O Valencia!: Dublin your pleasure, Dublin your fun.

Wooooooooooooooo. My flight from Dublin to Glasgow has been delayed 5~ hours! However, I found free internet (In an airport!?), so I have time to type up a bit of my Dublin experience. I really loved it and hope that I can make it back to Ireland and get into the countryside a bit more. Hopefully when it is a bit more warm and green.

Day 1 - Jan. 2nd:
I arrived in Dublin International at 10:25am (4:25pm CST) having gotten about 3~ hours of sleep on the plane. Over Newfoundland we hit some pretty intense turbulence that lasted about 2 hours with a few moments of calm. Having only flown twice before, I wasn't very excited. At one point, the pilot told the crew to sit down and buckle in and I became even less happy. The plane felt like it was moving a ridiculous amount and I kept thinking about the "Lost" plane crash scene and how I didn't want to be marooned in Canada (at least the healthcare would be better).

When we landed in Dublin, there was a slight dusting of about 1 inch of snow. We were delayed an hour and a half because usually snow doesn't accumulate here. As a Minnesotan, I had a hard time understanding how slight ice and snow could cause such a major city to shut down, but they just don't have plow and salt distribution systems. After going through immigration and waiting anxiously for my checked luggage, I walked into arrivals to see my friend Hannah Crippen who is studying in Nottingham, England for the year. It was great to see a familiar face as I stepped into a foreign country.

Christ Church

I used my first euros to grab a bus to the city centre (Thanks Fien!). It's a crazy feeling being in a new place without any idea of where you are and no cell phone or means of communication. Scary, yet somewhat liberating. We got off on the bus and used the printed directions to make our way across icy cobblestones and found our hostel fairly easily. The girl at the desk was from Argentina and kept referring to me as "Mr. Anderson" in the Agent Smith voice from The Matrix. We had a dispute over room fees which led to a 20 minute Kung-Fu battle ending with my triumphant acquisition of the room key (I wish this sentence was true). She told us that we had to wait an hour to check in, so we rented some luggage storage and went to find food.

The bridge between Christ Church and Dublinia.

We went to Quay's in the Temple Bar district and had a burgers, chips, and a Guinness (When in Dublin…). The food was good and I learned that it is common to dip chips (fries) in gravy here, which isn't actually half bad. I had been told the Guinness is better here and it's true, it is smoother tasting. We checked in and moved our things into our room on the 3rd floor. It was a 20 person room (mixed gender) and was subdivided into 5 smaller 4 person coves. There were keycards to get into the hostel and then the rooms, so that helped with not worrying about theft.

Excellent Viking beard.

Our hostel was right next to Christ Church (beautiful) which was connected to another older church building which housed Dublinia, a museum of viking and medieval history. The Viking part was pretty cool and there were hilarious models of people from that period. After paying, a shifty character (similar to a sketchier Barty Crouch Jr.) told us to follow him and quickly walked towards the back of the museum. My tourist sense started tingling and I started getting nervous. He led us to the back to a staircase and I paused and asked about the exhibits on the main floor. He told us that you start in the basement and a less scary lady appeared and agreed, so we went down stairs to Vikingland (but I bet he has the dark mark).

Intensely creepy mannequin at Dublinia

Afterwords we went into Christ Church which was beautiful and holds the tomb of Strongbow (Excellent name). That night we went to a Spar (little grocery store) and got ingredients for a feast of peanut butter and jelly sandwiches and some cheese and onion crisps (chips). We also munched on Babybell cheese wheels which were awesome. We spent the night in the hostel common room and watched a football match (Soccer). All in all, it was a good first day in Dublin. I was a bit jetlagged throughout the day, but mostly functional. I apologize for the length of these posts, but I will be in the airport another 4~ hours and need to occupy myself.