Dublin: To hell and back

I flew into London early monday morning knowing it was going to be a tough day. I had to refuel and be ready to fly out super early tuesday morning to Dublin. This trip which had appeared too easy as it was to plan (Expedia gave us a great price for flights and hotels) had already taken a bad turn when we discovered that Katie (who I was going with) couldn’t fly. This led to a flurry of activity on her part as she tried to salvage a way to get there. She ended up taking a combination of trains and boats that took 12 hours each way. Thats kinda how the trip went…

I got up at 2:30 am to catch a Dot2Dot bus to Heathrow. Dot2Dot is this amazing service that operates basically as a shared ride where the car picks you up at your hotel or flat and off you go to the airport and whichever terminal you require. Its pretty sweet. Then I hopped on a BMI plane to Dublin, navigated to a 747 bus to O’Connell Street and finally found the hotel. At this point it was about 9:30am and Katie had been in the hotel lobby since about 7. We tried checking in but no dice. Try back at noon they said. No worries. We went down the street to a little Ireland diner and had some traditional breakfast. I wasn’t feeling too hot and neither was katie. Lack of sleep and food on both our parts was taking its toll. In fact, and this will be more amusing later in this story, I actually said to katie “I feel like I can actually feel my body shutting down.” But we soldiered on and wandered around a bit before our room was ready…then we crashed into bed for about 5 hours. When I woke up I wasn’t feeling so great so I went to the bathroom to splash some water on my face. I went to walk out the door and everything got a little bit spotty. I was just about to say…hey katie? When I passed out apparently. I woke up when I hit the hardwood floor with my spine and then just laid there checking all my appendages to make sure they were in working order and I hadn’t just tripped and fallen. But I couldn’t quite remember the actual fall only waking up looking at the ceiling. Katie in her groggy state thought i as moving furniture and asked if I was okay. The conversation went something like this.

KT: You okay over there?

KC: I think I just passed out.

KT: *pause* What?

KC: I think I just passed out.

KT: *jumps out of bed and runs over* What?!! What do I do?

KC:…I don’t know?

KT: Shit.

KC: yeah.

Naturally we did what any sane 20 year old does in this situation. We called our mommys. Duh. Well actually I contacted some people as SU who called my mom for me. Needless to say our first night in Dublin was not a rocking one as we ordered food from the bar downstairs and watched Eastenders. We think, for those of you who care, it was a combination of sleep deprivation (I had gotten about 4 hours of sleep in two nights and not much in the week before), dehydration, lack of food and being sick. Good. Times.

Anywho, we slept in the next day and then decided the Hop-on Hop Off bus tour we had purchased tickets for already would be okay to do since it involved a lot of sitting. It turned out to be a great way for two sickies to see Dublin and our first stop ended up being the the Irish Museum of Archeology where they had on display some skeletons of Celts they had discovered in a Bog. It was a great museum and after that we headed out to Christ Church which has the biggest crypt in Ireland…or Dublin…don’t remember which one. Anyway this is also where they have a monument to Strongbow..the person..a norman king apparently. Who knew? Love his cider.

Christ Church

the Crypt SO COOL!

The next photo requires a little bit of explanation. Apparently there was a rat in the organ of the church and a cat crawled in there to get it. They both got stuck and mummified in the organ. They are on display in the crypt. I kind of love this country.

The Cat and the Rat

Theres is also a monument in Dublin called the Millenium Spire built to commemorate the year 2000. Course it was built in 2003 but whose counting.

the Spire

The other fun thing is the door colors of the Georgian Mansions that line the streets. They are every color red, green, blue, yellow and our tour guide told us why. Apparently when Queen Victoria died the Dubliners were told to paint their doors black as a sign of respect but being Irish, they don’t like being told what to do, so they painted the doors every color but black. Again…how could you not love these people??

Red door

We then headed off to St. Patrick’s Cathedral which frankly..was less cool than Christ Church but it is such a staple I had to see it.

St. Patricks

After that…we were basically done so we headed back to the hotel to chill for a little bit before dinner. For dinner we ended up at this amazing restaurant/pub/disco called The Church where we both had Guinness beef stew (yummy) while overlooking the original organ still in the church. The confessional is actually a booth at the bar. It was an amazing place to eat and I highly recommend if you are going to dublin!

Thursday was Guinness Day! We took the tour bus to the factory. Side note: As a joke the bus driver told us Guinness was closed for a function for the employees. Katie and I were frozen in horror. Well played bus driver. Well played. So we got lunch at the Brewery Bar which was delicious! and then took the tour.

