Ok, so like I was saying, we land in Dublin a little after 11pm local time, after having wasted the entire day due to United Airline’s plane issue. Then, because I checked that bag, we have to go down to baggage claim and wait until they finally get the plane unloaded. The bright side to this was that they gave me 10,000 frequent flier miles but still, that’s not much of a bright side.
You see, we didn’t have much time in Dublin to begin with. We spaced on the timezone difference and paid for the night we were flying in the plane. Due to the fact that we goofed on that, we miscalculated the amount of time we had in Dublin and booked our flight to Barcelona at 5pm on Saturday. In case all the hours and days are blending together, we landed at 11pm on Friday. Which brought us to a whopping 18 hours in Dublin – and we still needed to sleep – and show up at the airport plenty in advance because we were flying to a different country – grr.
So we grab my bag and figure out how to get to the bus that will take us to the Airbnb where the super nice lady is waiting for us and has been tracking our flight. When I say nice, I mean really, incredibly nice. She also gave us a bottle of wine (which we had no time to enjoy) and told us that while she had new guests coming the next day, we could store our backpacks in her house while we went to the city centre. Done deal. As a side plug, if you visit Dublin and want a great place to stay, I 100% recommend her!
We woke up at 6am to get showered (because we were seriously gross at this point). She let us in to her place and provided some recommendations of things we should see. The forecast had predicted rain but it turned out to be in the 70s and the best weather Dublin had seen in awhile! We jumped on the bus and headed towards breakfast.
Goal #1 – Eat a traditional Irish breakfast.
Goal #1 accomplished. It included coffee, toast, a black bean patty, sausage, eggs, ham and something else. It was delicious and filling!
By the time we were done with breakfast, it was about 7am. We only had until 2pm to see everything the City Centre had to offer before we needed to get back, pick up our bags and head to the airport. That gave us 7 hours to see all of Dublin. Yeah, right.
Goal #2 – Get Sarah a new SIM card.
Sarah and I both ordered international SIM Cards from Amazon before we left. We did some research and decided that buying new SIM cards was significantly cheaper than adding international data to our phone plan for 3 weeks. We both popped them in on the plane. When we landed in Dublin, mine took and Sarah’s didn’t. This meant that Sarah had no data and was only able to get online when we were connected to WiFi. It doesn’t seem like it would be a big deal, but when you’re in a foreign country and don’t know how to get from one place to another without Google Maps, then yeah, it’s huge. She was on chat with them multiple times and they told her that her best option would be to go to one of the stores in the morning.
After breakfast we plugged the nearest Three store in to my phone and off we walked. We got to the Three store and the sales associate didn’t look at anything but handed her a new SIM card, advised her it would take about an hour to sync and took 10 Euros- in cash.
Goal #2, accomplished!
Goal #3 – See some stuff in Dublin.
One of our first stops was Trinity College. We walked the entire campus and admired the beauty and the awesome weather. Time stops for no one though so we kept on. A fun fact is that museums in Ireland are free, so we hit up one of those as well. After that we headed to St. Stephen’s Green Park and walked around. We hit a few shops and I was able to find my Celtic knot ring – I was about due for a replacement as mine was starting to crack.
Then we set off to find Dublin Castle, Ha’penny Bridge and the Temple Bar. Our final must sees before we had to go. All the while, Sarah’s phone still isn’t updating. What. The. Heck? She’s super stressed out, so we grab some photos at the Bridge and then head to the Temple Bar. We didn’t have time to grab a drink so we waited until there was no one walking past and snagged a great photo. This was seriously harder than it looks though because it’s coming up on lunchtime so everyone is out and about walking and well, going to the bar to drink.
It was a short walk to Dublin Castle but we had to admire it from the outside. We were on a mission and a timeframe so we didn’t have time to walk around. We took a few pictures of the courtyard and decided it was time to move on.
The biggest bummer of such a short time in Dublin was that we didn’t get to try any whiskey or drink any beer. We stopped at the Irish Whiskey Museum but it was going to be too long of a tour and we just couldn’t risk it. I was also on the phone with my mom because we were still trying to figure out Sarah’s stupid SIM card issue. She had been on the phone with our cell phone provider who insisted Sarah’s phone was unlocked. Honestly, we were trying everything. As a last ditch effort, we went back the the Three Wireless store and the same guy there told us that there wasn’t anything he could do. Awesome-sauce.
Goal #2 – uncheck
For the rest of the trip, Sarah didn’t have data. We had both of our SIM cards though and fortunately mine was working. (spoiler alert: Sarah’s phone wasn’t unlocked.)
So we grabbed our backpacks from our Airbnb host’s house and got on another bus to the airport. This driver decided he was going to yell at me for wearing my backpack on the bus. On the plus side, I’ll never have to see him again.
We got to the airport and Sarah got yelled at for not having her liquids in a bag. Out of all the airport security lines that we had to go through, this one was the second worst. The line was long and the workers were super grumpy. I’ll give it to them because it was a Saturday afternoon but I’m letting you know since you’re getting the full review and experience here. I’m pretty sure after that I ended up carrying Sarah’s liquids on any of our flight days.
Once we made it through security we grabbed a bunch of souvenirs for people and waited to take off for Barcelona. On board with us was a whole group of students who must have been on holiday and flying home. Oh, and a family with a little kid – because they sat right behind us and Sarah got kicked the majority of the way.
See you in Barcelona –
xoxo, Star