I am a short fuse, burning all the time, you were a complete stranger, now you are mine
I'm back from Dublin or as we would say in gangsta parlance Dubs-land! A-mazing weekend. I went to London via coach (that's a bus like a Greyhound for those of you who resent use of British-isms.) on Thursday which was almost disasterous as I was cutting it very close to catching my bus and then I arrived at Victoria Station where I met up with MacD by the Tube. It was joyous and we then commenced a looking around for provisions. Mallory proceeded to examine approximately every single item sold by the Marks and Spencers in the station. This is NOT an exaggeration. This is exactly what she did. If they sold it, she looked at it and I followed much like a kid on a child leash. (we finally ended up with a purchase of yogurt) Then we went over to the coach station so that we could catch our coach to Stanstead, which is an airport. We were sadly separated from our chatting by the lack of seats in proximity to each other. My neighbor was playing his ipod at this unspeakably loud volume where I could only not hear him if I was intent on shattering my own eardrums with my own pod. Luckily we made it to the airport with plenty of time to spare.
The airplane was quite alright, what I expected more or less out of Ryanair since they are an unspeakably cheap airline where you have to pay for each piece of baggage you check and they play promotions on the plane when you may or may not be trying to sleep. BUT the flight only cost 10 pounds and that's the kind of flight I'm willing to take for that price. They even congratulated themselves for getting in on time with a loud volley of trumpets when we arrived in Dublin. It was kind of like a Metro operator clapping for himself for getting you to your destination in the expected amount of time.
Dublin Airport was ludicrously small and we went through immigration with virtually no hassle seeing as how we were nonEU citizens, it was exceedingly fast. Then we found the ATM, hidden in a secret locale next to the bathrooms for some reason. We were naturally arrested by the handsomeness of the baggage handlers at the airport. It was a good omen for the scenic value of our jaunt. Boarded the bus to town but were sadly unable to identify where to correctly disembark, something I will blame largely on the fact that we were on the upper deck and the windows fogged up something extreme during our trip. We ended up getting off and walking a couple blocks until we could find a taxi to take to our hostel, The Four Courts. There was a spiral staircase up to our room which was on the top floor. On the walls of the staircase were caricatures of various nations with random sayings/facts. We got quite familiar with them as it was quite a hike up to the third floor (really the fourth floor in America). Our room was at the end of the hall and was freezing cold most of the time. It was a ten bed room and our first night there, there were only two other people in the room, a couple from Harvard. They were nice. We went out to dinner at this little Italian place in Temple Bar, near to Grafton Street. We were ushered downstairs which seemed to be where all the other tourists were shuffled down to as there was an extremely loud crass gentlemen from America joking about cavity searches at airports and a group of British women next to him. The couple behind Mallory in the corner were making out like crazy during their dinner. It was ludicrous. The food was delicious though the service was terrible. She took like twenty minutes to come and take our order and let's not even get into how long it took to get the check. We had an early night and went back to the hostel.
Friday, we get up and go wander around for a while and end up going to see the Book of Kells at Trinity. It's an illuminated edition of the four Gospels of Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John. It's gorgeous, that's for sure and in amazing condition. After that we went to shop for a bit, walking across the Liffey and up O'Connell Street past the Spire, which is apparently the largest sculpture in the world. It's this huge metal spike sitting in the middle of O'Connell Street. You literally cannot encapsulate the whole thing in your field of vision unless you're at least a block away. It's amazing. Then we shopped for a while in Schuh, Miss Selfridge's and Topshop, seeing as how it's sale season in Europe and the euro is superior in sales to the pound. It was some good times.
More to Come: The Stag Part-A
The airplane was quite alright, what I expected more or less out of Ryanair since they are an unspeakably cheap airline where you have to pay for each piece of baggage you check and they play promotions on the plane when you may or may not be trying to sleep. BUT the flight only cost 10 pounds and that's the kind of flight I'm willing to take for that price. They even congratulated themselves for getting in on time with a loud volley of trumpets when we arrived in Dublin. It was kind of like a Metro operator clapping for himself for getting you to your destination in the expected amount of time.
Dublin Airport was ludicrously small and we went through immigration with virtually no hassle seeing as how we were nonEU citizens, it was exceedingly fast. Then we found the ATM, hidden in a secret locale next to the bathrooms for some reason. We were naturally arrested by the handsomeness of the baggage handlers at the airport. It was a good omen for the scenic value of our jaunt. Boarded the bus to town but were sadly unable to identify where to correctly disembark, something I will blame largely on the fact that we were on the upper deck and the windows fogged up something extreme during our trip. We ended up getting off and walking a couple blocks until we could find a taxi to take to our hostel, The Four Courts. There was a spiral staircase up to our room which was on the top floor. On the walls of the staircase were caricatures of various nations with random sayings/facts. We got quite familiar with them as it was quite a hike up to the third floor (really the fourth floor in America). Our room was at the end of the hall and was freezing cold most of the time. It was a ten bed room and our first night there, there were only two other people in the room, a couple from Harvard. They were nice. We went out to dinner at this little Italian place in Temple Bar, near to Grafton Street. We were ushered downstairs which seemed to be where all the other tourists were shuffled down to as there was an extremely loud crass gentlemen from America joking about cavity searches at airports and a group of British women next to him. The couple behind Mallory in the corner were making out like crazy during their dinner. It was ludicrous. The food was delicious though the service was terrible. She took like twenty minutes to come and take our order and let's not even get into how long it took to get the check. We had an early night and went back to the hostel.
Friday, we get up and go wander around for a while and end up going to see the Book of Kells at Trinity. It's an illuminated edition of the four Gospels of Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John. It's gorgeous, that's for sure and in amazing condition. After that we went to shop for a bit, walking across the Liffey and up O'Connell Street past the Spire, which is apparently the largest sculpture in the world. It's this huge metal spike sitting in the middle of O'Connell Street. You literally cannot encapsulate the whole thing in your field of vision unless you're at least a block away. It's amazing. Then we shopped for a while in Schuh, Miss Selfridge's and Topshop, seeing as how it's sale season in Europe and the euro is superior in sales to the pound. It was some good times.
More to Come: The Stag Part-A