Ireland!

Failte!
We've been in Ireland for several days now. We finished our Cornwall tour (very cool), got our extra luggage from Victoria Station, and hopped on the Gatwick Express to the airport. When we arrived we checked-in and went to check our 'extra' luggage at the left luggage counter... but they were full. Aargh! They really could have a sign saying that. The guy was totally unhelpful. I had to ask if there was another counter? How far? etc. Apparently he was not capable of forming sentences without prompting. Stupid people really are everywhere. Anyway, we managed to check the big suitcase onto the flight, but it cost us. RyanAir is really cheap and only allows 15kg of luggage. I think they're like the car companies are really just make their money off the extra you have to pay afterwards;-) Anyway, the flight was fine and we caught a taxi to the hostel. We were in a 4-bed and managed to wake up the other girl when we arrived, but we managed to shuffle about in the dark and crash... it wasn't even really that late, about 11, but it turned out she was going on the other Shamrocker tour leaving the next morning so had crashed early.

We got up the next morning and went down to checkin for the tour. The girl doing check-in was our tour guide. Her name was Laura... and appropriately enough was fond of alt music and piercings:-) We had a great tour. We went all over Ireland and though we didn't really have enough time to see things very thoroughly, we knew that would happen anyway and now know where we need to come back to.

Last night we arrived back in Dublin and taxied with all our multiple bags to our new hostel. It's very nice. We finally have an ensuite again so we can do laundry! I never thought clean socks would be such a priority, but I even bought a pair of Guinness ones yesterday so I'd have a pair to wear, so I need to get scrubbing soon:-) We all have some new clothes that we've been almost saving for now, but it will make packing a bit more difficult. My third, 'extra' bag was in use a long time ago, but Laura says she'll have lots of extra room in her suitcase if she just carries on her sleeping bag, so I may have to rent that out;-) Last night I went out with some people from the tour. The Arlington Hotel near the river has free Irish music and dancing every night, so we all went down to see. It was fabulous! The dancers did numbers that were basically from Riverdance and the trio was amazing. It's so cool to see musicians just change instruments all the time. I swear they all played at least 3 each. They even played the drinking song that our tour guide had taught us all, so we could even join in the sing along. We were even all warmed up from the Karaoke we did on the bus back into Dublin:-) They have the shows every night, so I'll probably drag Steph and Laur there later this week. They were really tired so they stayed in and slept.

I have to admit, there's not a whole lot that I REALLY want to do in Dublin. Just see Trinity College and the Book of Kells, so it's really nice to not feel like I need to be rushing around doing things. That's not very Irish anyway from what I've seen. People here are very laid back... like at home... but they drink more;-) Anyway, I need to go plan I suppose, so I'll sign off. This may be my last post from 'across the pond', depending on timing, etc. so I guess I should say 'thanks for reading'. I'm planning to post more about the stuff I've skipped, but I may just need to overcome the jetlag first:-) See you all soon!