on our exciting euro-travels.

When I last wrote, we were in Dublin, about to head to Portugal. The next morning we caught a cab from our hotel (but for the slightly-too-tiny beads, I highly recommend Egans House for Dublin lodging) out to the airport; it was a quick trip, with no traffic, and we arrived exactly 2 hours before our flight, which is the Ryanair recommended arrival time.

Ryanair, despite its miniscule fares (129 EUR, all taxes in, for three people to fly from Dublin to Porto), was an excellent experience: the plane boarded quickly, left on time, arrived 30 minutes early and was staffed by pleasant flight attendants and a chatty flight deck.

The Porto Airport is stunning: huge open spaces, very quick passage through, very good signage. We were met by a helpful man, friend of the owner of the place we’re renting, who piled us and our luggage into his Volvo and drove us door to door.

We’re renting a house here in the community of Leça da Palmeira, itself a part of the city of Matosinhos, which is just north of the large city of Porto. Leça has a sort of triple identity: gritty industrial suburb, lovely beach-side town and workaday Portuguese community. The resulting mix makes it perfect for us, and the house is everything we could have dreamed of. [[Oliver]] is especially impressed with the fully equipped kids’ room, complete with “cave bed” and complement of excellent toys.

I’ve started to post photos of our travels. All were taken with my [[Nokia N70]] camera-phone, which is proving to be an excellent “always on” device for taking decent photos with.

Arrived Dublin, Ireland this morning after an exciting array of air travel challenges.

When we showed up at Logan Airport in Boston yesterday around 4:00 p.m. we were told that “everything is backed up” and, because we arrived early, were put on a 5:00 p.m. flight that was delayed to 6:30 p.m. (rather than our original 6:30 p.m. flight that was expected to be delayed by a similar amount of time).

After various other delays, we finally took off around 7:00 p.m. and arrived in Philadelphia at 8:15 p.m., still in time for our 9:00 p.m. flight to Ireland. It turns out that Philadelphia Airport is approximately the size of a small city, and hiking from Terminal C to Terminal A is about 2 miles. Fortunately we flagged down a helpful golf-cart driver who took pity on us and gave us a ride.

We arrived at the gate at 8:45 p.m. to an announcement that there was a “maintenance problem” that was going to delay the flight until midnight. But to tide us over, U.S. Airways was springing for $10/person in food at the local food court. So we loaded up on food and drink and dug in for a wait. Then, miraculously, at 9:15 p.m., just as everyone was tucking into their food, the maintenance problem (a switch breaker, it turned out) was solved, and we started to board. A lot of large coffees got left in the lounge.

The flight over was uneventful — the usual arduous overseas flight in coach, no more no less. We’re now set up at the delightful Egans House, close to downtown Dublin. We got here with Gerard, a very helpful world-travelling cabbie. We are exhausted, but ready to conduct the fastest tour possible of Dublin before leaving for Portugal in the morning.</p?

One of my important works tasks today turned on whether midnight is part of “today” or part of “tomorrow.” As you might expect, my colleagues at The Old Farmer’s Almanac have many opinions on this issue, the predominate one apparently being that midnight is neither today nor tomorrow, but some amorphous nether region betwixt the days. Here’s what the 2006 edition says about midnight, in the “Astronomical Glossary” on page 75:

Midnight: Astronomical midnight is the time when the Sun is opposite its highest point in the sky (noon). Midnight is neither A.M. nor P.M., although 12-hour digital clocks typically display midnight as 12:00 A.M. On a 24-hour time cycle, 00:00, rather than 24:00, usually indicates midnight.

The issue at hand was that the tool we use for calculating sunrise and sunset times returns midnight as 24:00, but the tool we use for converting this to the user’s local time expects midnight as 00:00. In any case, problem resolved, and you can rest easy that sunrise and sunsets will emerge correctly when the sunset happens to coincide with midnight GMT.

