Claire Blogs Day 1: "This is Not a Good Start"

Upon boarding our plane at JFK, after we convinced the recalcitrant woman sitting next to Emily to trade seats with me (I had a bulkhead! Her hesitation was inexplicable. I think she only moved because she thought it was sweet that we wanted to sit together. "You know, most sisters spend their lives trying to get *away* from each other…"), the captain got on the mic to tell us we were going to be delayed by as much as 1.5 hours.

At this point, Emily started poking me repeatedly in the nose.

I said, "This is not a good start."

It went down before it went back up, but after an inauspicious beginning, today has turned out quite well, if I do say so myself.

The flight to Zurich itself was fine, though I never sleep very much at all on planes. The delay ended up being 30 minutes, which made our connection - tight even if we had been on time - a bit tough. Regardless, with much rushing and gnashing of teeth, we made it to Dublin fine.

The Irish don't have a gregarious reputation for nothing. Even the immigration officers are outrageously friendly.

The Hertz desk offered the next hurdle, which was not so much a hurdle as it was an expense - for some reason, despite my explicit request otherwise, we had been assigned a SmartCar, and I had to say "Oh hells no" and upgrade us to a Yaris ("the shittiest grown-up car money can buy!"). We have named it Milo. The man at the desk asked repeatedly if the manual transmission was going to be a problem, and I repeatedly reassured him that no, it was not, but driving on the left-hand side of the road most certainly was. And then I caved and got some insurance because I'm worried about the left-hand thing.

And then we got lost.

In Dublin, I mean, we got lost in Dublin, with me driving somewhat sleepily and haphazardly, given the road switching thing. I'll admit it's not as bad as I imagined it would be, but it is stressful enough to navigate a strange foreign city (WITHOUT STREET SIGNS, SERIOUSLY, DUBLIN) without having to be literally bass-ackwards about it.

Cut to the end, hysterics avoided, property damage kept to a (very slightly > 0) minimum, we found the Dublin International Youth Hostel, to the North of the city center, with its own parking included, housed in an old church/monastery/Catholic school, and staffed by seriously the nicest people on the planet. We upgraded from a dorm to a twin bedroom because I just couldn't handle the thought of sharing with strangers on so little sleep (I reassured the guy at the front desk that I'm not really antisocial, I'm just really tired, and he was gracious enough to sympathize), and moved our things to our very very small room with bunk beds and a sink and those Hostel comforters that I think are the same the world over, seriously.

At this point, with all that adventure behind us, it was…1:30 pm. No joke.

We vowed to stay up until at least 8 pm (spoiler: we're totally going to make it!), so we set out into the city.

Much like Cambridge, MA, Dublin turns out to be ridiculous to navigate vehicularly, but totally excellent on foot. We found lunch (soup and sandwiches!); some strange and inexplicable store fronts (including, notably, a business called "Beer and Optic Monitoring Systems"...what?!); Trinity College and the Book of Kells, which is totally worth seeing, and which we accompanied with the little College tour with a very cute tour guide with a very cute accent named Stephen, who recounted the very funny story of how he met Chief Justice John Roberts.

But wait, there's more! We found the Dublin Castle, but didn't go in; Christ Church Cathedral, where we did go in, and which contained, in its crypt, the Greatest Public Restroom Ever Built:


(I'd add more pictures in general but the wifi can't really handle it).

We walked back through Temple Bar, found some fish and chips for dinner, and finally hoofed it back to the hostel. And now we are exhausted. Actually, we were exhausted about 4 hours ago, but at least now we're exhausted and it's 8 so we can soon go to bed without feeling bad about ourselves. The sun has come out, and we are sitting out in the courtyard, where a Spanish guy and a French guy are trying to communicate/smoking cigarettes, and a number of guests (all of whom are French, with the exception of the Spaniard, oddly) are prepping for the pub crawl, watching soccer, eating dinner, and generally hanging out. It's very convivial, and the temperature is great. Inside the restaurant, the group of people watching the world cup have vuvuzelas, and HOLY MOTHER OF GOD VUVUZELAS ARE LOUD.

Tomorrow, we drive to Cong, pop 300, on the shores of Lough Corrib. I'm holding out futile hope that driving in the country will suck less than driving in Dublin. I'm pretty sure that there's no way it could suck more, at least.