Yes, people, we made it. We left NYC at 7pm (8:30 with the wait on the tarmac) and arrived here at 7am the next day. We rode a (double-decker, cool) bus to the hostel, which allowed a beautiful view of the longest tunnel I've ever seen, followed by a tour of Dublin's industrial district, which had at least 50 cranes sticking up (I was quite pleased by the Gaelic/English road signs everywhere).
We arrived at the hostel with our giant bags and determined we were in for an interesting time. The place was full of noisy kids eating brown bread with jam (As opposed to now, where the noisy kids walking by are eating alcohol with alcohol). We couldn't check in until 2:30, so we rented a locker for our bags and stashed them away. Free of the weight, we started walking aimlessly through the streets. They were full of little cars on the wrong side of the road, really old buildings, and foreigners (really, I was surprised how many non-Irish there were walking around...) We made our way over the river and ended up in front af a castle-like building that turned out to be the National Art Gallery. Although it is starred in our European travel book as something we wanted to do, it was a complete accident finding it. Nevertheless, we entered and were delighted to see the "free admission" sign.
The museum was full of mostly Irish artists, and had mostly paintings and a cool room of pencil drawings. We got about halfway through when our grogginess started to set in. We left and hitched a bus back in the direction of our hostel.
The bus pulled in to it's last stop about two blocks later, so we walked back across the river and I spied a Burger King. After hearing Daniel's complaints about Great Britain's big mac prices, curiousity got the best of me and I wanted to see what kind of burger inflation I was dealing with. We checked out the Whopper combo and determined it to be only slightly too pricy for us. Then we went to the McDonald's next door, and determined it to be a better deal. Although this was only a price-finding mission, the smell got to us and so we had our first Irish lunch... McDonald's hamburgers and curly fries.
Afterward, we trudged back to our hostel in hopes that they would let us in to our room, as we had determined sleep was quite necessary. They wouldn't let us into the rooms, but we could get into the basement/lounge area. We grabbed a puffy leather couch and were asleep before we knew it. Even the noisy "foosball" players did not disturb us, and we slept, brick-like, until our dorm opened. Now, ordering two beds in a 16-person dorm can be daunting... but ours turned out to be quite pleasant. We climbed the three flights of stairs to our room and quickly found our 1/8 of the room. Maybe it was the charming atmosphere or the incredible jet-lag, but neither Alex or I had trouble sleeping the afternoon away. Our (bunk) bed is actually in an area more resembling a 4-person room, by the way, as you have to turn two corners to find them. That privacy only spoils you, though, when you have co-ed bathrooms and showers. Alex and I decided early evening showers would be the best way to avoid too many awkward "getting dressed in the shower" moments, and also would allow us all the hot water we needed. That evening, we set out to find a supermarket in order to save some money on our meals. We were directed to the Super Value around the corner. It's a nice place to pick up some food, and we decided to do some super saving by buying: a loaf of wheat bread, a block of cheddar, three tomatoes, a giant bottle of water, a bag of salt and vinegar chips (my pick), and a tube of chocolate-dipped cookies (Alex's pick)-- totaling 7 euros. For dinner, we had cheese and tomato sandwiches with chips and two cookies. It was quite tasty, and we needed only to visit the self catering kitchen and smell the strange mix of cooking aromas to determine our meal was a good choice.
Although we had initially planned on getting a pint that evening, our afternoon nap only partially restored our energy, so we opted instead to spend the rest of the night watching weird european tv shows (like Scrubs and Friends) in the basement. After a gripping episode of Grey's Anatomy, we climbed back up to our room and passed out for the night.
-Andrew
