We woke bright and early (~4 am) to catch our flight to Edinburgh. I like early, but this was ridiculous. It was the kind of wake up where it took about a minute to figure out how to turn off the alarm and turn on the light. No bueno.
We walked down Cockburn St from the Royal Mile to get to the train station, where we got on the airport bus. The airport bus took about 30 minutes to get to the airport. We were flying on Ryanair, which we had read horror stories about. We've heard everything from them charging people hundreds of dollars to reprint boarding passes to outright telling people they cannot board. The truth behind this is that they make you jump through lots of hoops. Succeed and it is cheap, fail and pay the price.
Because this is an international flight, we tried to arrive 3 hrs early. However, they wouldn't even check in passengers or luggage until 90 minutes before flight time. We had to wait and look sad, knowing we could have slept more.
Once they checked us in, the security line went smooth and we were able to grab some breakfast in the terminal. We walked around trying to find something to buy with our remaining pounds, but found nothing that fit the bill. I still think I could have fit the 5 lb Toblerone bar in the duty-free shop home in my luggage, but my travel buddy put the kibosh on that.
Ryanair was the Ikea of planes. Everything was hard yellow and blue plastics, and the seats were so close as to have their reclining ability removed. We were cattle, and once we were on the plane they tried to sell us stuff repeatedly. The flight itself was fine, though it did seem like the pilot ascended and descended as fast as is humanly possible.
Once in Dublin we exchanged our final pounds for Euros and got a few more Euros at the ATM. We purchased 3 day bus passes and took the bus from the airport to the city center. Melissa booked us a Best Western in downtown, and the airport bus took us straight there.
The hotel itself was dark and gloomy. The lobby was dark, the hallways were dark (they had motion detectors to turn the lights on and off) and the room required a key card in a slot in the room to even turn the lights on. They are serious about saving electricity here.
Once checked in, we began walking down O'connell towards Trinity College.
It started raining and we jumped on a bus to get us the rest of the way. Very notable is that the bus system in Dublin is extensive, but unintelligible. I have yet to see a schedule or map that really lays it out in a way that non-locals understand. As such, I have been getting my best information from friendly locals.
At Trinity, we took in an exhibit on The Book of Kells, which is a handmade New Testament made by Irish monks in the year 800 A.D. No photographs were allowed because old books don't like flashes. The exhibit ended in their historic library, which contains quite a few notable items like the original version of Handel's Messiah. Most of the books in this room are far older than America.
We grabbed a quick lunch by Trinity at the Walter Mitty Coffee project. Very tasty sandwiches. Next we headed into the shopping district by Trinity to go to a Disney store. My niece really wants a dress from Frozen (Princess Elsa) and it is sold out in the USA. I regret to inform her that it is also sold out in Dublin.
Next we walked to St Patrick's Cathedral, but en route we passed a mossy rock that I liked.
St. Patricks is the head cathedral in the church of Ireland. It was built on poor land for building a chuch. An underground river runs underneath it, which makes typical cathedral burials in the floor near impossible, unless they want all of the bodies to end up in the North Sea. I found the tour to be quite informative, and most notable was the amount of money the Guinness family has poured into the place to fix it up. Looking at the floor, you can even find imagery associated with the beer.
The highest profile burial in the church, at least by American tourist standards, was Johnathan Swift, who wrote Gulliver's Travels. He also preached at this church and lived on the grounds for a portion of his life.
Our final tourist stop was the Guinness Storehouse, which is where they have their tours. They put on a good tour for people who do not know how to make beer. Those that do may not require exhibit after exhibit on how water, malt, hops, and yeast make beer. I did enjoy how they talked about where they sourced these components, but they didn't go into much depth. I needed the advanced tour.
The tour winds up 7 levels of the storehouse, ending up in a bar with a 360 degree view of Dublin. Additionally, this was one of the highest points in town.
Highlights included learning that the Guinness we drink is not the top selling Guinness (they make a product for Africa and the Bahamas, Guinness Foreign Extra, that outsells everything else... It's hoppier and has higher alcohol content as well).
Also, for the first time in the history of mankind, Melissa drank beer and pretended not to hate it. God I love this woman, even if she totally faked it.
We had dinner in Temple Bar, which is the party district of town. There are lots of pubs, and Melissa wanted to find one with some live music. I wasn't in the best frame of mind for this, having woken up at 4 am. We did go to the world famous Temple Bar (the best pub in Temple Bar the neighborhood) and watched a few songs. I didn't feel like fighting for the bartenders attention in a packed bar to get fed, so we moved to a pub down the street that had a traditional dining room. We had standard pub fare.
We went back to the hotel and crashed before 9 pm. We fell asleep before we Skyped... Or so we thought. Around 130 am the fire alarm shocked us out of bed. This was one of the worst sounds I have ever heard. We threw on our coats and evacuated to the lobby, where we learned it was a false alarm. That's the thing with hotel alarms, is that everyone pretty much knows it is probably a false alarm, but knows that if a hotel fire is real it is a hugely dangerous event, so people evacuate quickly. We saw a French woman who looked like she managed to get her wool coat on and that's it.
Now that we were awake, we Skyped with Colton. Riley was already asleep, and judging from the time from my screen grab, we should have been asleep too!
This was not the end of the excitement either. The fire alarm went off again at 4 am. Once again, this was another false alarm, which we learned once we got to the lobby. We are not happy with this hotel in the slightest...
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