Long day of travel yesterday. Amanda and her mom picked me up at 9:30am Friday morning and we headed up to Lebanon, NH to catch the bus down to Logan Airport. I was actually excited for the bus ride. The past few nights I haven't been sleeping very well, and the night before hadn't been any exception. But, never fail, I always seem to fall asleep in a moving vehicle. It was about 2.5 hours down to Logan, and after I watched about a 1/2 hour of the movie they were showing, I curled up across the two seats and fell asleep. After a good hour, hour and a half of sleeping I woke up and caught the last part of the movie, and shortly after that we arrived at Logan, right at terminal.
Because we were there so early, we were checked in and through security really fast...even if I did have to chug a huge vitamin water right before because I didn't drink that much of it on the bus. Oof. After that, we went and enjoyed a nice lunch because we had a few hours to kill, and then spent the rest of the time sitting in the rocking chairs near the large windows (how cute is THAT?!) and watching the planes come in and out.
Once we were on the plane, we knew it was just a waiting game before touching down in Ireland. But, the 6 hour flight felt like nothing compared to the 16 hour flight to South Africa we took in August. And, the food was pretty good for airline standards. I spent most of the flight taking little naps and watching the TV shows/music videos and the movie (Nights of Rodanthe, so GOOD) with the occasional ipod game.
We touched down in Dublin at around 12:30am EST, or 5:30am local time. We gathered our luggage, breezed through customs and met Melinda at the door.
It's a good thing she decided to meet us versus us trying to find the building. We needed to take a bus to reach the apartment complex, and not only is it extremely difficult to navigate in a city you've never been to, but the morning darkness made it even more difficult. On top of that, the bus that we took didn't stop where it was supposed to and actually took us one stop further. Glad Melinda was there to guide us or we probably would still be on the bus right now! haha
Once we got off the bus we had to walk for a little bit to reach the apartment complex, and on the way we ended up finding a few pint glasses sitting on the sidewalk. hehe, Ireland. love it. We dumped out the beer that was left in them and totally took the glasses. We figured we had been joking about stealing a Guiness pint glass from a pub...now we didn't have to!
I have to say, our plan to stay awake all day and fight the jet lag failed miserably. After we got settled in and spent some time catching up with Melinda and her roommates, it was about 8:30am local time or 3:30am EST. For two people who had spent the previous day/night barely sleeping, we were pretty tuckered out. And, Melinda still hadn't slept from the night before. So, the three of us decided to sleep for the next few hours to be able to function for the afternoon.
Amanda and I slept for about 6 hours, Melinda slept for a little bit less. When we all woke up it was around 3pm, and we decided to get dressed and head out into Dublin to walk around before the sun set and pick up some groceries for snacks and meals for the week.
Dublin is beautiful. Simply beautiful. I am in love with the old style buildings, the pubs that line every street, and the patches of cobblestone walkways. The people here are so upbeat, laughing and joking and singing with one another as they walk. When we got into the center of town there was a huge hustle and bustle, with shops galore and awesome musicians scattered along the walkway. It really felt like an Irish version of New York City in a way. I'm in love with the people, the atmosphere, the architecture--everything.
We even walked through an amazing park on our way to to the grocery store. The sun was shining, it was a nice 45 or so degrees out, and people were bustling around the park enjoying the nice weather, playing sports, and watching the swans in the pond. Ugh, simply gorgeous.
On our walking tour we stopped to cut through Trinity college. Its such a beautiful old style college, with cobble stone walkways and a large green. It was really quiet, but I love it. We stopped into the book store and the Long room, where the Book of Kells is on display. The Book of Kells is a manuscript written in Latin transcribed by Celtic monks in 800 a.d. The exhibit was about 8 Euro to visit, and as we stood there debating whether or not to spend the money, the man running it told us to just head on through as there were about 10 minutes until the exhibit closed. So, we got to see it for free! It was beautiful, displayed and illuminated under thick glass. Each page is extravagant, with lavishly hand decorated biblical text. And, we saw it for freeee!
Next we headed over to the shopping center to go to the market/grocery store. That is an experience in itself. I'm always amused by international packaging and stores, not only because I'm a marketing major but also because I just enjoy analyzing stores and food. Not only is everything measured in the metric system, but everything has weird names and packaging. Like bacon, for example. We've decided were going to cook meals a few times to save some money, and we wanted to make breakfast for dinner one night. So, I picked up some bacon, which is called Rashers. It doesn't even look like American bacon, it's thicker and wider. It looks like a slab of pork, basically haha. It's really interesting and fun, Amanda and I plan on going back and browsing around again to analyze it more as well as purchase some fun packaging to add to our South Africa international packaging collection.
It's also interesting that unlike American stores, one has to pay for plastic bags for groceries, but I guess its like that in most of the world, except for America. Typical. So, we bought our groceries and put them in our backpacks for the trek home. It was good too, they would have been really heavy to carry all that way in a plastic bag.
When we got back we made tacos for dinner, and then proceeded to trying to make brownies using the metric measuring system. It was even more complicated because Melinda doesn't own any measuring cups! It ended up with us pulling up a conversion chart that included fl. ounces//US equivelent// mL. So, when we needed 60mL, it equaled 2 fluid ounces. We ended up basing everything on a shot glass being 2 fl. ounces. We totally McGuyvered it and they came out delicious.
Now, we're just having a relaxing evening, eating brownies, catching up, and keeping it low key so we can head to bed at a decent hour tonight. Tomorrow we'll be up early to catch the train and head to Howth, where it will be a full day of hiking, touring, and checking out the apparently awesome market they have.
I'll leave you with a photo from the photobooth sesh Amanda and I had on the plane on the way here!
2 comments:
Welcome to Dublin!
Actually the paying for plastic bags is a relatively new thing in Ireland (well early 2000s) and in most of Europe bags are free. It's a good idea though.
Post a Comment