Dublin – Day 1!

We landed in Shannon this morning at 6am local time. We had a short layover before our 30-minute flight to Dublin. It was sunny when we touched down at 8:25am. Despite getting a few hours of sleep on the plane, Kendra and I were exhausted. Our first mission was to find the correct bus that would take us to our hostel. We managed to hop on almost immediately upon exiting the airport. Fifteen minutes later, and a quick walk from the bus stop, we checked into the hostel and grabbed breakfast in their kitchen. After a filling meal of toast and cereal, we packed our luggage away and took a brief three-hour nap.

At 2pm we woke up bleary-eyed and determined to see the sights of Dublin. We walked down to the river Liffey, and crossed the O’Connell Street Bridge. From there we wandered a bit in the streets and found a small pub tucked away from the main roads called the Stags Head Pub. We had a nice meal of toasties (think grilled cheeses with onions, tomatoes and thick slices of ham), chips (french fries), and coleslaw. Kendra tried to order a Killian’s, but the bartender laughed at her and said he had never heard of such a thing. He brought her a Kilkenny instead, which tasted like a watered-down Newcastle. Needless to say, Kendra didn’t like it very much.

After lunch we walked along Grafton street and got our mobile phones set up for local service. It’s amazing how easy it is to get a local number over here… we wandered down to Trinity and sat on the steps of one of the buildings. After admiring the campus, we walked up Dame St. to Upper O’Connell Street and back to the Hostel. Today seemed to be a low-key afternoon involving a lot of walking. Tomorrow we’re going to take the hop-on hop-off city tour bus.

We have so much to see and do tomorrow!