Five hours, Twenty-nine minutes

At 2:00 in the morning on Wednesday morning, our journey began.  We hit the ground running, so to speak, gathering up last minute items into suit cases (which, by the way, we only brought a total of four checked bags and four carry-ons with a year’s worth of possessions), packed Toby into his crate, and merged onto the highway towards Detroit’s airport shortly after 3:00 a.m. 

We arrived around 4:30 at United Airline’s PetSafe drop off location.  The person who was supposed to meet us at 4:30 was sick, so we had to wait until 5:00 for someone to check in Toby.  Finally, 5:00 rolled around and told Toby we would see him in a few hours.

My mom drove us across the way to United’s departure gate and, along with a Sky Cap, helped us lug our nine bags (eight suitcases plus my CPAP bag) to the check-in counter.  We checked in and made our way with only five bags to security and said our sniveling (OK, my sniveling) goodbyes to my mom. 

Detroit to Chicago; then we got to wait eight hours.  Luckily there was a Garrett popcorn down the terminal from us (if you are ever in Chicago, you must stop at one of their shops and ask for the Chicago Blend) which filled our bellies with cheddar and caramel goodness.  After calling PetSafe a few times to check on Toby, and making several laps of the terminal in an effort to burn off Garrett’s empty calories and get in some mild exercise, we were off to our next leg of the trip.

Chicago to Newark; we only had to wait here two hours.  It all started to sink in here: our last stop before a new country.  Nerves began to abound.

Newark to Belfast.  Our chipper flight attendant notified us that our flight time would be five hours, twenty-nine minutes.  We took off around 9:00 p.m. and found a comedy to watch (“The Watch”); we each had individual screens on the seat back in front of us, so made sure that we pressed “play” at the same time, pretended that it was a date night in the air, and settled in for the next five hours and twenty-nine minutes.

8:30 a.m. local time, we landed in Belfast.  I made sure that Toby was in fact taken off the plan before I deplaned (much to the chagrin of the flight attendants; they couldn't deplane until I did, and I wasn't going to until I saw that my dog was safe) and we made our way to customs.  That went very quickly and we made our way to the small baggage claim area (a total of three baggage carousals).  Side-note: If you have ever been to the airport in Lansing, you have an idea of how big (rather, how small) the international airport is in Belfast.  It is called an international airport, but it might as well be a private landing strip in the middle of a farmer’s field.  Needless to say, it was not hard to find our luggage to load up onto what they call a trolley and what we call a cart and met Dave’s boss, Alberto, who drove us to our hotel.

After checking in, we waited four long hours for Toby to get dropped off.  As of January last year, foreign dogs no longer need to be held for a six month quarantine in the UK.  However, because Belfast’s airport is so small, there is not the same “pet-scheme” as most UK airports, and so international pet owners must hire the only licensed kennel in Northern Ireland to assist in passing the pet through customs, who can then drop off your dog at a destination of your choice (for an additional tidy fee, of course).  I was over the moon when I finally got to hold him again.  The remainder of Thursday was spent with Dave swinging over to campus to register for his faculty ID, the three of us walking around the botanical gardens at Queen’s University, and trying to stay awake until 7 p.m. local time before falling asleep.  We’re hoping that jet-lag doesn't last too much longer…