Dublin/Missing the Ferry

Yesterday was quite an adventure. It started off wonderfully but quickly turned into a nightmare. For our field trip yesterday, all of the classes went to Dublin.  Amazing city, I would go back there in a heartbeat. We spent most of the day going to the Irish Museum of Modern Art and saw The Book of Kells at trinity college. We saw some of Monet's and Degas' famous paintings. We saw Irish modern artist works too. The Book of Kells was amazing; we couldn't take photographs but if I could I would show you. The amount of work and color that are still on these books is very impressive. Very beautiful. After that, me and my friend Allysa went to scope out some shops. Of course American Apparel had everything cute that I ever wanted to buy in my life but was about 58 euro a shirt. #hates. There was some middle school/high school girl in there trying on spandex shorts that exposed ALL of her butt cheeks and people were telling her it was cute, which it wasn't.


I even found my twin whilst here.

After that, we all met up at the buses. Beth and I had already planned to take a ferry to London for the weekend and visit her friend, Andy. The previous day or so, she had ordered the tickets online to get a ferry through Irish ferries to Stena Line (a company of ferry they use) but it said unconfirmed online, so her friend Andy called the next morning to confirm it. WELL, just to be safe (about knowing where we were going) we went to a tourist information center in Dublin, so she could tell us if we were going the right way. We had 4 hours. We thought we'd be okay. She called the company, they said Dun Laoghaire was the correct port to go to. We take the Dart(a train) to Dun Laoghaire and arrive right outside the ferry port. But it was closed....Weird you might think but we asked a local and he said he didn't know much but that it would open about an hour or so before we were supposed to be there. SO we hung out in a coffee shop for a bit and about an hour before, we went back out there and it was still closed. We knew something was up so we asked more people but no one seemed to know anything. Then finally we saw a guy and his dog and another couple walking the same irection and we stopped and asked, and they said that ferries had stopped coming to that port except once a day at 1. And we needed quickly to be at the only other ferry port in dublin. All the way back north. In an hour. We took a train to Connely then rushed to a taxi to Dublin port. The guy was kind of an idiot and didn't know which port to go to, he took us to all these different ones. Irish ferries had already left. We needed Stena line so we finally made it there with 25 min to spare and they told us they couldn't find us under registration. Our names weren't anywhere on there. The registration code the website gave through the travel agency was incorrect. They couldn't look it up so we would either have to pay to get on there AGAIN or we were sol. We weren't going to pay again, so we went outside to wait for a taxi and this wonderful, older man helped us get on his computer to look at the info. He suggested riding with him on the 2:15am ferry which was better than nothing. Our tickets still weren't coming up so we called the Stena Line company and they didn't open until 9am so there was no way we could have gotten it switched over. Our only chance was to hopefully find the group that was still in Dublin because they were going to a play. We used the man's phone and called a taxi and found the group finaly and went back to Waterford last night. Long day.

As for the weekend, I'm not sure what our plans are. I guess we aren't going to London. There might be something else fun in store. Atleast now we know what to do...if by chance we get into this situation again. Don't book ferries online. Just don't do it. Also, when asking directions, get someone who knows what they're talking about.

All in all, eventful day. Praying today will be better :)

Day 5.

So I got to Ireland about 5 days ago and it really is pretty fantastic. We've had some pretty crazy adventures already with some interesting people but for the most part, everyone here is really very lovely. They actually love to talk to us, especially the older folk. It is a great experience. This country is ABSOLUTELY gorgeous, THE most gorgeous, green land I've only dreamed about. Definitely worth coming here. It has stayed partly cloudy for us most of our stay so far and the sun has even come out some. So when we went to the cliffs by Hook lighthouse in wexford, and the sun was shining, it was a brilliant sight. Pictures do not do it justice.Way too beautiful to be real.

Top adventure so far, we almost got mugged the first day by this old cracked out woman asking for money on the bus stop. Well asking is not exactly what she was doing. It was more like cornering people and mumbling to them at the bus stop. WAY too close for comfort. Me and Beth almost had to go Spartan and kick her in the chest. She started mocking us and following us past the bus stop but we walked away as did some of the locals because this was obviously not normal here. This boy was nice enough to lead us to another bus stop but we ended up walking because the bus didn't come soon enough. We got home soaking wet because of rain. YAY! But it really was interesting. I've tasted pub food which is to die for. I've been to a little bistro in town. I've bought a few clothes and some of the clothes here are really cute! Depends on where you go! Penney's was my favorite place to go there but everything closes pretty early...at 6 so it was hard to stay long anywhere... They had a forever 21 vibe with about the same prices. There were also some cute little thrift finds downtown too, where old Irish folk loved to talk to us about our stay here. There are some great laughs to find in the people here, that's for sure.

We met some younger locals too and I exposed to them my "weirder side" right off the bat but they seemed to have fun with us. They called me "mad but a brilliant mad" and we tried speaking in each other's accents and that was super fun. I would be happy if I could do that every night. The country and the people seem fantastic. I'm going to see a play tonight with the theater group. Stephen King's Misery? Should be good or at least interesting. More adventures to come. :)