A Wee Trip to Ireland - Day 1 - Little ol' Jet Airliners

We started our rather quick trip to Ireland today with a noon flight on on a tiny 3-seat-per-row Continental Airlines jet from Nashville to Newark, New Jersey. We had a three-hour layover until we boarded another rather small Continental jet (at least for an overseas flight -three seats on each side of the row) bound for Dublin, Ireland. Continental was the main reason behind our choice to go to Ireland this year when we stumbled upon a round-trip airfare from Nashville to Dublin for $460 each. It would have been hard to pass up such a great price, so we pounced on it. The weather was clear and fair from Nashville to Newark and we had some great views of nearby New York City and The Statue of Liberty as we landed. The Newark Liberty Airport, as well as New Jersey itself, gets a bad rap, but overall it's a decent place to catch an international flight. The flight from Newark to Dublin was a rather short five and half hours (thanks jet stream tailwind). We boarded around 5 PM Eastern and we were flying all night plus gaining six hours, so by the time we touched down on the Emerald Isle Thursday was gone and it was Friday morning around 7 AM. We had planned to sleep most of the flight but that didn't go too well as our seats were near the back of the plane by the bathroom and there was constant traffic to and from it. Continental had a good in-flight entertainment system with a personal monitor for each seat with a good selection of first-run movies, TV shows, etc. which made the time just fly by (pun definitely intended).