So I’m finally in Dublin after what seemed like a planes, trains, and automobiles re-run. I’m amazed how often you have to remind the airlines that you’re still alive and still intend on getting to your destination.
Besides the airline shenanigans, oddly it was still kind of interesting getting out here. I guess that’s the advantage of not being on a tight schedule – easier to roll with the punches. The story is that I was late getting out of Portland so I missed my connection from Chicago to Dublin. This turned into a 24-hour delay since there is only one Air Lingus flight a day. My first time to spend the night in an airport. Considering I am now POOR and homeless, a hotel is no longer an option. Fortunately the nice lady at the United customer service gave me a pillow and two blankets. So, if you disregard the glaring lights, continuous skull splitting announcements, vacuuming, ranting people on cell phones, bed that resembles sleeping on 2x4s, and flights beginning to leave at 6am, I figure I slept like a dove for at least 45 minutes. I woke up refreshed and charged. Shortly after I find out that the Dublin flight was delayed 2 hours so I now got to spend the ENTIRE day at the airport. I would have taken a jaunt into Chicago but after making an initial phone call to Air Lingus I found out that I was NOT in fact booked on that day’s flight and that it was now full. I had to wait until an agent showed up which wasn’t until 3pm. I felt very much orphaned by the airlines. No matter – I think they realized I was a priority since I had already spent 24 hours in the airports.
Waiting for the flight to leave was fairly painful. There was a super abnoxious guy at the terminal that was trying to compete for attention over the TV : kinda reminded of a Ted Tuttle from Tacoma Washington type. Guess who I got to sit right next to on the flight. Unreal. Fortunately my iPOD headphones went on immediately and he seemed to pick up on my repellant aura.
So after almost 24 hours with no sleep, I continued to stare blankly for about 4 hours – waiting and waiting to crash. For whatever reason it just didn’t come. Finally for about the last 3 hours of the flight I passed out pretty soundly.
I arrived at the Dublin airport feeling pretty comfortable with what I needed to figure out next…. Public transportation, and hostel. A quick scan of hostels on the public computer terminal and find out that all the hostels are booked.. hmm, definitely a problem. This has never happened before in my previous travels. Wide-eyed and humbled I wandered over to the tourist office at baggage claim and asked if they could try finding me a hostel. After 4 or 5 tries the nice lady found one, 25 euros a night , and seeing my pathetic state, she even waived the 4 euro booking fee.
The double-decker bus to down-town was great, until we started moving. Being one floor higher on a bus seems to exaggerate all movement and within about 2 minutes my forehead was beaded with sweat and I was in urgent need of fresh air. That was a long bus ride, but I held my cookies. Finding the hostel was easier, except for not finding it for the first 30 minutes with a 150lb backpack. I was super stinky at this point and quite weary. I got the top bunk in a dorm and just crashed for the day.
Being poor is interesting. I actually like how it is forcing me to be very minimalist. It feels more environmentally friendly as well. I went out that night to the Temple Bar district in Dublin (most happening area), had a couple Brooklyn style pizza slices, found a live music bar, had one beer (4 euros – one’s enough), and turned in by 10pm. After a jet-lagged awakening from about 3-5am, I fell back to sleep and slept till 930am. So, showered, filled up on cornflakes and instant coffee (free!!), I’m now feeling the need to get caught up on my travel blogging and charge up my arsenal of battery powered devices. Not sure what my plans are today but I’ll get to that. It’s interesting, I really feel like a fit in, in this type of hostel crowd. Already met cool people from Slovekia, Colorado, Wales, Canada – all seem to have a sense of adventure.
Here's a couple airline tips -- lessons learned basically :
There’s two things I now know I won’t do in the future with my airline tickets 1) don’t buy on Travelocity.com -- only buy direct from the airline – it seems you immediately become a second class citizen in their eyes and they don’t feel responsible for customer service 2) make sure you have electronic tickets – Travelocity sent me paper tickets and because of this the airlines weren’t able to re-book me over the phone; I had to see a ticket agent in person.
