Jet-Lagged in Dublin

It's been a very long day, and I've barely slept in the last 24 hours. It all started when we took the commuter rail from Providence to Boston, connecting us to the airport through the Silver Line. Before getting on the Aer Lingus flight to Dublin, I had a quick Chinese meal at the airport.

The actual flight was one of the most comfortable transatlantic flights I've been on. The plane was brand new, the seats were comfortable, the meal wasn't completely awful, the movie/TV selection was large, and the flight was a mere 5 hours long. We landed in Dublin at 7AM local time, and after a visit to the airport's tourism office, we were on our way to our hotel. For transportation, Dublin only has a bus system and a two-line tram system known as the Luas. Our Hilton hotel conveniently has a Luas station right next to it. On the combined bus and Luas ride to the hotel, we saw a glimpse of what Dublin had to offer; the famous O'Connell Street and Grafton Street. After finally arriving at our hotel, we found out that the rooms weren't ready, so we decided to drop off our bags and go out into Dublin for a while.

We first decided to have breakfast at a cafe on Grafton St. I had a delicious bacon and cream cheese bagel, as well as a Coke to keep me awake. After this, we wanted to go on a walking tour of the city, but we weren't sure of its start location, other than "59 Upper O'Connell St." We started walking on a side of Upper O'Connell Street, and watched as the numbers went up, but suddenly at around number 30, Upper O'Connell Street suddenly stopped. We were unfortunately 5 minutes late to the tour by then. Still clueless about what happened, we went back down the street to see where we needed to go. Apparently, 59 Upper O'Connell St was on the other side of that road as 20 Upper O'Connell, completely contrary to a typical address system where it alternated. By the time we figured this out, the walking tour was long departed. We plan on trying it again tomorrow before our flight.

Since we missed out on the tour, we decided to instead visit the Kilmainham Gaol, a historical jail where the British held Irish prisoners. We got an interesting guided tour of the complex, and saw some of the jail cells and locations where Irish revolutionaries of the early 20th century were held and executed. The history was fascinating, and I learned quite a bit about the split from Britain, and the formation of the Republic of Ireland. The picture above is from the prison complex's main hall.

By the time we were done with the jail tour, I was ready to collapse since I hadn't slept for 24 hours. We returned to the hotel where I took a 2-hour nap and a shower before returning to the streets of Dublin. As we walked down Grafton St, we saw many street performers performing both Irish folk music and mainstream rock. Some of them were quite good. We walked down a side street and had an early dinner/late lunch at an unfortunately mediocre Italian restaurant called "Little Caesar's," not to be confused with the American chain restaurant. After that, we decided to ride the Luas tram to the hotel where we'll be staying at in two weeks, The Gibson. This modern building is located in the Docklands of Dublin, where there are a lot of new, modern developments. This is also where the O2 arena is located. Right next to it is the Dublin Ferris Wheel, where we rode for 20 minutes with an amazing panorama of Dublin's skyline.

Following this, we returned to the hotel for another rest. Our last adventure in Dublin was looking for a late night snack. We eventually decided on a Kebab place on O'Connell street, called ABRAKEBABRA. In the end, it was a bad decision as the food wasn't too good at all. As I finish this entry at 10:30PM, the sun is just setting, since Ireland is in such a high latitude.

Tonight, we'll catch up with lost sleep and then make up the walking tour we missed. By the time we're done, we'll have to get to the Dublin airport for a flight to Poland. This is the end of one extremely long day. Stay tuned for more of our trip.