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Published: June 17th 2008
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Day 6 - Monday- A bit of a wasted day….
A very stressful day we’ve had today, to say the least! I never ever want to have a rental car if I’m going to be in Dublin again. Oh my gosh, what a crazy place. Luckily, Robert avoided getting two tickets which was good (one for going down a one way street and one for being improperly in the bus lane). We actually saw the Garda give a ticket to the guy who went in the bus lane after us. The other time the Garda couldn’t get to us in time, or he had somewhere else to go - whew!! Well anyway, we got to Dublin after going to Dalkey Bay (quite by accident) which was nice. We checked into our hotel (The Ripley) after a horrendous rendezvous around the city center. I really should have bought a Dublin City map but I thought it wouldn’t be a problem since I thought I had it down exactly like the Google map indicated it would be. Not hardly! Luckily, I had looked at a picture of the front of the hotel and also read someone else’s blog about the gate being in
front. It was such a relief when we found the hotel at last. Unfortunately, when we went to return the car to the car rental place - the place was nowhere to be found. We thought we knew how to go but the road we looked for was not there. We did find another car rental place who told us the place we wanted was really far from there and maybe we should consider taking it back to the airport, which is what we did. I really should have checked with the car rental place as to the exact location of the rental place in Dublin because it would have made our life a lot easier. I’m sure it was my fault because I must have looked up the wrong address. Oh well, that goes in my list of tips for future travel. Always check and re-check directions! After we dropped the rental car off at the airport we got the AerLink bus which Kayleigh loves since it was a double decker one. It took us through a huge tunnel and then came out into the city. It was really fast until we got in the city traffic, where at
one light we sat there for 6 light changes before we made it through the intersection. The whole trip was 1 hour long which wasn’t too bad. It dropped us off very near Connolly station. Connolly Station is not very far from our hotel and tomorrow we are walking to it to board our train to Belfast at 7:00 am. When we got back to the hotel we were so hungry and the girls wanted to eat there since they had already eyed up the menu earlier. They had curry for the first time, as they wanted to try something new. I’m not sure they were too impressed by it. I thought it was really good.
Dalkey Bay - We found Dalkey by driving up the coast road after trying to find a business Robert wanted to stop by. We never found the business and decided to just discover “whatever comes our way”. So we saw a sign for the beach and headed that way. Lots of cars were lined up on the road and we saw a sign for toilets (good thing!) so we pulled over. That’s when I spotted the DART rail train and knew we had
to explore some more. We followed a path down to the shore (many steps) and Kayleigh got to collect some rocks. It was really a nice beach. We saw a very elderly man there who put his bathing suit on near the shelter and went into the freezing sea. I was just blown away by that as the water must have been so cold for him. Maybe that was the secret to his long life.
We haven’t had a chance to explore Dublin much yet. It was nice riding in the bus in the top front because we did get to see so many people, etc. It was definitely like no other city these girls have ever seen. Emily couldn’t believe all the people everywhere. I look forward to getting out on foot on Wednesday. I’m a bit disappointed we didn’t do more today but we had no time for it. I’m writing this at 10:22 this evening - where did our day go? At least this hotel has internet access which can be purchased on ½ hour cards. I better get some sleep since we have a very long day tomorrow.
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I have been looking at your blog everyday The pictures are great