So I made it to Dublin after a 7hour and 2min flight time. The trip was pretty smooth and easy especially the fact that our layover in Atlanta wasn't an hour long. We met up with the third party of the group, Allison, in Atlanta like 5 minutes after landing. Of course as usual the concourse we landed in was the furthest from the terminal we were leaving in. Did you know that in Domestic flights you have to pay for your meal?Needless to say when we landed in Atlanta, Poodles and I were both hungry! But in the 30min it took for us to get our food our flight to Dublin began to board, so it was back to the college days of swallow what you ate in 5min or less! The only turbulence that I woke up to was when we left the Canadian air and was actually flying over the Atlantic Ocean. Customs wasn't too long of a wait and went rather well after waiting 20min or so to get our bags from the baggage claim. We took an Air coach from the airport to our hotel and that was way cheaper than a taxi! Our hotel is located just outside the center of town and is about a 15-20min walk away. Once we checked it all three of us were hungry so we went in search of food. We ended up walking across St. Stephen's Green onto Grafton Street. That is this nice long pedestrian street, though not as long as Las Ramblas in Barcelona, where international name brand store sell their things. We found a nice espresso bar that served hot sandwiches and had lunch. It was nice to be back in Europe again where one can have a better than Starbucks espresso! While eating we did plenty of people watching, I noticed that tights are back in style this fall season mostly wearing black or dark colored tights and that pink seems to be the choice of color for the men. Now I don't really care for a man in pink, no matter how masculine he thinks he is! Yeah I'm "old fashioned" like that or maybe sexist but whatever I really don't care for a man in pink. I also noticed the men tend to dress better here than back at home. They take care that their appearance is well pressed and they are very well-groomed, even the trendy type students didn't look so sloppy or slouchy. It's one of the reasons why I enjoy people watching in Europe!

After lunch we went to the Tourist Information center on Suffolk Street, one of the places recommended in my 'Rick Steves Ireland 2009' book. They had all sorts of stuff there and not just your typical wall of pamphlets, you can buy tickets to events or do what we did and get the Ireland Heritage Card. This card lets you in free to most attractions in the Republic of Ireland or you get some discounts to those places. It is definitely worth investing in if one is taking a car and driving around the Republic of Ireland! Afterwards we had more than an hour to kill before I had to go back to the airport and pick up the last remaining party, Stephanie aka Bob. So we bought the 24 hour ticket on the hop-on-hop-off Dublin tour bus. I did this in Barcelona and it saved me so much hassle in getting from one tourist attraction spot to another. Our bus driver for the hop-on-hop-off bus was Anthony-do-everything was quite the character. He was funny, entertaining and knowledgably.

Then while Poodles and Allison walked to the hotel, having their own adventure I took a taxi to the airport. My driver was another one of those friendly Irishmen and he gave me such wonderful directions on how to drive back to our hotel from the airport. His directions were perfect! Bob and I had a wait to get to our rental car and the construction going on around Dublin airport is crazy. Now all of y'all will laugh at what happens next. Bob and I always get into some kind of an adventure when we get together. So after getting the keys to our car which is more of a small SUV than a mini-van, Bob was still fuzzy from her flight so I got to drive first. Yeah I'm sure you can see it coming can't you? J Well I get in, adjust my mirrors, which by the way the center mirror is so odd cause you're sitting on the right side, then I turn the key to start the car. And it won't start! So I try it again and still the car won't start. Bob suggested I hit the brake pedal and turn the keys at the same time to start the car. Wow it worked! So I'm looking at the gear stick to figure out what the signs mean. You had a dot in the middle where the stick stayed then to the right is an A above the dot is a + and below it is a - then to the left is an N and if you go down the N you get an R. Okay I'll have to take a picture of it tomorrow to show you. But now that the car is started we wanted to move forward. I knew the N and R were neutral and reverse but I couldn't find the D! So I push the gas pedal to move and we weren't moving. Bob sees this lever in the center console and assumes it is the emergency break, there is a button on the side that you can push in but when we did that and then tried to move the lever back it wouldn't move. We tried to move this lever like 4 times. Finally Bob gets frustrated and tells me to go ask an employee. Which I did and he had that look of "such tourist" but he showed us that we had to push the button, lift the lever up and then push down to unlock the emergency break. Yay! So now we got the car started and know how to move it you would think its smooth sailing by now right? Well those of you who have driven with me know that I am DWA and so not ashamed to admit it! We get the car moving and I turn to exit, right before I exit I had to break really hard because I didn't see the large Rental-Car Transport van coming in from my left. That same employee who helped us figure out how to unlock the emergency break was driving the van J As he passed by and saw us he just formed the sign of the cross to us, I told Bob that we'd been blessed by an Irish manand we were going to be okay driving now. Go ahead pause and have a nice good laugh! Bob and I did but you all will be pleased to know we left the airport with no more incidents and made it safely to our hotel.

We had dinner at O'Neil's which is this pub with some good grub. They were supposed to have some Irish music but we were all so tired after eating our potatoes and Guinness beef stew. That was delicious and reminded me of a beef dish from France! So we walked back to our hotel on the way Bob saw this pastry coffee shop and we stopped by. I got these totally awesome oh so sweet baked chocolate meringue that just gives you cavities right away. Yeah my friends have forgotten how sugar affects me! It's a good thing we changed our minds about walking back to our hotel right away. We ended up going to the Ha'Penny Bridge and taking our pictures on it then doing the long 5-8 mile trek back to our hotel. My feet hurt but it is a good hurt and I recall how much walking one does while in Europe.