Katie Enjoying Her Guinness

Me Enjoying my half of a half pint

Follow the arrows or perish.

The tour is set up so you follow the arrows. Like a Hershey for adults. Kt and I found this really funny…What other way could you go we said to the arrow on the stairs. All very funny. Until there was no arrow. Not so funny. Touche, Guinness.

Then we’d come across things like this…

Which way?

Which way do we go!?

Thats mean, giving people booze and then confusing directions!

 

Words of Guinness Wisdom

 

 

The tour ends in the Gravity bar..the highest bar in Dublin which has 360 degree view of the city and a complimentary Guinness. Us invalids declined the Guinness and got a coke and fanta instead. That’s right we’re badasses.

view from gravity

We headed back to the hotel on the 123 bus or if your irish the one-to-tree bus cause KT had to catch her train back. We had a great final dinner in the bar and she headed off leaving me all alone in the hotel room for the first time. So I did what any badass would do. I showered with the bathroom door open. I know. I’m a BAMF. No big deal.

This is the part where the trip back sucks. I hit the hay and woke up at 3:30 to catch a bus that was supposed to depart at 430 from about a block away. I didn’t want to wait on the corner for 30 min so i waited in the hotel lobby till 420. Imagine my surprise when I got to the station to discover a sign saying the bus left at 4:15 and 4:45. Fine Dublin. It. Is. On. So I stood in the rain and freezing wind for 30 min (during which time i saw a full grown irishman wearing pink footy pajamas) until I looked down and across the street saw Jesus-in-a-box. Thats right a statue of Jesus in the box. Well, I thought, can’t hurt. And said a little prayer. Imagine my surprise when the bus came 5 min early. Thank you Bus Jesus. I got to the airport and found BMI check in which was the most stupid and counter productive system ever. Instead of having some people (read: old people) check in with agents at the counter and other people (read: young people) check in self service they had everyone doing self service but some people (old people) couldn’t figure out how to use them damn new fangled computers and needed the agents anyway. Therefore you had agents checking everyone in using the self service computers. You see how this is retarded. After fuming online for about 30 min I finally got checked in and headed to security. Holding my backpack, laptop, sweatshirt, jacket, liquids bag, purse, passport and boarding pass (not sure how) I attempted to shove it all in the security thing in a flustered sort of way when A very nice lady said…take your time dear. Thank you airport goddess. I hustled through the metal detector to grab my laptop and waited for my purse…and waited….and waited…finally a member of the Dublin Airport..Association? something that ends up with the initials DAA a giant cocky rent a cop walked up and grabbed my purse. I shall call him moron for the following conversation.

Moron: Whose purse is this?

Me: Mine.

Moron: I need to go through it.

Me (Annoyed at this point): Have at it.

Moron: *shuffles through purse taking random things out*

**Note: in this purse is a card reader for my camera, ipod, cell, various wires, and other random electronic crap so this was not a surprise. What WAS a surprise was what happened after this**

Moron: *pulls out an umbrella* Is this yours?

Me: Yes?

Moron: *shakes 6 inch umbrella out throws it on top of my open purse * Okay.

Me: *jaw hits ground*

I had to force myself to walk away before I said what was on the tip of my tongue. Sorry for the swearing grandmas.

Me in my head: Thank you security god for saving me from the famous umbrella bombs. I’ve heard they’re really fucking popular. You should get an award. Idiot. Why don’t you try stopping some terrorists instead of sick 20 year old girls trying to get home.

But I knew I had to get on the plane so I kept it shut. But let it be noted I officially am annoyed with airport security measures.

On the other side I had to make a decision. Pay 16 pounds for a 15 min trip to  the center of London on a nice quiet express train or pay 3 pounds to take an hour ride on a subway. Naturally as a poor college student the decision was easy. Hello Heathrow Express. I’ll see you in 15 min London. What can I say? I’m my brother’s sister.

It then took me about 2.5 hours to get from plane to my flat and the highlight was a 15 min blissful trip on the Heathrow express. The downside was the 1/2 tube ride from Paddington to my street during rush hour. Its okay though. I got my jersey on and shoved my way through, thank god for that important life training received in the Garden State Public School System. Go team hackettstown!

All in all not a bad trip considering all that happened. Nobody ended up in the hospital or in jail and with KT and KC traveling…thats a minor miracle.

 

Cheers,

Kc

“To be Irish is to know that in the end, the world will break your heart…”