And now what?: Dublin part 1

The good part of not being a student is that you can take time of whenever you want. So Michele and I finally managed to book our trip to Ireland to visit Dublin. Unfortunately we were so late that the flight’s from Leeds to Dublin were really expensive so we ended up booking a coach to Dublin. A horrifying twelve hour ride overnight. Luckily we had a marvelous city to look forward to.
We got on our coach at 6pm and all was well and good. The bad times came when we were trying to sleep. The roads were bumpy, the engine was loud, the man in the front wouldn’t stop talking to the girl next to him (the poor thing) and the boy in front of us really loved to sing along with his ipod.

So by the time we reached the sea (1am), we had only managed to lie in uncomfortable positions for several hours. To improve this lovely ride, we got send of the coach to pass the border by making a circle-walk through a building and back to the second coach. Of course there is nothing more fun than walking around half-blind (no glasses nor contacts) in the middle of the night. As a bonus it turned out the second coach was even more uncomfortable than the first one. Luckily we were released from this horrible beast once we were on the ferry. We chose the most comfortable (read; the first ones we saw) couches and lie down to pass out within five seconds. I must admit that was a good nap (if one ignored the staring passengers). After that we were at the coach station in no time and had to drag our half-sleeping bodies to the hostel (6.15am). For some reason the 24-hour hostel turned out to be closed. NOT AMUSING. So we carried on the dragging of half sleeping bodies and drank coffee in McDonalds, because it was the only thing that was open at that time. After this very sleepy cup of coffee we decided to try our luck on the hostel door again. Unfortunately it was still closed. But then we saw someone coming out of the door next to the hostel, which turned out to be the actual entrance. The door we tried to enter was an incognito fire exit. Very funny at 7am.

Luckily the nice receptionist gave us access to our room right away so we could sleep for a bit before exploring the town. After having breakfast we were ready to go and wandered through the Temple Bar area (I thought it was Buddha Bar, but well, close enough) until it was time for our tour. The very excited history student decided to include every single fact about Dublin that exists which made the tour more than three hours long. The most important facts; Ireland lost every war or battle the ever started (quite sad) and traditional Irish food is awful (really sad). Slightly overwhelmed by the overload of information and walking, we decided to lay down for a while in the park that was the ending point of the tour. The park was famous for… something. I would say for its soft grass that’s perfect for a nap on a sunny day (after all, that is what we used it for). It was so good that only the thought of dinner wake us up and got us walking again. We found a Mongolian restaurant where you could put together your own dish and let it be grilled for you (yummy!). Next it was time for a shower and another nap at the hostel. After that we did a brave attempt on going out for drinks, which was a bit of a failure. By midnight we were back at our hostel again and fast asleep within five minutes.