Farewell Dublin……our time together was oh-so-short.

BY ONEIKA RAYMOND

So I’m onward to Edinburgh today and find myself writing from the Dublin airport, waiting for my flight. So I figured that I’d take advantage of the internet posts here to blog.

Let me first say that I hope that I did not come off too negative in the last post. From the little of Ireland I’ve seen, I have had a WONDERFUL time. I forgot to mention yesterday that I actually went to a performance of RIVERDANCE!! Yes!! In Ireland, the home of Celtic dance!! And it was, quite frankly, amazing. Spellbinding. Unforgettable. I walked out of there wishing my Black behind was Irish so I could have had the opportunity to jump up and move my feet at such a frenetic, yet accurate, pace.

I LOVE DUBLIN. I wasn’t too sure about it the first night I arrived and many shops and pubs were already closed (hence the gripe about everything closing early). However, despite those questionable (and I hope isolated) incidents, everything has been hunky dory. Especially the Irish people. Like the Irish girl in the electronics store who helped me buy a UK plug adapter so I would be able to plug in my camera charger. And the other Irish girl in the clothing store who checked for like 20 minutes in the stock room and on the computer for a dress that I needed a size in (well, yes, I must get my shop on, especially in foreign territory). And the Irish man this morning who pointed me in the right direction of my bus. And let us not forget the scores of Irish who smiled or said “hello” or “good morning” without being prompted, in their lilting Irish brogue.

So what is there to do here in Dublin? Certainly, it is no Paris, which has tons of historical sites to visit and where you are typically confronted with too little time (or money) to visit them all. Dublin is small and all the sites can be seen in the space of a day. I’ll expand more in a later post, but yesterday I took advantage of what has been my lifesaver in a variety of countries now: the free walking tour. Walking tours are always a great way to familiarize oneself with a city. A google search will yield a large number operating in any given city in Europe. However, Momma didn’t raise no fool. With the weak Canadian dollar, strong Euro, and astronomical prices in Dublin (which I’ll talk about in another post- but let’s just say that Dublin is re-donk-culously expensive), the word “FREE” was the name of the game. So I went on a free walking tour, despite the unwelcoming climes (the high was 16 degrees Celcius yesterday, overcast with scattered showers). I saw Dublin Castle, Dublin City Hall, O’Connell Street, the Liffey River, Temple Bar (hotspot for Dublin nightlife), and a whole host of other places. As the city centre of Dublin is fairly small, everything is walkable.

I love doing these walking tours because they are also a great way to meet people, which is always nice when you are travelling alone. This tour was no different; right off the bat I met an American, a girl from Hong Kong, and a guy from Brasil, who were all travelling by their lonesome like me. After grilling the young American on American politics (just kidding… yeah right), boring the girl from Hong Kong to death with questions about my soon-to-be home (I move to HK in less than a 3 weeks!!), and annoying the Brazilian by incessantly asking him to take pictures of me in front of various monuments, I met another lovely group of people from Australia/Israel/England who were super nice and fun! We hit it off and I actually ended up going to see Riverdance with them, and then meeting up with them again for hearty Irish dinner in a pub in the centre. The pub also had amazing live Irish music and dancing, which quite tickled my fancy, lol. At the end of the night, the club also put on a whole bunch of 80s music… Good times! And let me tell you, the Irish sure know how to let loose and party!! What a huge switch from the French, who look at me like I’m crazy when I break out dancing!

Anyhoo, I am going to get off this computer and take advantage of the incredible eating establishments in this airport. They have a full Irish breakfast special (eggs, sausage, beans, tomato, toast, mushrooms, and tea and coffee) in one of the airport restaurants, and the smell of eggs is wafting over here and calling my name…

Stay tuned for more adventures, next time from the land of men in skirts and the Loch Ness monster: SCOTLAND!

SHARING IS CARING

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