36 Hours to Dublin
Post date: 18-Aug-2009 18:57:24
This was one of the longest days I can remember...no sleep for about 36 hours.
The day started off like any other, except that we had one goal today: to catch the 11:30pm train out of Nuneaton. The thing is, when I booked this train on the internet, I had thought that the 11:30pm - 6:30am train looked great. We would catch some shuteye on the train and wake up fresh as a flower. Little did I know, there was a transfer in a quaint little station called Crewe for 5 hours. And it is there that we spent the night.
I enjoyed a back cramping sleep on the cement floor beside my bag and Serena decided to just stick it out and read all night. I suspect we both got the same amount of sleep - not much!
Morning broke and we hopped our train to Holyhead where we caught the ferry to beautiful Ireland. We had to haggle a little, but in the end we got our passports stamped by the customs officer. I guess that you don't usually get it stamped when you travel within the EU, but we're collecting them. To give you an example of how friendly people are in Ireland, the custom officer even joked with me!
"Did you get your Irish Visa before you came here?" He sternly said.
"Umm.....no," I replied, believing this day could not get any longer.
"Do you need one to enter Ireland?" he continued to quiz.
"Umm....no," thinking that I was sure I had researched everything I needed to.
"Very good. You've done your research, I see," he said with a smile that betrayed his pleasure dealing with Canadians.
With all of that foolishness said and done, we jumped on the DART train from Dun-Laghoaire into Dublin a few minutes away and began the long walk to our hostel. Like zombies, we trod into the hostel, confirm our beds grabbed a very quick bite to eat and promtly went to bed at 8 pm.
To see all 36 of our glorious photos from this arduous journey, look no further than here: