LegoLondonLand/Ire before Ireland Arrival

9/7
Legoland day finally arrived(we had been promising Zach that we would take him to Legoland from the beginning of this journey)!
The actual trek from London to Legoland was relatively painless even though you had to take 2 trains and one bus to get to Windsor. When we finally entered the place our first impression was that this was Wallyworld with a capital CHEESE! As we headed further into the park, it did get better with a very realistic 1/10 scale versions of all the major European capitals made with Legos. Zach was mesmerized by all the trains,planes and autos that were moving throughout the exhibit-so much so that he almost climbed in to fix a train that had de-railed.
We then came to one of the rides that looked like a lot of fun-it was a made for kids racetrack with miniature racecars... Unfortunately, you had to be 6 to ride on said racecars. Of course, me being the father of the year, I decided that I wanted my son to race one of the cars. The only way we were going to do this was for my son to sound convincing to the people when asked how old he was. He must have snowed them because he was hopping into a racecar 5 minutes later- you could have lit up the town of London with all the electricity emanating from our son. We had a blast and managed to get back to London by about 8pm that nite.
We had to move out of our hotel since the Hilton was full....I managed to find a great deal at the Hotel Intercontinental(via Hotwire.com) and was all agog when we arrived at this beautiful hotel. At the check in counter, I had a chat with the guy and found out that he was from our favorite place in the world (Taormina in Sicily). Needless to say, he was impressed with how much we knew about Sicily that he upgraded us to a suite that was something out of lifestyles of the rich and famous....
9/8 Off to Dublin
Had a great meal at a Turkish place in London called Sofra. I had arranged our flight with Ryanair and felt like everything was all set...I was rudely mistaken.
After taking a train to Gatwick airport, we were all set to check in when we were told that you had to have printouts of your boarding passes(never required in the time that I have been flying). Since we didnt have it, they charged us 40 pounds apiece for the check in with out the printouts. To add insult to injury, we were then told (along with every other person on our flight) that we were only allowed
15 kg of luggage per person. Of course, we were over the limit so I had to rush and buy a bag to stuff excess into and carry on to the flight. It was such a hassle and engendered a great deal of stress for yours truly-I found out later that the Irish call the airline SCUM AIR, which is being too nice. It was more like Lyin` and Cryin` Air....