and back to the EU

Another transit day. I haven’t packed as much luggage as some people I’ve seen, but I still hate carting it around. I’ve got it down to an art though now. I spent the morning walking around the city centre and the streets near the hostel. It’s still raining and I wasn’t up to exploring too much. Breakfast wasn’t that great at the hostel and a bad breakfast equates to a grumpy Pegs.
Just after lunch I got my bags from the hostel and caught a taxi to the station. A tip for any future travellers in Ireland. If you want to catch the Enterprise train from Belfast to Dublin, book online. You do have to get the ticket sent somewhere, but the trip cost me £8, as opposed to £20 or £30 if you book in person. My taxi driver was complaining about the weather. You would think he would have given up worrying about it but apparently the motorbike grand prix is on today and he wanted to go up and watch it but it’s high up a mountain and he’s worried the mist will be so low he won’t be able to see anything. A lady at a shopping centre was also complaining. ‘July and August is never like this. It’s never this bad’. Just what a tourist wants to hear.

Belfast had reminded me a little like Tassie. Especially the fashions. I thought ugg boots in public was a major error of judgement only made by Burnie bogans. Apparently not. Belfast bogans shop in the same place. I didn’t see any of the murals around the town, in fact I was a pretty bad tourist in this city.

The weather cleared up a bit on the train so I was able to see a fair bit on the trip to Dublin. It was straight from the train station to the airport though for my first experience with RyanAir. I had heard nothing but bad things, but the appeal of cheap travel was too good to pass up. My luggage allowance was 20kg and mine weighed in at 19.5kg. I also had to repack my backpack a little so it fitted in the carry on measure thingy. They always have those little ‘’Does your bag fit in here” things in Australia but I’ve never seen anyone told to try their bag in it. With RyanAir, barely anyone was exempt. One girl had a bag a bit bigger than mine and it was mostly empty, but the frame of the bag wouldn’t allow her to squish it into the bag guide so they made her check it in at a cost of 40 euro. The one thing RyanAir does have going for it is that it doesn’t pretend to be anything but a tight-ass airline. There is no on-flight magazine, no menu cards (the crew just walks past and you take one if you want it) and no in-flight entertainment of any kind.

I caught a taxi from the airport to my hostel, dumped my bags and grabbed another taxi to Donagh’s house. I met Donagh and his friends while I was travelling in Vietnam a couple of years ago. We’ve kept in touch so it was good to have someone to meet while I’m in Cork. He was hosting dinner for his friends so I went along…taking a 1L of gin and some tonic water with me. Dinner was pretty fun actually. All his friends were easy to get along with and very friendly, so it wasn’t as awkward as meeting a whole group of new people might be. The gin also went down well…a little too well actually. And a few of us, slightly happy, went off to the pub. I called it a night a bit after 1am as I had to get up at 7am, but the others lasted a bit longer.