This morning we returned the car. No scratches. We travelled 1389km in the Mokka. It was OK, nothing went wrong, it had all the features the Qashqai had in Wales, went quite well, but I wouldn’t buy one. The Qashqai is just a nicer car. It’s probably because I like Nissans. Lots of Qashqais in Ireland, apparently no Mokkas except ours.
Dublin Airport is the best one l’ve been through. Check in was efficient, just read the QR code in the email boarding pass on the phone, print a boarding pass and bag tag, dump the bag on the conveyor and you’re on your way. Even security worked well. The trays recycle from the output side to input on their edge, on a conveyor. There are only about 16 of them altogether on each scanner: the ones on the scanner belt and the ones on the return conveyor. Aer Lingus has a cabin bag limit of 10kg. Mine was 9.8, Anne’s 11.8, so we checked them. If all the major airlines agreed on the 10kg, then we could pack our rollaboard cases to 10kg and never need to check them. This means you, Qantas. Your 7kg limit makes no sense.
Uneventful flight to Bordeaux, and a long suburban bus ride to Gare St-Jean, in the centre, stopping all stations. Then a 1km walk to our apartment where Kamil was waiting to show us around. Kamil was Turkish, and had about as much English as we had French, but we got by. We are here for 2 nights. It’s warm here, no more wearing jackets on this trip (maybe in the Pyrenees and Alps, I guess).
Dinner was in a cafe on the Place du Parlement, after a walk along the bank of the Garonne.
