September 13

Tralee

I'd planned to fly from Shannon airport in western Ireland to London on a cheap Ryanair flight. Ryanair is like America's budget airlines, except the fares are 1/3 the price and it's more like taking a bus between Kansas city and St. Louis than flying.
All the same, it appeared that I could get to London for about e35.
It was the luggage that screwed me. I'd need to check my backpack. That would be an extra e10 or so. But checking a bag meant checking in at the airport, which invoked another e5 charge. Then there was the e10 charge to pay by credit card online. Of course, there were another e15 or e20 in taxes and airport fees. But the detail that finally pushed the ticket beyond the realm of cheap was the luggage weight restriction. You're only allowed to bring 15 kg on the plane with you. If you pay for a checked bag, that's only allowed to weigh 15 kg, with each additional kg costing something like e10 each. I carry between 30 and 40 pounds of stuff and, reading the fine print, I'm not sure they'd even let me on the plane.
Apparently, other travelers have told me, just about every western European under 35 has a story about being being nickle and dimed by Ryanair these days. On one of the trains I even saw a book about the airline wherein the author endured flights all over Europe on the airline, taking 6 a..m. flights, dealing with the luggage restrictions, fending off stewardesses selling trinkets onboard and fighting though "boarding scrums" at the airport.
While I'd be avoiding all of that, I still had to figure out a way off the island . The weather was wearing on me, and I'd spent as much time and money in Ireland as I'd planned. I messed around in Dingle for awhile, read the bus schedule wrong and spent the night in Tralee to take some time and figure out my next move.
Originally, I'd wanted to travel north to Belfast, take the ferry to Scotland, have a glass of Scotch in it's natural habitat and move south to London. I'd planned to skip this part my trek through the British Isles for time reasons but it turns out that's exactly the route I took.