2013-11-06 Travel UK and Ireland
Seminars@Hadley
Geography: Talking Travel – UK and Ireland
Presented by
Sharon Howerton
Cathy Pasinski
Moderated by
Dawn Turco
November 6, 2013
Dawn Turco
Good morning and welcome to Seminars@Hadley. Today we are doing a second in our series of combining Geography and Travel and today’s Talking Travel is all about the UK and Republic of Ireland. We have a trio of presenters with us this morning who are quite enthusiastic about the topic and I know this because we were all together earlier this week discussing today’s seminar and so they’re bubbling and want to get started and I’m not going to slow down the process. I am Dawn Turco, I will moderate today’s seminar, but we have a trio as I mentioned of presenters and they are seasoned Seminars@Hadley presenters and you may be familiar with them if you’ve been with us before. Sharon Howerton, Cathy Pasinski and Julie Kay are all instructors at Hadley and all lovers of Geography and Travel.
Cathy Pasinski
Hello everybody. I am one of the presenters. Can the other two please introduce themselves?
Sharon Howerton
Hi I’m Sharon Howerton and I’m also a presenter and will be talking about my travel experiences to the Republic of Ireland.
Julie Kay
I’m Julie Kay and I just got back from the UK so I am really excited to be able to share my travels with you.
Cathy Pasinski
Great. Thanks everybody. I went to the UK in 2007 so I have a little bit of experience. The first thing I’d like to talk about would be the location of the UK and the Republic of Ireland. If anyone has a map pull it out because we’re going to find it on the map. The UK is on the northwest part of Europe. It is separated from the continent of Europe by sea. The UK has some countries in it. The countries are Great Britain, those include England, Wales and Scotland, which are all in one island, and northern Ireland, which is part of another island. It’s actually about one-fifth of the other island. It also contains some smaller islands around it. Now the Republic of Ireland is west of the island of Great Britain and south of northern Ireland. This part covers four-fifths of the island and most people call it just Ireland. The Irish Sea is between the two main islands, Great Britain and the Republic of Ireland. On the west side the UK is surrounded by the Atlantic Ocean. That is on the west side. On the north side we have the North Sea, and on the south side we have the English Channel. So that is the location of the UK and the Republic of Ireland. Now I’m going to hand to the microphone to Sharon so she can tell us a little bit about the history.
Sharon Howerton
Britain was originally a mix of the Anglo-Saxon tribe that was influenced by the Celtics and the Romans. The Normans or French overcame Britain at the Battle of Hastings in 1066. Kings and Queens have ruled England ever since. England defeated the Spanish Armada in 1588 and made Britain the leading maritime power. By the 1800s Britain was the leading trading nation in the world. After the two world wars Britain was no longer as strong. By the 1970s almost all of the colonies of Britain had become independent nations.
Presenter
To me it’s very fascinating to see how the Romans influenced Great Britain. One of the places that I’ve been to about ten years ago was Bath, and it’s called Bath because it has Roman baths. There were Roman soldiers so it wasn’t like Rome settled there, but the Roman soldiers were there and they influenced the people that were living in Great Britain. A bath is a great town. In fact the Washington Post just had a lady ask a question “Where should I go if I’m going to London and I have four extra days?” and the writer responded Bath. The Roman baths are almost complete and it also is a very fun town. This last trip, last month, there was a Roman villa. Again, the people that lived there were influenced by the Romans and they found rooms there, it was like a manor, and they had their private Roman baths and all the mosaics, so it was very interesting. Sharon you wanted to talk a little bit about how to get to the Great Britain area.
Sharon Howerton
Actually you really have to fly to get there. One of the ways to get there would be considering getting there from Hadley, which is in the Midwest just north of Chicago, so you would need to travel by air. From Chicago the closest airport is O’Hare Airport. There sometimes are direct flights to London, I think that’s probably pretty common, and Dublin. Sometimes of the year are considered high season and low season. At times there may not be direct flights, but I know when I went in 2011 we did have the opportunity for a direct flight from Chicago to Dublin. That took about nine hours. If you were to go to northern Ireland you might need to take another flight but to the main airport to get into England would be to get to Heathrow Airport. Again, you’d probably need to take another flight to get to Scotland or Wales. The flight from Chicago to London is about eight hours. It seems to me that it took us about nine hours. A lot of times the flights seem to leave the states in the evening and fly through the night so that when you get to Europe they’re at the beginning of the day because the time difference from the Midwest is about six hours. If you wanted to go to Scotland or Wales or northern Ireland again you’d need to take another connecting flight, so the whole trip then would probably take 11 hours or something like that. Sometimes you have a connection that you need to wait for before getting from one flight to the next, that’s why frankly it’s really fabulous to be able to get one flight to get to your destination. The best trip that I took to Europe was going directly from Chicago to Dublin and arriving at 9:00 a.m. if I remember correctly so that we had an entire day and also had an opportunity to rest overnight as we traveled from the states to Ireland. Again, from the Midwest the United Kingdom and Ireland are about six hours ahead of us. To get from Chicago to the United Kingdom you would fly over Lake Michigan and then the northeastern part of the United States and part of Canada, and then finally it would cross the Atlantic Ocean. Cathy?
