Saturday, April 10, 2010
Journey To Dublin: Part Two
We disembarked from the plane at seven thirty AM Dublin time; two-thirty AM USA time. We followed signs to Customs and Baggage Claim. Signs were obviously in English, but they are also in another language that I didn't recognize. My gut instinct told me that the language looked similar to Sanskrit. Who knew that the ancient Egyptians had such an influence on Irish culture? These are the types of things that naturally occur to you when your body thinks it is two-thirty in the morning, but you have just seen the sun rising in the sky. It wasn't Sanskrit. The Egyptians did not have a major impact on Irish culture. No, the language that I was seeing I would later find out was Gaelic – the traditional language of Ireland before the English came over and attempted to systematically destroy all things associated with traditional Irish culture. But I digress.
We made our way through Customs and on to Baggage Claim without incident. After we successfully retrieved Lara's bag, our four-day vacation could get underway. Four days isn't a lot of time to explore an entire country, so there wasn't much time dilly-dally. Our plan was to proceed from the airport directly to our hotel via local bus, drop off our bags at the front desk, and then immediately set out on foot on the streets of Dublin.
There was a Tourist Information Desk near the Baggage Claim, and immediately adjacent to that desk was a Bus Eireann Information Desk. The Tourist Info Desk had a long line of people waiting to talk to the representative, and the Bus Eireann Info Desk had no line at all. I didn’t want to talk to the Bus Eireann people because they only handle long-distance trips across the island. They don’t do the local city bus service. And at this moment, I was only interested in finding about the local service…and I wanted some maps of the city. I love maps. They are my favorite souvenirs. But beyond my love of any and all maps, I knew we would require a good map of Dublin if we were gonna make it from the airport to our hotel. So I parked my ass in line and began to wait patiently to talk to the Tourist Info Desk representative. Meanwhile, Lara walked directly over to the Bus Eireann Info Desk and asked the rep where the local bus stop was located, what is the fare, what is the preferred method of payment, and could we please have a map of the city. Dammit. She just got all the answers I was looking for and she didn’t have to wait in line to get them. It did not appear that I would be the navigator on this little journey.
I followed Lara to an ATM where we got some Euros. We found the bus stop as soon as we walked out of the terminal exit. We boarded a green, double-decker bus that was bound for downtown Dublin. As the bus took-off and began to meander through the streets of suburban Dublin, we realized that we weren’t exactly sure where we were supposed to get off the bus. Our hotel website told us that we should disembark from the bus when it crossed Drumcondria Road. But from what we could tell from the street signage that was haphazardly thrown onto the buildings that happened to be nearest to the street corners, it seemed like the bus was actually travelling along Drumcondria Road. This was disconcerting. Since we are both consultants, we decided that we should reevaluate our methodology for locating our hotel.
We knew that our hotel was on the way to downtown Dublin, but we knew we wanted to disembark well before the bus got there because we were fairly sure that our hotel was about a 15-20 minute walk from downtown. I tried to look at the maps that we had received from the Bus Eireann Info Desk, but the one map we had that actually showed local streets did not show the part of the city that we were travelling through. There was no way to tell what our cross streets were. I hate maps. They are totally worthless.
Our fail safe was that we knew that our hotel was directly adjacent to a gigantic soccer stadium by the name of Croke Park. This is the stadium where the Dublin soccer team plays its regular season games, and it is the stadium where later on in the weekend, the Irish national rugby team would play the Welsh national rugby team. So Lara asked the bus driver where we should get off the bus if we wanted to get to Croke Park. He told her exactly where we needed to get off and exactly which direction we should walk to get to Croke Park. You just can’t understate the importance of using landmarks for wayfinding.
We got off the bus and walked in the direction that we were told. We only had to walk about a quarter mile before we saw the upper deck of the soccer stadium towering over the surrounding buildings. From that point on, we were able to simply walk towards the stadium. While we were walking along, Lara informed me that she was hungry. I told her I thought that was crazy because we were fed breakfast on the plane two hours ago…and dinner two hours before that. She did not agree. She curtly stated that breakfast was at least four hours ago, and dinner was four hours before that. I disagreed with her disagreement. No way dinner was served that long ago. And how could she know anyway; she was asleep through most of the flight? I told her that I disagreed with her disagreement. Breakfast was two hours ago. But she maintained her disagreement most steadfastly. Breakfast was four hours ago. I conceded the argument in a most sarcastic tone and we walked on in silence to our hotel. When we arrived at our hotel five minutes later, I was hungry.
We asked the front desk girl if we could drop off our bags, and she told us that we could just go ahead and check in to our room. Ten minutes later I was lying face down on a small double bed with clean white sheets and the softest white pillow there had ever been. It was nine AM local time (four AM USA time). I was exhausted. We had been in travel mode for nineteen hours, and I had no more than two or three hours of sleep along the way. But we were excited to get out and see all the sites of Dublin, so we only rested for about twenty minutes before we resumed our journey. I splashed some water on my face, brushed my teeth, and we set out for downtown Dublin on foot.
