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Dublin, Ireland (23 - 25 June 2007)

In Glasgow back in March, RyanAir were giving out 'free' flights (not including taxes etc.) for two to Dublin in celebration of St. Patrick's Day week. Well if it's free it's meant to be as I always say, and I was there to snap a couple up and organised for Jen and I to head over for a long weekend! All I really knew of Ireland was that it's the home Guinness, the word "sun" is a fairly redundant one in their dictionary, the locals have a great accent, and that Dublin has a bloody great night life! So I was expecting a weekend of drunken fun in the rain hehe. As it turns out, it very nearly didn't matter a bit what I expected because I only just made it to the airport on time! The flight to Dublin was out of Glasgow's Prestwick Airport, located in (believe it or not) the town of Prestwick some 50kms south of Glasgow making it a real pain in the arse to get to. I had to get the first train at the crack of dawn out of Edinburgh to Glasgow's Queen Street Station (the same route I take to work every morning), walk 10 minutes around the corner to Central Station, and get another train from there to the airport - no worries. However, on Friday night (the night before Jen and I were flying out), Queen Street Station was hit by a flash flood that shut it down for most of the night. I'm not sure exactly how much damage a little water can do to a train track, but as of writing this (Wednesday), the trains are still running to a reduced schedule because one of the two tracks leading into Queen Street Station is unusable hahaha! Anyway, I knew absolutely nothing of this; the flood, the bung timetable, the warnings not to bother travelling unless absolutely necessary - none of it. So I rock up to the station in Edinburgh, get on the train, and fall straight back to sleep like I always do. I woke up about an hour later and we were at a standstill about five minutes out of Queen Street. Five minutes later when we still hadn't moved I was getting pretty agitated. I only had about a 15-minute window as it was to get from Queen Street to Central and this wasn't looking good. The conductor came over the PA to explain the situation with the flooding, and I'm sitting there thinking "Shiiiit!" We eventually inched forward again, and by the time we finally got to the platform it was 7:25am and the train to the airport was leaving at 7:30 hahaha, so the sprint was on! I made it to Central, found the train, and ran on with about 60 seconds to spare. Like I said - no worries! ;)

Like I said above we flew out of Prestwick Airport, and this is it - Prestwick. I have no idea why they decided to plonk an international airport out here in the middle of nowhere but there you are.		Any hope I had of catching up on sleep on the plane was dashed when a gang of about 20 chicks wearing red devil horns boarded and made a bloody great noise for the whole flight hehe. Obviously off for a hen night.
After just 30 minutes in the air we were looking over Irish terra firma, and what a dark and grey sight it was!		RyanAir apparently has a reputation for rough landings at excessive speeds, and they sure lived up to it! Just before touchdown I could see the ground coming coming coming and BANG! The pilot literally dropped the plane (hard!) and the chicks in the hen party all had a good scream hehe.
Dublin is definitely not the prettiest city I've ever been to but the general atmosphere around the place certainly makes up for it. The place is packed with both tourists and locals, the nightlife is awesome (more on that later), and the locals I came across were really friendly. For example I just asked a bus driver for directions, and ten minutes later were still talking about sport and New Zealand and this and that, all while we were going down the road with a bus full of passengers hehe.

This big random pole in the middle of the street is the Spire of Dublin, a.k.a. the Monument of Light. At 120 metres tall it's a pretty impressive looking thing, and has been given such nicknames by the locals as the "Erection at the intersection", and the "Stiffy by the Liffey" (the Liffey being the main river flowing through the middle of Dublin). It went up in January 2003 as part of a plan to improve the look of the area which was previously a bit Glasgow-like in nature.

Apart from large erections, Dublin has no shortage of street performers...

Some pretty nice bronze statues...
Knobs & Knockers selling exactly that (of course)...
Many big cathedrals (this is Christ Church Cathedra1)...		And far too many buses!

Oh and of course, good hearty Irish tucker, and...		Black gold! :)		That's good advice.

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hehehe he couldn't resist the third time we walked past - no matter how hard he tried.... - Jen

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