We arrived in Dublin bright and early at 6:30 a.m. and all we could think about was going to sleep. Twenty-two hours of travel and and four solid hours of sleep in the last 36 hours will do that to you… We grabbed our car from “budget” rent-a-car and headed off down the backwards streets of Ireland to… where? We didn’t know. We literally had no idea where to go. Our initial plan was to go to the Cooley Penninsula and visit a distillery but in our sleep deprived delirium we did not feel that was wise. So we just sort of went… We pulled out of the parking garage, always staying left, and headed towards any sign that said “Dublin City Center.”
Eventually we made it. But again, since the plan wasn’t airport to hotel and we didn’t have directions we had literally no idea where to go. Add to that that it is almost literally impossible to find the street name signs in Dublin, we were incredibly lost. I have a sneakin suspicion “Where The Streets Have No Names” by U2 is a scathing review to the director of transportation and signage in Dublin. But as Bethany said “sink or swim” … we doggy paddled. We ended up finding wifi at a gas station, I Googled directions and remembered that even if you lose data signal the maps app still follows your GPS location, creepy, but useful. Several wrong turns later we arrived at The Ashling hotel around 7:15 a.m. But as luck would have it, check in isn’t until 1:00 a.m. at the earliest and we had nothing to do and no energy to do it with.
We Muscled up enough courage to go to a local wireless store to get our European pre-paid SIM cards, at least now we can get GPS to wherever we’re going. We went back to the hotel and I fell asleep on a couch in the bar. Yup, I’m already passing out at bars… When in Ireland I guess… I was woken up when an employee asked if we were okay and had already checked in. I believe this was a kind way of saying “If you’re not a guest, this aint a homeless shelter.” Luckily we were and he looked into our room situation 20 minutes later we were in our rooms to sleep. Yup, we just got to Dublin and now we’re sleeping. Off to a running start.
We reluctantly got out of bed around 4:30 and headed off to the Temple Bar by foot. If you’re not aware Temple Bar is a strip of local shops, pubs and culture hidden away off one of the main Dublin Thoroughfares centered around famous Dublin Bar “The Temple Bar.” Halfway there we were sidetracked by a large old gothic Catholic Cathedral and decided to take a detour.
First detour of our trip so far! We arrived at Saint Augustines Cathedral and walked into a foreboding albeit beautiful cement and stained glass structure. They don’t make churches like the used too… Though theologically, I’m alright with it.
We then made are way the rest of the distance to Temple Bar. There we enjoyed our first official Irish drink two very nice Stouts. We also heard some original Irish Jigs song by an entire pub and met an awesome Christian couple from Savannah, Georgia. We made fast friends and may meet up again tomorrow or in a week in London. Adventure!
The night started winding down around 10:00 pm, though you wouldn’t know from looking at the sky, and we walked back to our Hotel. Turns out this time of year it doesn’t actually get dark until around 10:45 p.m. That’s good because we have a lot of daylight to burn in our final day in Ireland tomorrow. We finished the night off with a true Irish coffee and we’re off to bed.
Talk to you tomorrow!
Cheers,
B&B
