The first 24 hours in Ireland

It's been an interesting trip so far ... here's some of the stories ...

The flights from Phoenix to Chicago, then Chicago to Dulbin were mostly uneventful ... except that I was not able to sleep on the last leg making for a VERY tired Greg when arrived in Ireland.

When I landed at the airport and made it through customs, it was on to the hotel and to collect my rental car. And the adventure begins ...

I needed to arrange transport from the airport to the hotel ... so I visited the "information" desk at the Dublin airport. The helpful man at the counter informed me that a taxi ride would be about 60-70 euro (very expensive!). He said if I was not in a rush that a bus ride would only cost 5 euro ... it sounded like a decent alternative and also offer a chance to see the city. My next step was to check a local ATM to see if I could take a cash advance with my corporate card ... could not figure out what the PIN was ... so no cash. That and the fact that it didn't seem that the taxi would take a credit card seemed to make the decision easy for me ... bus it was. Of course, this is with my luggage in tow ... luckily only one rolling bag. The nice lady at the bus counter was able to charge my fare to the credit card, and then gave me a map with the bus lines that I needed to take into town (748), then one transfer (66, 66A, 66B), and on out to my hotel.

The bus ride into the city was fairly fast ... and before I knew it I was in Dublin, bussing along the Liffy river with no clue where I was heading, and all day to get there. I knew that I needed to change busses, but I wasn't real sure where I should do that ... so I watched most folks get off at one particular stop and thought to myself ... is this the right stop? But I kept on riding until the next stop where almost the rest of the bus emptied out ... yet I was still riding. On to the next bus stop when there was just about no one left riding with me ... I finally asked the bus driver where I could get the 66, 66A, or 66B bus line. He informed me that I should have gotten out at the last stop ... and that I should get out here ... and of course I was not paying any attention to where I was since I was in a sleep-deprived stupor at this point. So I blindly followed the path that the rest of the folks that exited the bus took ... and I would up on a street, going the wrong way, with all of my luggage, and no idea how to find the 66 bus line.

I was lucky enough to have a friendly bus driver pull up driving the 51 bus line, and when I poked my head into ask where I could get the 66 line, he told me jump on and he'd take me there. 2 minutes later I was jumping off that bus and the driver was trying to tell me to hurry across the street to catch the bus I needed, which was sitting at the bus stop. As I was making a mad dash across the insanely busy street to catch the bus, he pulled away leaving me to wait 30 minutes for the next bus. So here I am, on Irish soil for about 1 hour now ... and I'm effectively LOST in the middle of Dublin, waiting for a bus to take me to Leixlip (pronounced LEEKS-lip), standing across from what appears to be the main Guarda (Irish police) station downtown, standing behind Trinity College, and - only to find out MUCH later - standing right across from the Westin Dublin - the hotel for most of my stay in Ireland.

The 66A bus arrived right on schedule and this time I made sure to ask the driver if he was able to take me where I needed to go and if he could let me know when to get off. So off I went ... through Dublin and on to Leixlip. This bus driver was a bit looney ... having run thru yellow/red lights about half the trip thru Dublin ... but he got me to the Leixlip House Hotel which was my hotel for the first night in Ireland. Exhausted and a bit frazzled, I stumbled into the lobby and queried about my room only to be told that it was not ready and most likely would not be for another 2 hours. After a heavy sigh, I went into the lounge/bar and had a cuppa tea to relax. I still needed to collect my rental car, so I phoned my friend/co-worker Caoimhe (pronounced KWEE-va) and she was on her way to pick me up.

When Caoimhe arrived it was such a relief to see someone I knew! We climbed into her Peugeot 106 (read: small car) and proceeded to the Intel site so I could get my rental car. This bit about driving a rental car was the only thing that had me a little worried about being in Ireland since you have to drive on the LEFT side of the road and the driver sits on the RIGHT side of the car! My rental is a Ford Mondeo which looks nothing like any models we have in the US ... and although it's barely larger than my old Mazda Protege ... it's a GIANT on the road here ... which makes it slightly harder to drive. After picking up the car, I made it back to the hotel and finally got into my room and was able to get a rest for a little while. After waking up and being a little hungry, I ventured into "downtown" Leixlip which is really just one street long. Down the end of the street is an eatery called The Ryvale Tavern where I enjoyed a lovely turkey dinner ... along with a very nice drink called Bulmer's Original Vintage Cider. After dinner it was back to the hotel for another round of rest/sleep. Caoimhe was kind enough to invite me out for drinks with her two sisters (Eimear and Dearbhla - pronounced "EE-mer" and "DUR-vla" respectively). We started the evening at about 10pm!! and the first pub we went to was called Sheehans ... it was exactly how I pictured an Irish pub looking/smelling/tasting - LOL. After a few pints of Guinness we left and started out to a hotel called the Burlington which just happened to be THE pre-game party place for the All-Ireland football finals that were to be held the next day. It was an absolute madhouse in there ... a great experience for a yank from "the states" as they say here. All said and done, I wasn't in bed until 3am!