Seven Days in Dublin: Day One

Like so many cities around the world, Dublin is wrestling with the Airbnb question which is all about sky-rocketing rents in the city and the lack of availability for their own working population.
When we sought an Airbnb property in Dublin for the 7 days of our stay, we found that an Hotel was less expensive. Sad, but true. However...The hotel that we chose was no prime property. In fact, it should just be demolished...right now!
This was the least expensive property available at the time of booking (well over 100 euros, I might add). I wont go into toooo many details about my opinion of this property, but perhaps a few photos MIGHT persuade you of my opinion...

 Waz's pillow inner

 Window ledge

 ONE of the areas of the bathroom which needs help...or further destruction.

 I asked houseskeeping if they change the shower curtains each time they change over the room. I was told that they old do when it LOOKS like it needs changing, lol. WHAT? I asked them to change ours, as it was stiff and pink from body fat. This one hadn't been changed for a loooong while..YUK!

 We estimate the single beds to be about 20 yrs old. The springs on the mattress were very much in evidence in the first bedroom...the second was slightly better, but my hip bone didnt appreciate the wire springs sticking into it!

As retired folks on a fixed income we have to be a bit picky as to where we spend our money. Do we spend up large on the accoms, seeing we are only there to bathe and sleep? Or do we spend up large on 'attractions' as they are called? Airfares being what they are, we sought the most reasonable in the middle of the 'silly-season'. Aer Lingus did ok for us. No frills, like so many of it's competitors, but the seats had plenty of leg room in the forward section of the plane, so we have nothing to complain about there. Flights were full, but there was plenty of space in the overhead bins which is what we needed for our carry on bags . We pack light!


We booked our berth at the Tara Towers Hotel in Booterstown on the south side of Dublin on the way to Black Rock. The hotel is opposite the shore, with a main road and DART train line in between. No simple matter to get to the shore, and we didnt make it there. The tide is huge, going out a good kilometer or more, and we were impressed by the number of people out walking their dogs on the mud-flats, and the vast numbers of seagulls highlighted in the late afternoon sunshine on those same mud-flats around 6pm.
Single paned windows meant the road (main artery) and train noise was high. The window only opened about 3 inches, so there was only a small amount of air coming into the very hot and stuffy room.

Most of the buses (Dublin buses that is) are double decker. You take your life into your own hands climbing the stairs to the top deck and coming back down. We saw a couple of people fall or lose their footing as the bus was either taking off or coming to a stop. No consideration was given to the elderly (time-wise), mothers with young children/strollers and those with handicaps. It appeared that the drivers have a timetable to keep to, and by gosh and by golly they will keep to it. It was a bit nerve wracking at times. This was our only mode of transport for the visit, although we did get the DART one day...more on day 6!

Back to home and leaving France...

Rising around 4am, we had a quick breakfast, wash up and hit the road. We were all packed and ready to go, just needing to find a place to dispose of our trash before hitting the highway to Bordeaux. It was very dark still, and though we know the road reasonably well, I still dont like driving in the pitch black going 110kph.
The traffic grew towards 6am and as we neared the city of Bordeaux. We had booked into the long term parking lot which was full!! WOW! but for 35 euros for the 7 days it was a steel compared to the other options.
Finding a space as close to the bus station as possible, we were transferred to the Airport Departures in good time for our 9.30am flight to Dublin.
We were a little flummoxed by what we thought was a lack of security at check in, but I always get wanded due to my Bionic-woman status with so much body metal. They only ever find my underwire and my jeans zipper!

Bordeaux is not a large airport but we were very glad to have been the first through security checking as we had time to take off and then refit ourselves before the great hoards came through a half hour later.
With so much time on our side, we went straight to the Grand Crème stand. I was about to put a plastic lid on the cup, thinking we were walking to the gate already, but the server instructed me not to do so, waving his finger at me saying "Plastique, plastique!" and told us to go into the table area behind him and drink our coffee! Yes sir! He is quite right of course, and so much of what we do is without that extra thought. It was a good reminder to us on this trip in particular....and I will mention this while I still think of it...
One of the days walking around the center of Dublin we went into the Marks and Spencer Food Hall, where, I kid you not, EVERY food item we could see...and we went looking...was wrapped in plastic or contained in several layers of packaging. We were shocked!

There were plenty of recycling stations on the streets and people did use them, but generally the streets were strewn with trash which was most unattractive, to say the least. We have been in many large cities, not the least of them Paris, and I think Dublin was up there with the worst of them.

Aer Lingus runs A320 Airbus between France and Ireland. Full flights appear to be the norm, especially at this time of year. Plenty of French going to Ireland and plenty of Irish on the return trip. Way too many small kids and upset babies. We wonder why people want to travel in the summer heat with such young children. Tired and screaming babies does not make for a pleasant flight, and some of us have had such children. I swore after one such flight that I wouldn't travel with kids under 4, ever again, and I didnt!


