Ireland

My flight was scheduled to leave from the Paris-Beauvais airport at 9:25am on Christmas Eve. I found out the night before that the Paris-Beauvais airport wasn’t technically in Paris (as the name would suggest) rather 80 kilometers outside of the city. So I awoke at 5am, caught the earliest tram at 5:30 to cross the city and just barely made the airport shuttle at 6:25. I checked in at the airport and made it to my gate on time. Phew. The only thing left to do was wait, and wait, and wait …for three hours. The region’s foggy morning inhibited all incoming flights from landing and as a result some 500 people were crammed into the tiny terminal eager to leave. At 12:30 an announcement came on saying that because of the weather Ryan Air flight 25 would be re-routed through Lille airport, which was about a 2 hour drive north. All the passengers were loaded into five buses and sent northward. We finally took off at 4pm from Lille and arrived in Dublin at 4:30, seven hours later than we were supposed to.

I had anticipated spending New Year’s back in Berlin, but I wasn’t sure how long I wanted to stay in Ireland nor the mode of transportation that I wanted to depart on. So I entered the country with a TBD ETD. Well, the immigration office was not pleased to hear that. I spent half an hour talking to the woman at the immigration desk, being mistakenly honest. “Yes, I know I’m travelling on Christmas Eve. Yes, I know that I’m travelling alone. No, that doesn’t bother me. Yes, my parents know. No I don’t have a return ticket. No, I won’t try to live illegally in Ireland. Yes, I do plan to return to the United States. Yes, I do have a place to stay. Yes, it is a real place. No, I don’t have the phone number of my hostel….” And so it went. After a second officer came in and confirmed that the Avalon House was an actual hostel and not code for ‘illegal immigration’ they finally stamped my passport and let me in, but with significant suspicion. I caught the 16A bus and headed for the city center to check in at my hostel.

Being the Catholic country that it is, it’s needless to say that Christmas is big in Ireland (AKA every thing is closed for the holidays). When I arrived Christmas Eve all the markets had locked their doors, pulled their metal screens down and pasted their “Will re-open in January” signs on the windows. Shops, pharmacies, train stations, restaurants—all of them closed. I wandered the eerily empty streets around my hostel in search of dinner and settled (without choice) on a ‘hot and ready’ Spar dinner. Spar became my new best friend over the holiday weekend; with the exception of churches they were the only place to keep their doors open. Over Christmas Eve, Christmas Day and St. Stephen’s Day/Boxing Day, I ate just about everything Spar had on the deli menu.

I made some friends in the evenings at Avalon and took a complimentary tango lesson one evening, but wandered the streets of Dublin alone during the day, enjoying the time to myself. On the 27th when things started to open up again, I visited the beloved Guinness Storehouse. For 11 Euro I experienced a walk-through commercial for Guinness beer and enjoyed a ‘free’ pint at the top floor’s bar overlooking the city. It was already two o’clock by the time I finished my draught and I only had a few hours of daylight left. So I took the elevator to the ground floor, conveniently located amidst the Guinness gift shop where I escaped spending only 50 cents on a postcard. I wandered the streets toward the River Liffey catching the Christchurch Cathedral, James Joyce statue and the Spire (a god awful monument).

I only had one full day left and I really wanted to see at least part of the countryside. I visited the train station that day to see if I could travel westward for a day and a night before I left, but I could only catch a train to Galway or Limerick the following morning and try to take in the sights in just a few hours of daylight. It would definitely have been worth it to see the cliffs and coast, but I wasn’t sure I would have enough time. My only other option was a guided tour. I had wanted to avoid such tourist traps, but with my limited time-frame alas I caved. I woke up the following morning at 6am to catch a tour bus out west. I hadn’t made reservation, but I was lucky enough to get the last seat, at the last minute. After three hours of driving through the frosty morning countryside we were at the coast. I got to see the cliffs, some castles and the Burren (my personal favorite). The day was spent mostly driving, but I thought it was worth it to experience not-Dublin. When we got back to Dublin I had enough time to grab some hard cider at a market, pack my bag and take a nap before my early flight the next morning back to Berlin.