Ireland, Part 1: dramas and dilemmas in Dublin

Hellooo readers! Here it is, finally – the first installment of our adventures in Ireland!

As I write this, sitting on our lounge room couch, I can hear fireworks constantly whizzing, popping and crackling in the distance, and earlier we could see some from our window. It's almost Guy Fawke's Night and fireworks are on sale in the supermarkets here, so we've been treated to spontaneous neighbourhood pyrotechnics displays on a few nights recently!

Anyway, back to Saturday night last week...

After spending the day relaxing and packing (and, in my case, going shopping for Ben's birthday presents), we took a taxi to Gatwick Airport in plenty of time for our 8pm flight to Dublin. It was a RyanAir flight – which, let me just mention, gives quite a different feel to the start of a holiday to, say, an Emirates or Singapore Airlines flight!!! But it was cheap and we lived to tell the tale, so no matter!

Upon our arrival in Dublin, we collected the keys for our pre-arranged hire car from the Avis counter in the airport, and made our way out into the chilly night air to our little red Opel Corsa. This is the point at which the first unforeseen and slightly inconvenient dilemma manifested itself – just what you've been waiting for, I'm sure! We do seem to have a few of them... :S

Well, we switched on TomTom, our handy little GPS buddy, only to find that all of our POIs (points of interest) were, erm, not there. These included the locations of our pre-booked accommodation for three of the four nights, the location of the meeting the next morning, etc etc. Ben had pinpointed the POIs for our trip using a Google Maps feature, but had not had a chance to check before we left that the download to Tommy had been successful... ah, hindsight! Anyway, this isn't the last you'll hear of this particular dilemma, but we'll move on for the time being. Thankfully, spending the night trying to find a comfortable sleeping position in the car was avoided, as we also had print-outs of our accommodation details.

After having tea at an Apache Pizza franchise near the airport, we stayed the night at a nice little B&B in Dublin. We arrived so late that we were still awake when the clocks ticked their way into Ben's birthday on Sunday, so he was pretty happy to be spending his birthday on holiday in Ireland!

The next morning, another slightly distressing situation presented itself: I realised I had left my hairbrush behind! We didn't even have a comb between us! Anyone who knows what my hair looks like when I wake up, and what it needs to look like a couple of hours later for the meeting, will understand why this was an issue requiring immediate attention. After our scrumptious home cooked Irish breakfast, we asked our helpful host whether any potential hairbrush-selling outlets were nearby. Her response indicated that most shops opened at 11am, perhaps making it slightly difficult to have my hair behaving nicely by 10:30am. However, following her directions, we found a nice little EuroSpar nearby that was open early AND sold hairbrushes with enough fortitude to tackle the task ahead (fortitude: “strength and endurance in a difficult or painful situation" (for the brush, not me!) -http://encarta.msn.com/dictionary_/fortitude.html).

We then checked out of the B&B and set off for the meeting. Now, this is a very long story so I will do my best to make it short-ish...

One, we didn't have the POI in Tommy. Two, the piece of paper with the address, phone number and directions was sitting uselessly in our flat back home. Three, when we took Ben's temporary international SIM card out of his phone and put his usual SIM card back in to get the phone number from his “recent calls” list (as he had spoken to them the day before), the removal of the SIM card had wiped all recent calls from the phone's memory! And four, I had had nothing whatsoever to do with these arrangements, so could not come to the rescue by freakishly remembering the address or directions. Again, HINDSIGHT!!!!!!

All he remembered was the name of the suburb, and that the house was located at “The Briars”. He remembered the lady telling him over the phone that there was no house number, and he vaguely recalled that the directions she had given him had included “second on the left”. The previous night, he had located The Briars on Tommy in the given suburb, and thought the layout of the streets within the complex was as he remembered it from doing the Google POIs. So, we arrived around 10:10am, feeling quite calm and confident that we had found our way to the right place.

Well. We tried following the directions he thought he remembered. Nope, none of the houses that were second on the left on any of the streets in the complex looked at all welcoming. However, lots of them DID have Halloween decorations on display, so our endeavours were witnessed by many a skeleton and large hairy spider entwined in excessive amounts of fluffy white web. We tried parking in the entrance of the complex and watching for people arriving. Nope, no one. Then we knocked on a few doors when it was almost starting time... probably about 8 of the 80 or so houses to choose from. Of those people who were home, no one knew anything. So we walked and drove around a bit, listening. Still nothin'! Then we sat and read for an hour or so before watching for people leaving. Still no luck!!!! And so, at a quarter to 12, we meandered back into Dublin.

We were later told by the friend who gave us these people's address that their house is the only house at the Briars. Hence why it doesn't have a number. Hmmm. I suppose, despite all our careful planning and organising, it could have been possible that were were at the wrong Briars...??!!

We also later learnt that the meeting is usually from 11 to 12. Ok, the rest of it might have been avoidable, but we definitely didn't know that!!

On our way back into Dublin, we stopped to take photos, follow interesting signs, explore interesting-looking side roads, and drive over large bridges that turn out to be someone's driveway and end up at their house.

We then stopped for a look at Swords Castle in Dublin – which we had passed on our way through the city that morning, and resolved to return to – and had a wander through the peaceful park beside it.

After that, we set off for Kilkenny, the location of Sunday night's B&B... if only we could ever get through all the banked-up cars and inching-along traffic to get out of Dublin, that is!

But, despite not having got very far into this story at all, I really should be off to bed, so I'll leave you in anticipation until the next installment – which I promise will be much closer to drama-free!!!

Goodnight!

PS. Are there more than four people still reading this? We'd love some more comments! :)

PPS. We would also like to thank Lincoln and Jynni for funding much of our Irish holiday with the Euros they gave us for a wedding present. These had been living in my wallet waiting for an opportunity to be spent, as per L&J's instructions that they weren't to be exchanged, banked, used as uneven-table-leg-proppers, etc. Thanks again!!!