Top ‘o the Mornin to ya!

Yay I’ve finally explored a wee bit of Ireland!  I went to Dublin for 5 nights starting from Wed 31st March – basically I took advantage of the long Easter holiday weekend and tagged on a couple holiday-days and got meself a decent break away!  I didn’t come back until Monday 5th April which was a perfect amount of time – apart from the fact that I was a bit sick of hostel-living by then but cheap’s cheap and needs must!

I booked through RyanAir (the budget-est of budget airlines it has to be said) but they were totally fine (apart from the 3hr delay leaving Newcastle which resulted in me losing an arvo of sightseeing but WHATEVER haha)

So I gets to Dublin airport and picks up my Dublin Pass from the Tourist Office (pre-ordered of course) and got on the Airport bus to the town centre (free with the Dublin Pass) & my hostel – Jacobs Inn.

Now it was on this bus that I had one of my ‘OMG moments’ and realised Wow… I’m actually in Dublin!!!  I love these moments cos it’s when I’m finally doing something that I’ve been planning for ages and is the best feeling… This was truly realised when I saw the road signs – half Gaelic and half English which to be honest I didn’t expect (probably cos I’m a bit dense about Ireland haha)

After settling into the hostel…  actually instead of going into a boringly detailed assessment of the hostel I’m just gonna move along to the more interesting observations, but if you’re planning a trip to Dublin & really want to know about how I found the hostel (Jacobs Inn) then email me or leave a comment and I’ll fill ya in on the +/- of the place…

… so, after settling into the hostel I had originally planned to start my sightseeing but because I was now checking in at 4pm instead of 1pm I didn’t see the point in starting so I just took a walk up the street to the main street – O’Connell St.  Wow what an amazing street it is! Luckily the street I was heading up had a perfect view of the Spire – this incredibly tall monument that pretty much resembles, well, a spire! but without the church underneath it – really amazing monument but so hard to get a decent photo of because it was SO tall. I managed to get a few of it but obviously at a distance…

On the way up to O’Connell St I stopped in a shop called O’Carrolls… now this was an experience – talk about an Irish overload on your senses! Everywhere you looked there was green leprechauns, green sheep (they’re obsessed with sheep & the tourists love it!) green shamrocks, Dublin this and Dublin that – you name it and it was in that shop.  To be honest it was kind of a bit daunting walking in and thinking “Holy shit I’ll have to spend a week in here looking at everything before I decide what to get…”  Oh and the shops were everywhere! After I left that one I saw another one about 3 blocks up on O’Connell St, and then looked across the road and there was another flippin one!

O’Connell Street itself was incredibly impressive – it had really wide sidewalks and two lanes going in either direction for cars with another wide lane in the middle for pedestrians – with amazing statues dotted all along it. Again I tried to get some good pics but it was hard with my wee dinky camera L

Now being an over-planner I had researched and researched Dublin til the cows came home so I knew what I was in for and what I wanted to see but actually seeing these things in person was totally amazing. My next photo opportunity was just up O’Connell St and was called the General Post Office – AGAIN I’ve taken photos but if you Google it you’ll see how absolutely amazing and grand this building is – for a flippin post office! And inside it was just as grand but it was kinda impossible to take photos because I didn’t know if I was allowed to and there was this security-guard-looking guy who kept watching me so I took a couple furtive snaps and high-tailed it outta there! It was very much a post-office of olden times – very cool.

Next I headed up to the top of O’Connell Street and came to the River Liffey so followed that down to Halfpenny Bridge and took some pics then went down a side-street to Temple Bar – drinking capital of Dublin haha. Now this was an alcohol-free trip (except Guiness but that’s later) so I wasn’t interested in seeing it packed with drunken yobbos but wanted to see it in the daytime nonetheless.  This is where my day kinda took a weird turn…

I’d just finished taking a photo of some signs (I love taking photos of signs in other countries…) and this random African guy came up to and said ‘Hi’… I said Hi back but instincts told me to bolt (cos he was big and scary-thanks instincts for being on the ball haha) so I went into the nearest shop – thank god it was a tourist shop and not a brothel or something!  I mooched around inside and watched him outside on his mobile (probably to his boss – Mr People Smuggler/Pimp) until he eventually left… then I got some postcards and left. I saw him up the street so I quickly made for the nearest side-street to get me back to the River and was almost there when he was suddenly back next to me again… can we say HOLY SHIT CRAP BOLLOCKS! I was seriously actually panicking at this stage because holy hell who does that? We walked over the Halfpenny Bridge and he was asking me what my name was, where I was from, how long I was here for etc etc so I just told him a bunch of lies waiting for him to get the hint and piss off – I didn’t want to just plain tell him to F*** OFF in case I became the next headline in the paper “Kiwi Chick tells Big African Man to F*** Off & Is Found Strangled in the River Liffey”… so I politely chatted to him until he finally asked me if he could have my number so we could go out for ‘drinks and fun’ as he put it. I just told him I had a boyfriend back in Australia and he wouldn’t like that hehe and he said “This boyfriend was a lucky man” and then said “Dublin is a small city so I’m sure we’ll see each other again soon” – not if I can help it buddy! Then to my absolute relief he walked away…. Needless to say I never set foot near the Temple Bar area for the remainder of my time in Dublin just in case that was his regular stalking ground!

Anyways… after my heart-rate got back to normal I walked back towards the hostel and stopped in Tesco’s on the way to get some food (and watched in case Scary Man walked past following me – ready to alert the security guard looking bored as hell near the door) and then headed back to the hostel for the night.

Check out some photos HERE…

… continued in next post…