"First of all girls, yer sayin' it wrong."

It's certainly been a hectic 48 hours, but Meaghan and I have arrived! We left Boston around 7pm on Wednesday night, to begin our 5 hour journey to Shannon, Ireland, before arriving at our final destination, Dublin. We took the photo below when we were at peak nervousness, right before we got on the (HUGE!) plane in Boston.

Unfortunately, when we got to the Shannon airport (where the interior 

decoration is oddly reminiscent of the Brady Bunch house-- maroon to bright orange gradient chairs, lovely) we had to exit the plane and wait inside for 2 hours to reboard. So that was between the hours of midnight and 2am-ish (home time, GST), and 5am-7am Ireland time. Needless to say, we were a little out of sorts. Luckily we both had face wash in our carry-on's, which left us feeling like (somewhat) rejuvenated new women, ready for Dublin. We re-boarded the plane around 8am, and arrived at Dublin just 30 minutes later. 

It was pretty surreal when we first arrived, for a few reasons-

a- It was ~ 3:30am GST, but 8:30am in Dublin. I was running on about 3 hours of sleep, and Meaghan on about 40 minutes.

b- I've never been abroad before. Let alone without parents/a chaperone of any kind.

c- People drive on the left (opposite) side of the road here. Even trying to navigate crossing 2-lane streets is pretty confusing, let alone crossing all the lanes of traffic at the airport, where double-decker busses have a tendency to fly by just inches from the sidewalk.

Meaghan and I went through customs, dropped our checked luggage off at a luggage storage place in the Dublin airport, found our bus to the hostel, grabbed a seat on the top level (so high above the road!) and were off. The bus also had a screen towards the front that showed where we w

ere on the bus route in comparison to all the bus stops. But, stupidly, we thought we knew better than the woman who had told us that the O'Connell street stop was closest to our hostel, and we chose to wait for a stop a few blocks later, only to find that the bus only had one more stop after O'Connell, and it WASN'T the one we were looking for. We asked our bus driver for directions to Aston Quay (where the hostel is), and were told 1) it's pronounced "KEY", not "KWAY", and 2) how to get there.

We spent our first afternoon in Dublin trying to be as active as possib

le, to avoid the jet lag that definitely bogged us down a bit in the late afternoon. We explored all around Temple Bar, near our hostel, and then just wandered around until we saw Dublin Castle. Near Dublin Castle we heard a woman singing some crazy opera music (in a language we later identified to be German), so we followed her voice until we found a large grass "area" of sorts, where there was a huge crowd of people watching the opera. Eventually we meandered back to the hostel and took a quick nap.

Before dinner we did a little more exploring, this time on the North side of the River Liffey, which divides Dublin in half. We found some really cool shops, and one that is definitely note-wort

hy is Penny's. It's basically a department store, but everything there is SO cheap! Cardigans for €14 (about $20), eyeshadow for €2 (about $3), and shoes for €3-10 (about $5-15).  We also found a really awesome book store (Eason's), and african-inspired store with lots of awesome jewelry for €5 or less. Needless to say, I had a verrrrry difficult time resisting the urge to buy anything and everything, but I made it out alive and only bought one really cool necklace.

We went to dinner last night at a restaurant in Temple Bar, which is the really touristy pub-filled area just south of the River Liffey. The restaurant was called La Med and we got had some awesome Italian food there. Little known fact- there are probably more Italian restaurants in Dublin than there are traditional Irish restaurants, not kidding. After dinner we went to a pub called The Porterhouse, which had probably 20+ beers on tap and at least a dozen or two more in bottles. We each had a pint, Strawberry Fruli for me and Apple Cider beer for Meaghan... oh and we were called out for not being from Ireland within moments of stepping up to the bar, due to our ineptitude of knowing Irish beers. And one thing we definitely noticed was how expensive most food and drinks are here! That will definitely be biggest expenditure while I'm here (not for Guinness, Mom and Dad, but just buying enough food to sustain myself). After that we called it a night- though we had fast-forwarded our day 5 hours, we were both exhausted by 11pm.

After 12 hours of sleep, we woke up around 11:30am today and hit the ground running. We decided to explore more of the North side of the city, and we went towards where our apartments are. But either we're worse with directions than we thought, or there is a Platform 9 3/4-esque entrance to Block B, because we found every other block of our apartment except ours. We eventually wandered all the way across Dublin to Trinity College (a campus that definitely rivals Elon's in the beauty department) and St. Stephen's Green, a massive and beautiful green park in South Dublin, and almost 4 km (~2.5 miles) from our our apartment.  There, we made friends with some pigeons, and then headed towards our hostel. We grabbed some great pasta from a little shop for (a cheap!) dinner, and now we're relaxing, mooching off the hostel's free WiFi, and preparing for London tomorrow!

Cheers!

Random Sidenote: We found a TGI Fridays in Dublin today. Why Dubs would want to eat that poor-excuses for Americana cuisine is beyond me. ESPECIALLY for >€15 (or about $22) a plate.