Introduction

Our home exchangers for this trip are Miriam and Denis who live in Barna, a suburb of Galway, Ireland. We have been in touch with them for many months working out the details of our exchange and travel plans. The only slight hitch was my back problem in January of this year which was resolved with successful back surgery in February.

I found an excellent air fare on Aer Lingus from Boston to Shannon so that we could visit my cousins in New Hampshire for a few days on the way to Ireland. We were able to get one ticket with frequent flyer miles from Leon to Boston and another decent fare on another airline. Consequently, John and I flew on different airlines to Boston. The ugly part was that we had a shuttle pick up at 3:00 a.m. for our 6:30 and 6:50 a.m. departures. I arrived on time in Boston at 4:00 p.m. but John's last flight was delayed and he didn't arrive until 6:30 p.m. But, Don and Kathy were there to meet me and we had a nice catch-up visit while waiting for John.