We arrived in Dublin at 6:30 am Friday, June 17th. The city doesn’t really wake up until 10 am. Luckily, we were able to hitch a cab ride with my mother and her boyfriend to their hotel, which was in the center of town. We had coffee in a small café next to their hotel, the Westbury.
We called our Servas contact that had our list of hosts and set off to obtain them around 10:30 am. For those of you not familiar with Servas, visit www.servas.org. It is an amazing network of people. We have a list of Servas hosts for Ireland, UK, Belgium, Netherlands and France. There is no monetary exchange that is made in the Servas program. All exchanges are cultural. It is truly an amazing program. Anyway – on the way to obtaining the list, we saw St. Patrick’s Cathedral, as well as some of Dublin’s side streets. We also met my mother and David (her boyfriend) at Davy Byrnes, a famous pub in the city center. Before parting ways, we made plans to meet at 7:30 pm at Oliver St. John Gogarty’s on Temple Street for some traditional Irish music. Kale and I then set off for our hotel. This was around 2:30-ish.
St. Patrick's Cathedral:
Molly Malone Statue:
Just FYI Dublin is Ireland’s capital city, so not only is it expensive, it is also tourist-dense making it very busy. We had booked a hotel for our first night in Dublin, which ended up being quite far from the city center. We took a train from Pearse Station to Broombridge, which was about a 20-minute ride out of the city. Let me set the mood. Kale had booked this room based on our “shoestring” budget, but we had been hanging out with my mother and her boyfriend at a five-star luxury hotel, and had just flown first class to Ireland. I was not happy about having to take a step down from five-star luxury, which meant me having to actually walk two miles carrying my backpack to a less desirable location filled with people on a budget like us…WAH! L Yes, I was being a big baby.
We called our Servas contact that had our list of hosts and set off to obtain them around 10:30 am. For those of you not familiar with Servas, visit www.servas.org. It is an amazing network of people. We have a list of Servas hosts for Ireland, UK, Belgium, Netherlands and France. There is no monetary exchange that is made in the Servas program. All exchanges are cultural. It is truly an amazing program. Anyway – on the way to obtaining the list, we saw St. Patrick’s Cathedral, as well as some of Dublin’s side streets. We also met my mother and David (her boyfriend) at Davy Byrnes, a famous pub in the city center. Before parting ways, we made plans to meet at 7:30 pm at Oliver St. John Gogarty’s on Temple Street for some traditional Irish music. Kale and I then set off for our hotel. This was around 2:30-ish.
St. Patrick's Cathedral:
Molly Malone Statue:
Just FYI Dublin is Ireland’s capital city, so not only is it expensive, it is also tourist-dense making it very busy. We had booked a hotel for our first night in Dublin, which ended up being quite far from the city center. We took a train from Pearse Station to Broombridge, which was about a 20-minute ride out of the city. Let me set the mood. Kale had booked this room based on our “shoestring” budget, but we had been hanging out with my mother and her boyfriend at a five-star luxury hotel, and had just flown first class to Ireland. I was not happy about having to take a step down from five-star luxury, which meant me having to actually walk two miles carrying my backpack to a less desirable location filled with people on a budget like us…WAH! L Yes, I was being a big baby.
Once we reached Broombridge, we started walking through a residential-type area following our GPS signal to the location, per Google maps. The further we walked, the more I whined. “Why did you book a room SO FAR from the city center? There are no restaurants and there are NO BARS!!!” I nagged Kale for a good 15 minutes.
As we walked up to 151 Navan Rd., the address given to us by Google maps, a car was pulling into the driveway. We asked the driver if we were at the hotel, and he told us we were at his home, which was not a hotel. We walked away feeling defeated, tired, lost and hungry. At this point Kale performed a Steve Martin rental car scene from Planes, Trains and Automobiles. At the time, it wasn’t funny, but looking back, it’s pretty hilarious. After threatening to cancel our entire trip, we walked back to the train at Broombridge, and discovered the address Google maps had provided us with was incorrect. Once we found out the correct address to our hotel, we hailed a cab, and finally checked into our room. By the time we got to our room it was 5-ish, and we were supposed to meet my mother and David at 7:30 pm. We decided to take a “quick nap,” but overslept and didn’t end up waking until 7:30 pm. Shit.
We were late. We took a bus into the city center, and luckily were able to meet up with mumsie. The traditional Irish music was lots of fun, and we ended up eating dinner after the show at an inexpensive Mediterranean restaurant. We got back to our hotel via cab around midnight and totally crashed. We slept until 12:30 the next day. We felt refreshed and ready to take on our next adventure.
We were late. We took a bus into the city center, and luckily were able to meet up with mumsie. The traditional Irish music was lots of fun, and we ended up eating dinner after the show at an inexpensive Mediterranean restaurant. We got back to our hotel via cab around midnight and totally crashed. We slept until 12:30 the next day. We felt refreshed and ready to take on our next adventure.
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