This was a morning of misadventures. I was supposed to get up for church at like, 7. But the damn birds outside and the snoring woke me up at 5 and it was really hard to sleep. So I missed church but still popped in, you know, thanks God, before withdrawing money to pay for my 3.50 ticket on the bus. Since I didn’t want to have to pay 2 atm fees, I just took out a bunch of money and was going to trade it later. JoHanna had told me to go to the Post and get it exchanged. This was not a favorable rate. This was very upsetting. Then there was RyanAir.
I really really really don’t like RyanAir. I went to print off my pass (had to be done at least 4 hours early, but I missed it by 15 minutes. So when I got to the airport and asked to have my ticket printed, they charged me 60 DOLLARS. To PRINT a TICKET. Additionally, they are super strict about weight limits, so earlier at the hostel I’d had to move all sorts of things around in my bags. Jerks. My ticket for a one hour flight from Scotland to Ireland ended up costing me 190 bucks. Never again.
The flight was jam packed but pretty uneventful. I got some nice shots of the city and Arthur’s Seat from the window and before you know it we’d touched down and I was through customs without a hitch.
Waiting for the bus was made quite pleasant by the bus security(?) officer I met. His name was Liam and we chatted for quite a bit – we were both born in October, I’m moving to Boston, his team (I have no idea what sport) play firefighters and police in cities like New York but this October they’re coming to Boston. He was exceptionally kind, and when he found out that I wasn’t really sure of what there was to do or what tourist things I could do in Killarney he ran inside and brought out a very nice guidebook complete with lovely map and not only pointed out where I could get tours to, but also just let me keep it. He made sure I got on the right bus and knew which stop was mine. It was a lovely welcome into Ireland.
The train station was lovely, but I had a bit of a problem getting my tickets. I asked for a ticket at the counter and the woman said it would be 68 euro. I was shocked because online I could have gotten it for less than half that. When I said as much, she informed me that online was cheaper and there were internet kiosks in the station. I went to one and it promptly ate my euro coin. I found a fast-food place with WiFi and bought some food and tried to get on only to discover that the WiFi was down. I went over to another kiosk that, fortunately, worked just fine, but it ended up taking me 2 more euro to make my booking. And then because it was a credit card, I ended up paying a fee for that. All in all though, it was much cheaper than the ticket counter, especially when I decided that I could hang out in the station for another couple of hours to get a later and even cheaper fare.
I boarded the train (which had WiFi) without incident and spent a pleasant hour chatting with Thom while the countryside passed outside the windows. I had to make a quick switch in the middle of the trip and the new train didn’t have internet but it was only a little while more til we got to Killarney. Once there I had to ask for directions 3 times because I got myself very lost but finally checked into the hostel, settled in, and relaxed. Tomorrow I move into the B&B I’ll be staying at for the rest of my trip. It will probably be a relaxed day, but I’m ready for a few of those.
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