Cathy Pasinski
Thank you Sharon. I’m going to start talking about airport navigation and airline travel. I have traveled around Europe a few times and because I live close to Chicago most of the time I leave from O’Hare Airport, which is our biggest airport here in Chicago. When I traveled to London in 2007 I went from O’Hare Airport to London’s Heathrow Airport. Navigating through O’Hare Airport to me is a lot easier than navigating through Heathrow Airport. In O’Hare Airport first of course you have to go to the check-in area of the airline that you’re traveling with and you check in at the counter or now they have electronic kiosks that you can check in with. You might need assistance because I don’t know if they are completely accessible. The next part is to check in your luggage. Third you need to locate the security check where you stand in line and you present your ticket and your passport, then they let you get through to the check area where they will make you take off your shoes, put them in a bin, and then in addition everything you have on you, like a purse or a small suitcase or your jacket, they all have to be placed into bins for x-ray inspection. If you have any small bottles of saline solution or lotion or shampoo they make you take them out of your purse or out of your little suitcase and you have to put them in the bins separately. I know you’re not allowed to have big bottles. The most you are allowed is about six ounces. If you have something larger they will confiscate it. You have to put all those things in bins and the bins go on a conveyor belt and they go through an x-ray machine. In the meantime you have to go through an area where you get x-rayed. I forgot to say that laptops and cell phones also need to be placed in bins. You go through the body scan, which I have been through a few times. You have to stand, put your arms up, and then you wait a few seconds, they scan your body and then they let you go through. Sometimes they will pull you aside and do an additional pat down or another scan with a wand. I don’t know how they pick people, I think it’s at random, because I’ve even had one of my children picked to be extra patted down and extra scanned. After you pass the metal detector and electronic scan you have to retrieve your things and put your shoes back on and your jacket back on. The next step is to locate the gate of your departure and then wait in the waiting area until it’s time to board the plane. Chicago is a busy airport so you should arrive at least two hours before your flight is scheduled to leave. It’s best to ask for assistance ahead of time, especially when you’re booking your flight. Sharon, who is a very experienced blind traveler, can talk about assistance services.
Sharon Howerton
Yes I have traveled quite a bit and whenever I’ve gone to Europe it’s been with a large group, so I’ve always made it a point to connect with someone before I get to the airport or go to the airport with other people in the group. That always made it a whole lot easier, however, I have traveled within the United States alone. I have a guide dog and did not take her to Europe with me any of the times that I’ve gone. That’s a whole different story that we can talk about later. I chose not to take her because of the kind of trip that we took and I’ll explain that as well.
At the airport they do provide assistance and that’s one of the things you need to allow time to secure because sometimes it can take a while for someone to find an assistance person for you, someone from the airport, and they don’t work for the airlines anymore; at least here in Chicago at O’Hare Airport it’s a private firm that does the assistance to passengers who need a wheelchair or a blind passenger like myself. Sometimes they bring a wheelchair and I’ve said “I don’t need a wheelchair I just need someone to walk with,” and at times I’ve even had them just put my carry-on in there if they want to insist on bringing the wheelchair. I’ve always let them know when I book a flight that I need assistance but to be really honest with you most of the time, at least here anyway and I can’t speak for other airports, but at least here it’s best to try to find someone. When I’ve checked in a curbside for example where there’s a counter they’ll call the people to assist. That person will get you through security and then on to your gate.
Traveling with a dog, at least on a domestic flight, and I think different schools teach different things, but what I’ve done when I’ve traveled with my dogs, and I say dogs because I’m working my second one now, I would go first, have her stay and then she comes through after me. The dog always sets off the alarm because of the metal in their harness. They pat them down and all that kind of stuff and it’s really not a big deal but it’s really important to check the TSA regulations as far as the kind of things that you can carry on, the size of the bottles you can carry, how you need to transport them, all that kind of stuff. When we were in Heathrow, as an example, this was one airport and this was a few years ago so things may have changed, but we were told that they did not allow you to carry a purse so we all had to scramble and hide our purses in our carry-ons. There are different regulations in different airports so it’s important to learn what those are before you arrive there or before you go through security and that type of things.
Cathy Pasinski
Thanks Sharon. That’s that very informative. I want to make a correction. Thank you Dawn. We only are allowed to carry three ounces of liquids, not six ounces like I said before, in a quart size zip bag. That’s the regulation. Thanks Dawn for that correction. Next I’d like to talk about negotiating Heathrow Airport, which is a little bit more complicated than O’Hare Airport. As usual you would exit the plane and if you’re staying in London you have to find the luggage claim area so you can retrieve your luggage. Then you will have to locate the exit to exit the airport. If you’re catching a connecting flight to go to another big city or Scotland or Wales or Ireland there is a procedure you have to go through. First you have to go through passport control. You have to find the passport control area and wait in line. There are different lines usually. There is one for European Union travelers and then the non-European travelers. You go in the correct line and the person checks your passport and if you’re lucky they will even stamp it; sometimes they don’t. Next they need to take your picture. They call that a biometric capture. Then they check your bags, even though you’ve come from the airport where your bags where checked in America. Then you go through security screening, pretty much similar like you did in the O’Hare Airport, and you have to go through Customs. Some countries have you fill out a form that they want you to declare if you’re bringing a large amount of money or expensive gifts, stuff like that. If you’re still trying to catch a connecting flight you have to locate the departing gate. Now this can be tricky because there are five terminals in Heathrow Airport and they’re not that close to each other. Sometimes you have to take a bus or an electric train to get from one terminal to another. That can be a little complicated. In addition to that sometimes you have to go through security again. They are very thorough I have to say. One time I remember I did have to go through security twice and the line was so long each time I was so afraid I was going to miss my next flight. They are very strict. Again, it would be better to ask for assistance ahead of time, especially if you have limited time, it would be easier to have someone help you negotiate all that distance. Next I’m going to hand the microphone to Julie, who’s going to talk about resources for planning your travel.