Dublin
September 15th to 18th, 2000
Between colleagues
It's been a while that I4ve been talking about a trip with people at work. Dublin seemed to be the favorite destination so we began to try to fix a date for it. Since life is not easy, only one was really interested : Ronan, the happy Britton. Of course since we have right to free plane ticket, we reserved that at company's expenses
The only airline that seemed affordable was Aer Lingus. We asked for ticket to the company and tuesday beofre leaving we got the confirmation : no more economy class tickets so we find ourselves in business class... no problems. But the day befoe we leave, the secretary came to tell us that business class is a little bit expensive, and there is economy class tickets for monday morning. Seems like we don't really have choice, so we took it, even if we had to wake up at 5 am monday morning
Departure
Friday evening, it's the big departure. Since there was a trucker's blockade because of gas price, we had to take the train. We got to the airport and learned that our flight was half an hour late. My fine colleagues had access to first class lounge and invited me, so I could wait confortably for my flight, a glass of wine at the hand.
At the said time, we went to boarding. Once in the plane, we had to wait again for take off priority reasons. We got in Dublin 1H30 late but fortunatly we had youth hostel reservation
The guy in line in front of us was 8h late. I took Aer Lingus from paris but when the plane landed there, the tire took fire and he had to wait for it to be repaired.. sounds familliar...
Pub Crawling
Was we left our stuff in the room, we went pub crawling. We blindly wnet int he city but we still managed to find Temple Bar (it's a street name!). There we entered the first pub that looked busy. Actually it was crowded! People of every age... speaking of what, Ronan had the chance to be cruised buy a grandmother
After an hour we decided to change pub. We went to the Quays, second floor where we took another Guiness. We were beginning to want to sit when we saw a seat next to us, which we took. Then we realised that maybe it belonged to someone. As we were speaking, the girl next to us said that her friends were sitting there. We began to stand up but she said that we can sit until they come back. When the friend got there, we stand up and he said to stay sit, that it's harsh to make us leave, then we sa that we had an agreement... then the girl asked us where we come from. After Ronan told everyone he's french, in total indifference, I said I'm Quebecois....
Her reaction has been immediate and
impressive : "Eille, t'es Québécois, tabarnak, calisse,
j'aime ben gros le Quebec, j'ai vécu là". All this said in
a mix of Quebecois and unidentified accent. She was so happy and
we began to talk about Quebec, she lived in Ste-Therese, her
backpacking trips, mine... after a while some other of her
friends came b so she greeted them and began talking to them so
we took another table. Later she came back. She is finnish, work
at IBM, leave for South America for 6 months... it was fun to
talk with her. She cute, very friendly, the crazy kind that knows
everyone.
The bar finally closed. The others (Spanish, Australian, Norvegian..) were going in a club but we didn't really fele like that. Once outsideI told Anna we were leaving... she took my hands and began to turn around and dance with me in the middle of the stree. I was not easy but we finally managed to leave and go to bed.
Tourism
Next morning, we visited
town. But first we had to eat. We passed in front of a placed
called "get suffed". Inside, the clients wre
construction workers... very typical. We had a super Irish
Breakfast, not too different than the Quebec ones : Eggs, becon,
baked beans, sausage, 2 toasts.... we were ready for the day. All
this was served by 2 girls of 12 years old... hurray for child
work
We began with Trinity College, there was a big guided tout, very interesting, then we visite dthe library and ancient books. We then walk to the park to rest, went to the castle, a disappointement, looked for a place to rent a car but finally we decided to do it at the airport.
Then we looked for a
restaurant, not easy, good ones are full, but finally we found
one that was not too bad. Ronan got Irish Stew and me, stuffed
chicken. Yummie
We went back to The Quays were we saw a shower. Women partying and one was stangely dress and was collecting kisses, she got one from Ronan, who seems to be very popular with older women.
Music was not very good and we wanted to hear Irish music. Anna got there and I said hi but we left after. We found a little pub with "traditional irish music" advertised. After waiting for 1 hour, the show began but it was not very good, the only ones who seemed to have fun were the musician, the public was bored... since we were tired of walking all day,w e went to bed.
Ride in car on the wrong side of the road
We woke up early to rent a car a the airport. They gave us a Daihatsu... We went to Howth, a nice fishing harbour, then we began to look for megalith that wer eon the map... we finally found the place but it was written "For the key of the monoliths, go the the 5th house on the left and ask Mr Hanson... take it back before 6h30pm... we went somewhere else.
There was 3 other monoliths on the map, so we decided to risk it. This time the boards were bigger and we got to a big parking lot with a tourist center where minibuses were leaving to go to the monolith. It was passage tombs : Gowth and NewGrange. it's big hills with passages inside oriented with the sun, one is East-West and the other, to the north and on december 21th, the light goes to the end of the tunnel, very impressive since it was built 5000 years ago.
We spent the afternoon there but then we
went looking for food, not easy, Irish can say they are not
english, but for food, they're not that different.
Coming back
Next morning we had to wake up at 5 am to go to the airport. of course the plane was late and we got to work at 11h30. In Amsterdam, people just realised that planes make noise so they closed all airstrips but one, find the mistake..