Dublin

First time I have internet in over a week, so here it goes...

We arrived in Dublin late Thursday night. We flew on RyanAir, and boy it was an experience. You are not assigned seats, and you have to wait by a screen until your gate is displayed about 40 minutes before departure. When the gate is displayed, everyone rushes to the gate to get in line to get a better seat. We were lucky and were one of the first in line. A few guys had luckily already flown RyanAir earlier, so they gave us the low down on how it all works. They also informed us that you have to print off your boarding pass before you get there, because if you do not, they will charge you 15 pounds. That would have been really easy and we would have done it when we bought our tickets, but you can only print them off from 15 days before the flight and up to 48 hours before the flight. Your checked bag can only be 15kg, and you one carry-on (you have to put everything in that one carry-on, purses and everything) can only be 10kg. The charge for over 10kg is 40 pounds. The charge for being over you checked bag depends on how much you are over. We were able to escape all these charges though since we were informed by our friends….but then again our plan ticket only cost 18 pounds, so they have to get you somewhere! We did have to pay 20 pounds to check the first bag, so it cost more to check our bag then it did our ticket!

Then when we got our flat… it was in the middle of Dublin’s ghetto! We had gotten an email earlier in the week saying we were “upgraded” to a luxury apartment…they forgot to mention the location change. The cab driver said in all 15 years he had been driving people from the airport, he had never once taken anyone there. He also told us to not walk around and definitely do not carry our purses. We slept there the first night and then called the reality agent first thing in the morning saying we wanted out. So we got a 100% full refund and moved to a nicer part to town into the Holiday Inn. So I guess it is good we got a free night out it??

So after we got done moving into the Holiday Inn, we walked around the city of Dublin, which I decided was by far my favorite place I have been. Irish people are so nice, and the pub experience is a whole new world. How they are depicted on TV is not misleading… it is real.

Saturday we walked around some more, went on one of the red sightseeing buses and visited both the Jameson Distillery and the Guinness Storehouse. Of course I tired an Irish coffee, but seeing as I don’t like whiskey, I also did not like the Irish coffee. We all went to dinner as a big group and then hung out and listened to Irish music in pubs the rest of the night. Clinton and I also randomly ran into Bob Riley on the street in the middle of Dublin early that morning and talked to him for a bit!

Random Story: Of course there are homeless people everywhere on the streets, which is very sad, but I never give them money because I do not want them to spend it on drugs and alcohol...I have heard too many stories. I always said I would give them food instead. But we were walking along and I saw a crippled girl, about our age, begging for money. This is the first person that got to me… I felt really bad for her. I wanted to give her money but we were walking to fast to have time…. And it is a good thing! While walking down a pedestrian street later that night, I looked to my left at a little “Jut-in” at the street where a door was….and we saw her standing up perfectly straight and sticking a needle into her arm! I was shocked…she put on such a good show earlier! So I just stared and said kind of loud (accidently) “hey it’s the crippled girl from earlier, and she is not crippled… she is doing drugs!” Everyone turned to look and she definitely saw us. When we walked back by later, the overhead door was pulled down so she could have privacy, but not all the way so you could still see her feet. Good thing I didn’t give her money!

On Sunday, Clinton, Jeff, Beau and I took a day tour to Wicklow, which is the county/countryside right outside of Dublin, and of course it was beautiful. There is not one thing about Ireland I do not like. We were able to see the beautiful countryside…and I know I have talked about the countryside being pretty in other places such as France, England and Scotland… but Ireland’s countryside blows them all out of the water! We were able to see some film locations of “P.S. I Love you,” “Leap Year,” and “Braveheart.” We also actually saw Sean Penn filming his new movie called “Camelot.”