[[Oliver]] likes to hug people. I’m not sure why. He doesn’t get it from me (I like a good hug as much as the next guy, but latent agoraphobia has always intruded). But Oliver hugs his friends when he leaves school (something that seems to have spread like wildfire through the student body). And he hugs Catherine and he hugs me at every opportunity. And if opportunity presents itself, he’ll hug just about anyone who looks huggable.

In recent weeks this has extended to members of the transportation system working class: a few weeks ago he hugged our bus driver after a good ride down from the Farmer’s Market; last night he hugged the flight attendant after our Air Canada flight from [[Charlottetown]] to [[Montreal]]. In both cases the look on the face of the hugged made it clear that regular hugging by customers is not a commonplace occurrence. But they both seemed pleasantly surprised at the offer once the initial shock had passed.

Talking in the car on the way up from Boston to Keene, New Hampshire where we’re staying, [[Catherine]] recalled that our first trip on Air Nova (the predecessor of Air Canada Jazz, the “regional” part of Air Canada) was to New York City back in the mid-1990s. On that flight they were conducting an experiment wherein they had an on-board oven that was used to bake fresh chocolate chip cookies. The cookies were amazing. And somehow not at all like the sesame snacks cum mealy twigs that are on offer now (okay, I know, enough with the sesame stick bashing; but it’s what I do).

As we’re only here for 3 days this time around, it turns out that the cost of renting a “Pontiac Sunfire or similar” is only $10/day different from renting a fully tricked-out Volvo XC70. So we drove up from Boston with heated leather seats glowing, moon-roof open, and Hertz NeverLost GPS system guiding our every move. Although I could never justify (or afford) such a car for the once a week market runs, it sure is a nice vehicle.

I’m here in Dublin, NH until Thursday; Friday morning I wake up in Dublin, Ireland.

Before taking off on vacation this evening, I went for my customary pre-trip hair cut. I was lucky: when I went in, Fergie was sitting in the barber chair by himself reading the paper and saw me right away; ten minutes later there were 5 men waiting to see him. Here’s what happened:

I get my hair cut about three times a year (I think: I can’t remember between times, so it must be about three times, as 100 days is about the length of my short term memory). There was a lot more grey hair on the floor this time than last time.

For other hair news from [[Charlottetown]] see this post on Rob’s website. Rob falls on the Ray’s side of the Ray/Fergie barber divide, a world I’ve never experienced.

Spotted at the corner of King and Prince in downtown Charlottetown last night around sunset:

In one of my earlier incarnations I worked developing new products for The Anne of Green Gables Store here in [[Prince Edward Island]]. In amongst all the jam and doilies and porcelain dolls, my favourite “new” product was Rogers’ Chocolates.

One of my most pleasant duties while in that roles was to visit Rogers’ store and plant in Victoria, British Columbia. To be effective at my duties, of course, required considerable comparison testing (read “orgy of chocolate consumption”). Thrown together with a stop for tea up the street at Murchie’s and I had a rollicking family-run business cavalcade of food and drink under my belt.

For me, the pinnacle of the Rogers’ line is their “Carmel Nut Dark Chocolate” bar — 2 oz and 250 calories of chocolate nutty goodness. Not something to have every day, but certainly something to indulge in on occasion. While the Anne store stopped selling the Rogers’ line a while back, Bruce MacNaugton’s to-be-named restaurant cum crafts shop on Queen St. in downtown [[Charlottetown]] is now selling them. I’ve just polished one off. I won’t need dinner.

Our friends [[Olle]] and [[Luisa]] get married on Saturday, as evidenced by:

That I’ve never met Luisa (or, worse yet, that [[Catherine]] and [[Oliver]] have met neither Olle nor Luisa) doesn’t stop us from wishing them a happy day.

Another view of the new developments at Cousins Shore, Prince Edward Island:

This was taken with my [[Nokia N70]]. It seems a mobile phone can take non-fuzzy photos.