First Day in Ireland

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This morning we woke up around 5:30 am to head out to the airport for our Aer Lingus flight to Dublin. One major thing that my family has learned about travel of our kind is to be really conservative with the items you bring, and that was reinforced at the airport. Also, make sure that you check to see the bag requirements of any airlines that you might travel. We checked British Airways’ regulations on the way out and had no problem. Apparently, though, Aer Lingus considers flying from Scotland to Ireland domestic, instead of international, so they only allow one bag per passenger. I have two bags of stuff to live with for the next 7 or 8 months, and each of our four bags were overweight. Needless to say, they charged us more to fly our bags than it had cost for all of our tickets combined. Just make sure that you bring one small bag with you when you travel anywhere without a car.

The flight itself was very short and I have no complaints. It was 40 minutes from takeoff to landing and the flight was smooth and uneventful. We landed and called our apartment hotel so that we could make sure that we had a room.

When we landed we were tired and hungry. We grabbed an enormous cab for our enormous luggage and headed out to our hotel. Our cabby was exactly what you would think of when you think of an Irishman. He was loud, funny, animated and quite unreserved. He discussed Irish and American politics with us and did not hold back on his strong opinions or on the cursing. He also told us that he had been a “footballer”, or soccer player, for the Manchester team when he was 15, but stopped playing when the coaches gave him bad treatment. He was quite pleased with my dad’s tip and offered to take us to the ferry when we left Dublin. The hotel we stayed at was called Christ Church Hall Apartments. This was like our room in Edinburgh. It had two bedrooms, a bathroom and a kitchen complete with washing machine. This hotel was not quite as nice as the past hotel, and it was not clean when we arrived so we dropped off the bags and wandered to find somewhere to eat.

We headed down to the area known as the Temple Bar, on the southern bank of the River Liffey. Unfortunately, everything was closed until noon and we were a bit early. We were still tired and hungry and quite short tempered. We wandered around the Temple Bar asking around and snapping at each other until we finally found a place called the Porterhouse Brewery. We calmed down as we drank our home-brewed beer and had Irish stew, mussels, and sandwiches. We relaxed and listened to stories from our Italian waitress and then headed out to our hotel. By the way, I would not recommend ordering mussels from a brewery. Who knew?

We returned to our hotel and slept for about four hours.

After our nap, we decided to walk down to the Liffey until we got hungry for dinner. My mom had a craving for Italian food and in Dublin there is absolutely no shortage of Italian restaurants. We went to a place with all Italian staff and relaxed to a nice dinner.

After dinner, we did what my parents called a “mini pub crawl”, which was hardly a crawl at all. We went to a place called The Auld Dubliner and I had a cider. This is like a beer made out of fruit like pears or apples and can be found in the States, but is quite common over here. The atmosphere was nice for me, but my parents were annoyed with the live music. Instead of the expected traditional Irish music there was a guitar player playing acoustic covers of popular bands. We then migrated to a famous pub called The Stag’s Head, with the namesake head placed in all of its glory over the bar. I had my first Guinness in Ireland and it was definitely better in Ireland. It was not just my imagination, but they brew it with different water, so it tastes sweeter and is easier to drink. If you go to Ireland or the UK, definitely try beers that you can find in the States if they are brewed locally. There are many things that you can find here and the States that are different in both locations.

After our pub-crawl, we returned to the hotel. My parents were surprisingly wound up and stayed up until 1 am to my surprise. We went to sleep after watching some tv.

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