The Last Two Days

Hi everyone,

We are packing our things, getting ready to leave Dublin in the morning. We arrived so tired last night that I didn't have a chance to post about our trip to Edinburgh. So here is a recap of the last couple of days!

Edinburgh
We spent all day Saturday in Edinburgh. It is an absolutely beautiful city. In fact, it ranks as our second favorite destination on the trip so far after Bath. Everyone in Edinburgh is so friendly, and they all sound exactly like the late night host Craig Ferguson, which I found highly amusing.

We decided to do one of the tours on the double-decker buses since we knew we only had the one day. We figured this would give us a good chance to see everything in a relatively short amount of time, as well as the fact that this tour would allow us to hop on and off wherever we chose, therefore spending more time at the points that interested us. It turned out to be an excellent decision. The buses pick up tourists right in the center of downtown Edinburgh. The first stop is the Edinburgh Castle, which is over 1000 years old and is still used in military capacities today. Although, thankfully the threat of Vikings has diminished.

The castle sits on top of a hill that overlooks the whole city. There is the castle itself, along with the normal castle accoutrements: dungeon, prisoner barracks, canons, gift shop, etc. We spent probably two hours there exploring and taking pictures.

After leaving the castle, we headed down on foot on a route called the Royal Mile.It is so named because it the route heads down the mountain for one mile's distance and at the bottom of the mountain (and the elapsement of one mile) the Queen's Holyrood Castle awaits you. This castle is a residence for the monarch of The United Kingdom. When the Queen is in residence, the Royal Mile is closed to tourists, but we lucked out and she was not visiting Scotland.

Along the Royal Mile are many beautiful religious and governmental buildings. I have included some photos here for everyone to see! We then picked up the tour at the bottom of the mile and finished seeing the other sights. Then we headed back towards downtown for lunch and shopping!

After all of this, we were pretty pooped. Also, we had a flight to catch that night to Dublin! So we packed our bags and headed for the airport!

Flight To Dublin
This requires it's own section of the blog entry.

We arrived at the airport well ahead of our scheduled flight. RyanAir was our airline, and this is basically like a bus in the sky--the fares are dirt cheap. Along with those cheap fares however come some pretty interesting restrictions. For example, the cheap fare assumes you will have no luggage whatsoever. Humorous as this may sound, it is true. If you choose to take any of your belongings with you at all, you will need to pay for the bag. OK, fine. Then, the bag can only weigh a maximum of 15 kilograms (multiply by 2.2 and you have your weight in pounds). Long story short, we were way over our allotment. By 10 kilograms. The penalty for overweight baggage is 14 Pounds Sterling per kilogram. This would have resulted in an overweight baggage fee of 140 Pounds, which is roughly two hundred dollars. Asinine.

So to solve this, we visited the lovely airport gift shop and purchased another suitcase. Because, you see, the fee to check another bag is only 19 Pounds. Significantly cheaper. So, 52 Pounds later (33 Pounds for the suitcase and 19 Pounds for the extra bag fee), we finally headed towards security.

The United Kingdom continues to amaze me. For, you will be amazed to know, RyanAir has done what citizens of the United States are terrified will happen in their country--they have allowed the use of cell phones on flights. Yup. A picture of the sign is included for your enjoyment.

When we landed in Dublin, we had to go through immigration. I was extremely excited about this, because I was jonesing for an Irish stamp in my passport. Laura was not nearly as enthused by this. As she had not had a smoke in quite some time, her patience with my jubilance was running a little low. She was about to get to her breaking point.

We get in line to have our passports reviewed and go through immigration. And then the longest wait of our lives begins. Apparently, people from other countries have no idea that a passport is required for international travel. Laura is completely coming unglued. About an hour later, and after watching two persons and a child denied admittance to Ireland, I finally got my stamp.

Upon arriving at our hotel, we collapsed into our beds. It had been a long day.

Dublin
We awoke this morning feeling refreshed. We were ready to see the city of Dublin, so after breakfast, we headed towards the bus that would take us to the center of the city. After the bus driver stopped to pick up his lunch sack from his parents house on one of the country routes, we were on our way. I am not making this up by the way--the guy's dad handed him his lunch.

We had decided to again do the hop on/off bus tour around the city since we only had today to visit. Dublin is not very big, so the entire tour only takes about an hour and a half. The first place we decided to get off was the Guinness Factory! Yay beer!!

We took a tour of the factory and then we exchanged our ticket stubs for our complimentary pint. Very tasty! The bar is located on the seventh floor of the factory and this floor is encased in windows from floor to ceiling, so you can get an excellent view of the city!

St. Patrick's Cathedral is here in Dublin, and you get an excellent view of this beautiful church from seven stories up.

After the Guinness excursion we hopped back on the bus to finish the tour. There weren't too many other places to get off and see an attraction, so when the tour concluded we headed back to downtown Dublin for lunch and shopping.

Dublin is beautiful, but this leg of the trip has definitely been the most expensive. Everything here costs a lot more than in either England or Scotland.

Tomorrow we head back to London on RyanAir (I will fully charge my BlackBerry before the flight). We will head back to Cambridge to stay the night at our friend's house. Tuesday through Thursday we plan to be in London and will actually stay in London the last two nights we are here.

Whew! That pretty much sums up the last couple of days!

Cheers!