Dublin airport is modern and efficient and actually highly attractive. The food hall, which we were happy to visit upon arrival, is excellent, with huge choices of food. This is the kind of food we can relate to, especially the scones! yep! Waz was in heaven and made several scone choices for a snack over the course of our stay in Dublin.
It is also a relatively large airport. RyanAir is way over the other side. We were happy to be flying Aer Lingus!

Dont ever take the forward weather forecast for granted....it is ALWAYS wrong, lol. We should have known, shouldn't we?
The weather the week before our departure was particularly horrid with low temps and many complaints about an early Winter before the Fall. We packed mostly for cooler temps with a pair of shorts and a short sleeved t-shirt being a bit optimistic. Our long Pj's were packed and a mix of sweaters and jackets. Merde! How wrong could we be?
As it happened, the temps were mild, though the sky was grey and cloudy with intermittent showers for the first day, and our room facing the ocean was HOT. The whole hotel was HOT. We could only tip the one window inwards at the top about 3 inches, and not much air came inside. It was hot at night, even though we eventually learned to keep the thick curtains covering the windows all day, and leaving instructions for housekeeping to do likewise. I even went so far as to seek out the cleaners on our floor, and explain our dilemma, and again, telling the front desk to do likewise. They were very obliging, thankfully, and we returned each of the first 4 days to a cooler room...just slightly.
By Wednesday I was over it! I couldn't sleep in that heat anymore, and it had only become warmer during the week. I went downstairs and requested a cooler room away from the noisy road and the blast of sun most of the day. To their credit they relocated us into a better situation...more on that later. We were instructed to leave our bags packed and ready to go, and they would be transferred for us while we were out all day. We dropped off the old keys and would pick up the new ones on our arrival back at the hotel later in the day. Simple!
Was it? Yes! Very simple, thankfully. We picked up our keys and were most grateful that we had been 'upgraded' (I use that terms loosely!) to a larger room with an angled window with a view of the ocean still, but not the heat and not the road/rail noise. It was still warm. NO air-conditioning anywhere in the complex! The beds were marginally better, as was the bathroom, but furniture was falling to bits, handles for drawers missing etc...all we could do was laugh. Anyway...back to our first day in Dublin...well, afternoon!
One of the first things we usually do when we arrive somewhere, is to go for a walk in the neighborhood. This often involves a visit to a supermarket also!:)
On this walk it was windy and threatened rain, but we had jackets with us and we wouldn't melt with a few raindrops.
We loved that Gaelic language was everywhere. It is an attractive, musical language that is easy on the ears, but well night impossible to pronounce until you know the rules. We didnt find those out, so made asses of ourselves once or twice:) as you do!
The College looked modern and was in attractive park-like grounds, as were many of the other buildings of note that we came across.

 We were on the Embassy Mile, as it were. The American Embassy was at a fork in the road towards town, and the elegant and modern British Embassy was a little closer to our Hotel, but both were well guarded and 'secure' as you would expect.
This Eiffel Tour of telecommunications gave me a moments pause.

 Bikes everywhere. There are bike lanes and bus lanes and skinny car lanes and often all of the appear to converge. DONT LOOK! Bike riders take some interesting risks, but they are plentiful and I guess like any city anywhere where the preferred mode of transport is bike, they have right of way and they make full use of it! High Vis clothing was de rigeur and there were many varieties of child carrier, panier baskets on front and back, and people in cycling gear were less numerous generally during the week, than those in suits, pedaling like crazy against an often stiff wind to get to their destinations.
This being Ireland and all, we wondered why they tell you where to look, on the roads at intersections at entries to Hospitals etc. We were glad of the instructions ourselves, frankly, this being a country where they drive on the left side of the road. It is easy to forget this simple fact as I nearly got bowled by a cyclist one morning as I crossed a side road to buy our breakfast yoghurt. I was fortunate that it was only a bike!

 Another Catholic Church! Simple, white stone, huge parking lot. There was little difference in appearance between the Catholic and the Anglican churches, to be frank. We tried to find them, of course...the differences, not the churches! They are all too obvious.

 Fairly typical nice homes along the street from the Hotel. This is a duplex by any other name (being an American term, I think?). Interesting architectural details and love the red bricks and slate roof.

 From a different angle.

 'local' shops in amongst the houses and some light industrial. Lovely Plane trees along the road.

After a visit to the supermarket for a breakfast yoghurt and some fruit, we went back to the hotel (we did a large circle walk of about 4ks, I think!) for dinner in the restaurant at the pub on the ground floor.
Food was not memorable, but filled a gap. See....I cant even remember what we ate, lol.
Had a couple of naps and watched some of the European Athletic Championships. Fantastic Men's Gymnastics! The Irish 19 yr old Pommel Horse Champion won the Gold in that event, having acquitted himself well at the most recent Commonwealth Games in Australia, but leaving there with a Silver! Wonderful to watch their exquisite timing and grace in all the disciplines. Some diving followed, which was equally enthralling. Too much sitting in Hotel rooms watching TV is not good for us! We tried to get a good night's sleep in the heat, but that is another story for Day Two!