11.07.2007

The long flight from Singapore to London can really throw you. The flight took 13 hours and we arrived in London at about 5am (less than rested). I learned to accept long ago that most seats are designed for a maximum height of 5’10”. Unlike Singapore Changi Airport, Heathrow still manages to make the whole transit thing a trying experience, with customs giving you the third degree even if you are only connecting through to Dublin. We got through to Dublin, customs were very easy going there. We picked up our car for the next three days, an Opel Astra. We got a comprehensive tour of Dublin, north of the river Liffey as we spent about an hour trying to locate our Hostel with only a very undetailed tourist map that we managed to get off another Australian tourist who we asked for directions. As we were driving around in a daze, the car next to us signaled to down the windows so he could speak to us. I was wondering what it was that I must have been doing wrong. He turned out to be a South African asking us for directions to his hotel. Blind leading the blind. Mind you, by the time we found and settled into the Adelphi Guest House we had a pretty good idea of where a lot of things were. The Guest House is really nice. We missed the porters from the Hotel in Singapore when we were lugging the suitcases up the stairs, happy with our choice of the 1st floor room rather than the 3rd floor room that was offered.

After some freshening up we headed out to see as much as we could of Dublin in the one night that we had here. Dublin immediately struck as a beautiful city, and very lively too. O’Connell Street and Temple Bar area were both buzzing with people and it was hard to maneuver the sidewalks.

We headed straight to Trinity College, South of the river in the more affluent district. The College itself has a lot of history and is aesthetically beautiful. The tour includes entry to the Old Library, which is the world’s largest single room library (beating Cambridge by 2 metres) and houses an enormous number of very old books. Since most of them are hundreds of years old, and because they are catalogued by their volumetric dimensions, before title, subject or Author, they are only really used by scholars. The Library also holds the Book of Kells, which is a copy of the 4 gospels as old as 800AD, with very intricate detail.

We then went through to see Dublin Castle (from the outside), Christ Church (an Anglican Cathedral) and St Particks Cathedral. Both cathedrals were breathtaking with displays of many historical artifacts in the Christ Church crypt.

In contrast, the next stop was the Guinness Brewery. We were walking blind because the tourist map we were using stopped listing street names near the brewery so we had to rely on some helpful locals to show us that we were on the right track. Ironically, the map we were using was published by the brewery. The brewery tour itself takes you through the process of brewing, finishing with a complimentary pint on the seventh floor. The pint and the view were well worth the time and the admission fee, especially as Neda cant stand beer and so I had a bit more time to savorur the view and the brew as I had her pint.

We caught a bus back to the temple bar area (the main hot spot) for a very late dinner of Irish Stew. As the sun sets very late it was still light at 10pm. John Villis will be disappointed that at this time, our Jetlag came on with a vengeance and we were falling asleep waiting for our meals and so retired for the night without sampling any of the pubs that line dot every street. We did attempt one but it was too crowded to get near the bar. We consoled ourselves with the knowledge that there will be many pubs to try in County Cork in the south the next day.

So far Ireland is expensive, especially compared to Singapore. We took a taxi back to our room which was 5 euro which would have been about 3 Singapore Dollars in Singapore. The food is quite pricy too, but if the dinner we had is anything to go by, it is well worth it.