iLand (Ireland)

This will be a relatively small blog, as yesterday we made the massive voyage from London Heathrow to Dublin, in the Republic of Ireland. We awoke at 8am, breakfasted, and then went for a final walk through Hyde Park (as we had been kicked out on our first day, and hadn’t fully explored it). We went back to the Round Pond which was cordoned off the day we’d been kicked out, and we found the spot where the Police found the dead girl. There were some flowers there, and cards saying “If only we’d known” so I think she must have committed suicide. Very sad. Made me think, though, that if I was going to suicide I’d probably chose a more glamorous location. Maybe I’d try and hop the fence at Parliament – naked – and run screaming like a madman towards Gordon Brown. I don’t think it would take long for the police to do something about THAT.

We left Hyde Park and did a final check of our cell at the Hostel, then checked out. Got on the Tube, tubed to Heathrow. We weighed our bags and evened out our distribution of stuff so that we were both under 20kgs. Plus I put on two extra jackets to decrease some more weight. Stupid 20kg limit. Qantas has 23. We really are a fat nation if the “Spirit of Australia” says its okay to be heavier than everyone else.

We waited for the plane from 11:30am-4pm, and then got on board. The flight took one hour. ONE hour. Matt and I were all like, is this thing gonna take off yet? Oh, we’ve landed. Got a nosebleed on the descent though, to which Matt’s initial reaction was “Ewww” for a couple of minutes. Then, being closer to the aisle, he wrangled some tissues off an air hostess. Really inconvenient time though, when the plane is landing. We landed, went through the Irish girl asking us very blunt questions. No joke**, this was the conversation.

Me: “Hello”
Irish Customs Girl: “What de fook are ye dounn harrr?”
Me: “Excuse me?”
Irish Customs Girl: “What... de... fook... are... ye... do..unn... heyar?”
Me: “Yeah, saying it slower doesn’t help”.
Irish Customs Girl: “What is de purpowse of yer visut?”
Me: “Holiday”
Irish Customs Girl: “Is dat riyte?”
Me: “Uh, yeah. Believe it or not”.
Irish Customs Girl: “And hoe lawng ahr ya intendin’ ter stey?”
Me: “Ten days”.
Irish Customs Girl: “Is dat riyte?”
Me: “Do you have any other programmed response?”
**I may have taken some creative licence with the exact text.

Leaving that, we walked into another big hallway. Matt says to me “Dude I think we go down this way” pointing left. But I was quite confident we just had to walk forwards. There were three channels you could walk through at Dublin Airport – red was if your flight was from an EU country but you had something to declare. Blue was if your flight was from an EU country and had nothing to declare. Green was if your flight wasn’t from an EU country. They were literally right in front of the corridor leading from our plane, so I decided we should walk through the blue channel. Which would have been great, if we had already picked up our bags. It seems counter-intuitive, to have the place you walk out through right in front of you when you get off the plane, and not have the fucking bags first. But anyway, that was my mistake. We spent a few minutes with some other British people who made the same mistake, on the phone to security, to try and let us back in so we could pick up our bags. Eventually they let me back in and I harvested our bags from the conveyor belt.

Next task was to get to the hotel. We caught a public bus from the airport to the city centre for 2.20 euro, although we didn’t have any idea where to go from there. We have now also gathered evidence that it is not just Brisbane bus drivers who are pricks – Irish ones are also pricks. Thus, there is a cross-continental correlation between profession and level of prickness. Upon arriving in the city, we got a taxi to our hotel.

I say hotel. But we’re living in a Castle. Not even kidding, this castle was built in 1132. The room is fully modern though, looks like any other regular hotel room. But the outside facade and the lobby and whatnot? It’s pretty much all castle. Forking. Epic. And ten minutes from the city centre.

We had dinner at the Castle, and we did as the Irish do and had a Guinness each. It was Matt’s first. He’s in love with Guinness now, which is a problem for me because I’ve never been the biggest fan of Guinness and I assume he will wish me to keep drinking it with him. Sigh. We’ll see how we go with that.

Heading to the Guinness Factory today hopefully. They give out free Guinness.

Yay.

That’s all from me.