Day 8: A rainy day in Dublin

The day before, our cab driver insisted that we visit Dublin while we were in Ireland. Despite technically needing a visa and not having one, he assured us that there would be no border control. Since we had already seen pretty much the whole of Belfast, we decided to go for it and go to Dublin for the day!

Short side story: our bus was at 7am and we almost missed it. We woke up at 6:06, got ready in a rush, and were out by around 6:20. We ran (in the rain) the 30 minutes to the bus station, then had to wait in line to have our tickets confirmed and printed (even though we bought them the night before).

We took the 2.5 hour bus to Dublin, and just like our cab driver said, there was no border control. We mostly slept through the whole bus ride, and the next thing we knew, we were in Dublin already. Since our flight to London was later on in the day (from Belfast), we took our bags with us and just decided to leave it in lockers at the Dublin bus station. We went to the lockers and remembered that the currency they use in Ireland was Euro!

Unfortunately it was raining most the whole time we were there, so the city looked a bit dark and gloomy like this:

On our way out to explore, we stopped by a visitor's centre to get a free map and found a flyer for a the free Sandeman's Walking Tour. We've heard great things about the Sandeman tours and since we didn't really know what to do, and the next tour was at 11, in a few minutes, we decided to join them.

Our tour guide was good, and really funny. We got to see a lot of sights and learned lots of interesting stuff too.

Dublin Castle

Dubh Linn Gardens

It was cold and rainy

Road signs in Irish

The only downside was that we got left behind! Halfway through the tour there was a 15-20 minute coffee/drink break. Our tour guide pointed the group out to a bar and a coffee shop we could visit and said we'd meet outside in 15-20 minutes. We had some coffee (and ate sandwiches we made baon), went outside in 17 minutes... and our group was gone!

So, we just decided to walk towards Trinity College and see the rest of the the stops mentioned in the flyer. We took our time walking and even stopped by a souvenir store to buy some postcards. The funny thing was, when we got to Trinity College, we found our tour group again. It was a bit awkward though! We didn't just want to go up and join them, so while they were walking away, we joined the back of the group. Ha.

Our tour guide who left us :( Haha

At St. Stephen's Green

The tour ended at around 2pm and we needed to make the 3pm bus back to Belfast so we could catch the bus to the airport and our flight back to London. On our way back we weren't quite sure if we were going in the right direction when a lovey Irish gentleman led the way and took us back halfway to the bus station. We realized that Irish people are really very nice! We've been helped several times even without us asking for any help or directions.

We had to run back to the bus station since it was already almost 3pm. We made it to the bus station at 2:45, and went to get our bags, when what do you know... our locker wouldn't open! We nervously called the attendant, it still wouldn't open, and he had to go get the master keys. After we got our bags we ran to the bus and made it on with 4 minutes to spare!

Even though it rained almost the whole time, it was nice to see Dublin for the day and learn a bit about the city. We enjoyed our stay in Ireland/Northern Ireland. It was very relaxing (except the times we were running to catch our buses) and the Irish people are really nice.