Anyway, it was a 5 1/2 days trip to Ireland. The original plan was to go there for a weekend only but then we decided to extend it a bit in order to have more time for travelling there. I mean, who needs to study for university anyway? :-P And I have to use the vacation days of my internship somehow, so this was the perfect opportunity!
I'll try and keep the complaining part short. Michael and I had to get up f***ing early and take the bus to Frankfurt Hahn (definitely not Frankfurt, see map below!) at 5:45 a.m. to be on time for our flight at 10:25.
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| There's a reason why the locals call this airport "Hahn" only... |
And that's not because HHN is so incredibly far away from Mannheim (we were there at 7:45 or so), but because there are only four "Hahn Express" buses a day... So we had a lot of time at the airport. The only problem about that: HHN is quite small in comparison to Frankfurt airport, or Dublin airport, or probably most airports you want to compare it to. I think it has 12 gates. But there is a McDonald's ...
But yeah, we somehow didn't die of boredom and managed to make it to Dublin with Ryanair. And we didn't even have to buy perfume (10% off!) or scratch cards on the plane!
At Dublin airport, we were lucky to catch an Airlink Dublin Bus to the city centre. Really lucky, because when we arrived at our hostel, we found at that there would be strike of Dublin Bus and Bus Éireann the two following days. That was something new then... I mean, delayed buses are standard in Ireland, waiting for the bus is probably considered a legitimate free time activity - but no buses running at all...?!
So Michael, Laetitia, and I had to spend part of our afternoon in Maynooth with redoing our planning. But MU library is a nice place to do so, I think, especially since it's close to Coffee Mill where we went afterwards. This time, I didn't take any pictures of the amazing all day veggie breakfast they have but it was as amazing as always, of course (see here for pics).
In the evening, we went to Brady's, one of the four pubs in Maynooth, to meet Ashnit and Alex, two others of the full year students, there.
Let me just insert the picture here that caught some attention when Ashnit posted it on Facebook:
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| I'm the one on the left. :-P |
If you're wondering why: because I'm not drinking tea there, but actually something with alcohol. But it's not beer (I still think Guinness is disgusting), it's Cider Berry.
Afterwards, we went to Celbridge where Laetitia packed her stuff and joined us for the hostels (no buses the day after, so no way of making it to Dublin, remember?). But this way, I caught at least a glimpse of Celbridge, one of the neighbouring towns/villages of Maynooth - during my Erasmus semester, I had never been there, I have to admit...
And proudly presenting the planning results, this was our round trip through Ireland:
Friday
We spent some time in Dublin, got some postcards and stamps and had lunch at Govinda, an amazing vegetarian Indian restaurant I had found last semester.
And of course, I took some pictures of Dublin city centre, but I think I'll present them in a separate post, just in case anyone has had enough of Dublin ... (which is not likely, it's a really nice city - but adding all the pics here would also make this post even longer than it is already ...)
Later on, we went to Dublin Heuston, one of the at least four train stations of Dublin (Connolly, Tara Street, Pearse, Heuston). As far as I know, Heuston is where the long distance trains depart and arrive - if it's possible to have "long distance" trains in Ireland. Anyway, since there were no buses, we took the opportunity to go there with the LUAS, the tram. From Heuston, we took the train to Ennis. That's a town somewhere in the west of Ireland nobody seems to know of, but it's quite close to the Cliffs of Moher. There was no direct train to Ennis, so we had to change in Limerick. According to the reports of people who had visited it last semester, it's not really the nicest of the cities in Ireland. But I managed to find Limerick's nice spot:
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| At the entrance of the train station. |
In Ennis, we had some time for walking through the town (which has an O'Connell Street including a monument, just like Dublin!), doing some grocery shopping, and having dinner at the nicest hostel I had ever seen before going to a pub in the evening - the standard activity in Ireland. ;-)
If you're waiting for pictures, there'll also be a post about Ennis, just wait for it.
Saturday
The Cliffs of Moher, finally! Since Bus Éireann was on strike, we had had to book a tour to the cliffs. But that wasn't too bad. Be patient and wait for the separate post with a looot of pictures. :-P
In the evening, we already had to leave the cute town of Ennis again, because we moved on to Killarney. Train connections in Ireland are interesting: we had to change the train three times. The first time was in Limerick (again!), where we had an hour before our connection train departed. So we decided to have dinner at an Asian (fast food) restaurant close to the train station. Another kind-of-nice place in Limerick. Oh, and the next change was in Limerick Junction. When we arrived there, the question was: "Is Limerick Junction like Frankfurt Hahn?" Answer: Yup, seems so.
Shortly after 10:30 p.m. and after another change in Mallow (no idea where that is), we finally arrived in Killarney. Where all hell was let loose. When we arrived at our hostel, we found out why: two girls in our dorm, who were about to go out, explained to us that there was some car rallye going on. The whole town was partying, so it seemed - while we only wanted to go to Killarney National Park...! You can imagine, our night wasn't exactly the most restful one ever since Irish guys returned from partying in the middle of the night - must have been 3 a.m. or something - turned on all the lights, had conversations that prevented you from falling asleep again, and then left the room again, leaving the lights on (that happened twice, I think). But I guess they weren't too happy about us either when we got up at 8 a.m. ...
Sunday
As I already mentioned, we only came to Killarney to go to the national park. And that's what we did! Wait for the green beauty to come in a separate post!
In the afternoon, between getting wet and getting wet again (Ireland - of course it was raining more than once), we went to a restaurant before moving on to Cork. And we didn't have to change trains thrice* this time, only once, I think.
In Cork, we went to our hostel, which was on top of one of the few hills of the country, left our stuff in the prison-like looking dorm and then went to the city centre, which was really nice at night. Well, and what do you think we did then? We went to a pub, for sure! (But in Cork, it's actually recommended to go to a pub, not only because that's what you do anywhere in Ireland, but also because of the atmosphere ...)
Monday
Since the hostel in Cork was the only of the four hostels of our trip where breakfast wasn't included and we didn't want to pay 3€ for "basic/light continental breakfast" (i. e. toast and cornflakes), we went out for breakfast. The place where we ended up after strolling through the city for some time - it wasn't the easiest task to find something with vegetarian options on a Bank Holiday - we ended up at a nice place, not sure where exactly. But the food looked okay:
Only one more picture here, because it's also related to food. When walking through the city, we spotted a nice cupcake shop, so we couldn't resist:
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| #foodporn xD |
* all credits to Laetitia for this Shakespeare-like expression.
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