From Ireland to Austria Series: A Sullen Greetings from Dublin
This is from a series originally posted on my original blog: Seefahrer Thayer. While I don't recommend it, you can view the original posts here. Because the content had value and useful tips I've decided to repost them here, however, they've since been heavily edited and updated.
I got basically no sleep on the plane... which made for an interesting day.
I meandered through the city on the public bus until I found myself in the city center and hopped off. At that point, I picked the first hostel I could find, which happened to be right in front of me upon exiting the bus. I'm staying at the "Ashfield House" to anyone that's interested.
Anyway, I checked in, and decided I should probably eat, and went wandering... well for the first three hours I knew precisely where I was and how to get back. But then the roads started doing weird things, and well... I got lost. I was certain I was getting blisters, so I decided to hop back on the bus with my all-day pass and tried to scope my view from the second level.
Well, I ended up in Dublin's suburbs at the end of the track with a confused bus driver, who then directed me to another bus to take me back into town. By now I've been walking around 5 or more hours on no sleep and no food, and I keep nodding off on the bus, which likely isn't a good combination when you're already lost. Anyway, just so happened as soon as I snapped back awake I saw my hostel, which looked nothing like what I remembered.
I went back in, got my room key, took a shower and passed out for an hour and a half. By this time, I'm kinda overwhelmed and tired and don't want to get up again, but I force myself to get up and go out. I had a Guinness at a bar with live music playing all of my favorite shanties, then had some traditional Irish stew. I had pretty low morale today and kind of regretted every decision I had ever made about this trip! But I think it was mostly sleep deprivation and starvation.
This all sounds terribly boring all written out like this. But I guess it was relatively uneventful. I did almost break my hand on the bus, though. The but started unexpectedly and I just slammed it into the railing. It's swollen and bruised already.
So yeah, relatively uneventful. Gonna go plan out tomorrow, though. I'm thinking a city tour and seeing Kilmainham Gaol.
Just a note on the people... while I've been loving the awesome accents, no one's been particularly friendly. If you held a gun to any of the local's heads I'm pretty convinced they still wouldn't look at you. I'm convinced if you offered them a Guinness they'd take it and run without making eye contact either. Some of them have been very nice, but many of them are standoffish. I'm especially surprised at how little interested the other travelers are in meetings everyone else. In the common room all they do is sit on their computers and phones, no one really talks to each other (which by the way is not what I'm doing.)
I've enjoyed it here, but I think I'm ready to move on to a smaller city in Ireland, it's exhausting trying to keep up here.
At this moment I'm simultaneously trying to seem interested in a football game on TV. I'm not sure how convincing I'm being.
