Having gotten on the plane safely, I found myself very jittery. The flight itself was fine. Air Transat made a great fuss about ours being the inaugural flight of the Montréal-Dublin route. I’d have traded the complimentary celebratory glass of wine for the option of not stopping for an hour in Montréal, but I wasn’t asked.

We arrived in Dublin around 9am with no issues. We were both very short of sleep and cranky, so figuring out the bus into the city centre was harder than it needed to be, but we maanged to find local transit instead of paying for the expensive airport shuttle, saving us each €4.50. Dublin bus tickets are €1.50 and good for 90 minutes of unlimited travel - a much better deal than Toronto’s $2.75 for one trip. Getting to O’Connell Street took half an hour, at which point we realized that, scattered as I’ve been the past week, I’d forgotten to write down the name and address of the shostel, and neither of us could remember a thing about it, we’d looked at so many. Of course I had a confirmation email, but no access to an internet connection. We hung around the tourist information office looking at the guidebooks until I remembered, then went for lunch - one of what I hope will be our very few restaurant meals, since food is very expensive in ireland. Everything is very expensive in Ireland.

Dublin can be a very pretty city when it tries - we spent some time wandering in St. Stephen’s Green, a well-groomed park in the city centre. Even thought it was a weekday, it seemed that the entire population was out enjoying the very un-Irish sun and warmth.

Stopped by the grocery store and got soup and stuff for sandwiches - nothing extravagant, but it came to a lot of money. Funny thing about Ireland, the beer is cheaper than the water, at least when you buy it from the supermarket.

The hostel was all right, a solid 2.5 stars. Lousy beds but good kitchen and common areas. Clean, but very noisy, across an alley from a bar and across the river from the Temple Bar area meant that there was an awful lot of noise

We spent the evening walking around the area, which is done up very quaint and touristy, and then walked out to the end of the portlands and played a game of stepping on coloured lights in the pavement. I worked very late to try and get work done on the sites, but didn’t make very much progress. The common room was a comfortable enough place to work, but obviously there was a lot of traffic until the wee hours.