Our first destination was Trinity College, which was the very first university constructed in Ireland. It was funded by the British and it was originally intended to educate only the protestant children of British settlers. The university itself is a major attraction for tourists seeking great architecture and/or historical monuments, but apparently there is a bonus attraction housed within the university; The Book of Kells.
We made our way through Customs and on to Baggage Claim without incident. After we successfully retrieved Lara's bag, our four-day vacation could get underway. Four days isn't a lot of time to explore an entire country, so there wasn't much time dilly-dally. Our plan was to proceed from the airport directly to our hotel via local bus, drop off our bags at the front desk, and then immediately set out on foot on the streets of Dublin.
There was a Tourist Information Desk near the Baggage Claim, and immediately adjacent to that desk was a Bus Eireann Information Desk. The Tourist Info Desk had a long line of people waiting to talk to the representative, and the Bus Eireann Info Desk had no line at all. I didn’t want to talk to the Bus Eireann people because they only handle long-distance trips across the island. They don’t do the local city bus service. And at this moment, I was only interested in finding about the local service…and I wanted some maps of the city. I love maps. They are my favorite souvenirs. But beyond my love of any and all maps, I knew we would require a good map of Dublin if we were gonna make it from the airport to our hotel. So I parked my ass in line and began to wait patiently to talk to the Tourist Info Desk representative. Meanwhile, Lara walked directly over to the Bus Eireann Info Desk and asked the rep where the local bus stop was located, what is the fare, what is the preferred method of payment, and could we please have a map of the city. Dammit. She just got all the answers I was looking for and she didn’t have to wait in line to get them. It did not appear that I would be the navigator on this little journey.
I followed Lara to an ATM where we got some Euros. We found the bus stop as soon as we walked out of the terminal exit. We boarded a green, double-decker bus that was bound for downtown Dublin. As the bus took-off and began to meander through the streets of suburban Dublin, we realized that we weren’t exactly sure where we were supposed to get off the bus. Our hotel website told us that we should disembark from the bus when it crossed Drumcondria Road. But from what we could tell from the street signage that was haphazardly thrown onto the buildings that happened to be nearest to the street corners, it seemed like the bus was actually travelling along Drumcondria Road. This was disconcerting. Since we are both consultants, we decided that we should reevaluate our methodology for locating our hotel.
We knew that our hotel was on the way to downtown Dublin, but we knew we wanted to disembark well before the bus got there because we were fairly sure that our hotel was about a 15-20 minute walk from downtown. I tried to look at the maps that we had received from the Bus Eireann Info Desk, but the one map we had that actually showed local streets did not show the part of the city that we were travelling through. There was no way to tell what our cross streets were. I hate maps. They are totally worthless.
Our fail safe was that we knew that our hotel was directly adjacent to a gigantic soccer stadium by the name of Croke Park. This is the stadium where the Dublin soccer team plays its regular season games, and it is the stadium where later on in the weekend, the Irish national rugby team would play the Welsh national rugby team. So Lara asked the bus driver where we should get off the bus if we wanted to get to Croke Park. He told her exactly where we needed to get off and exactly which direction we should walk to get to Croke Park. You just can’t understate the importance of using landmarks for wayfinding.
We got off the bus and walked in the direction that we were told. We only had to walk about a quarter mile before we saw the upper deck of the soccer stadium towering over the surrounding buildings. From that point on, we were able to simply walk towards the stadium. While we were walking along, Lara informed me that she was hungry. I told her I thought that was crazy because we were fed breakfast on the plane two hours ago…and dinner two hours before that. She did not agree. She curtly stated that breakfast was at least four hours ago, and dinner was four hours before that. I disagreed with her disagreement. No way dinner was served that long ago. And how could she know anyway; she was asleep through most of the flight? I told her that I disagreed with her disagreement. Breakfast was two hours ago. But she maintained her disagreement most steadfastly. Breakfast was four hours ago. I conceded the argument in a most sarcastic tone and we walked on in silence to our hotel. When we arrived at our hotel five minutes later, I was hungry.
We asked the front desk girl if we could drop off our bags, and she told us that we could just go ahead and check in to our room. Ten minutes later I was lying face down on a small double bed with clean white sheets and the softest white pillow there had ever been. It was nine AM local time (four AM USA time). I was exhausted. We had been in travel mode for nineteen hours, and I had no more than two or three hours of sleep along the way. But we were excited to get out and see all the sites of Dublin, so we only rested for about twenty minutes before we resumed our journey. I splashed some water on my face, brushed my teeth, and we set out for downtown Dublin on foot.
Our first destination was Trinity College, which was the very first university constructed in Ireland. It was funded by the British and it was originally intended to educate only the protestant children of British settlers. The university itself is a major attraction for tourists seeking great architecture and/or historical monuments, but apparently there is a bonus attraction housed within the university; The Book of Kells.
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