Bus to ferry then home again

Sunday, July 8th

our hostel

The three of us got up pretty late. I actually woke up pretty early but the bed was comfortable, so I kept letting myself to fall back to sleep. We got up at 10:30, which means we missed the complimentary breakfast that need at 10. It was ok. We got ready, checked out and headed out to find breakfast. We checked one place and they had stopped serving breakfast at 10:30. We ended up finding ourselves at the Skeffington Hotel restaurant. Which is connected to the Skeff (where the pub crawl was), and the "restaurant" is actually in the bar.

I had an Irish breakfast, but a small one. It had a fried egg, fried tomato (which I didn't eat), ham, sausage, black & white pudding, and orange juice. The orange juice had ice in it. It wasn't bad. Just something I wasn't used to. Right after we ate we headed to catch the bus.

The directions to where we were supposed to meet it were a little unclear, so we ended up running to the bus. It was pretty much like the regular Dublin buses, except it had seats instead of benches. The drive was over an hour to get to the ferry, so I took lots of pictures of all the houses I would like to live in. Both Hanna and Lexi fell asleep.

what the seats looked like

Future house...maybe

When we arrive at the dock we had to wait for everyone to get off the ferry (because there are only two times to get on the ferry to go to the islands and two to get from the islands). The boat got pretty rocky because of the waves. It was like being on an amusement park ride, except oddly calming. The seats were comfortable and I took plenty of photos, of course.

View from the boat

We decided to get a little food when we first arrived. We went to a cafe near the docks and I got ice cream (strawberry, chocolate, vanilla) with chocolate sauce and tea. This is the first place I've ever tried having milk in my tea. Now, I'm fallen in love with it. I have a cup of tea w/ milk almost every day, and sometimes more than once a day. Anyway, we realized that we only had a little over an hour left before we had to be on the ferry to leave (which is not enough time to really do anything). We ended up taking a carriage tour. Unfortunately, it wasn't very long, but it was a lot of fun.

We started out in front of the cafe and rode up into the countryside. We saw the smallest church in ireland (from a distance), a lighthouse (from a distance), and a few other "important" places. Our last stop was a graveyard. Small but kind of cool. There was a old church there and a well known headstone.

The Graveyard

The popular headstone

The church

When we arrived back we didn't have enough time to check out the sweat factory or the "American Bar." We wanted to make sure we got a place on the ferry. The ride back was just as relaxing, and then onto the bus. We got back around 6 and we had to be at our bus at 7. Just enough time for dinner. I had wanted to get a claddagh ring from Galway, since that was where it had originated, but we did not have enough time. We decided to eat at a hotel/pub we had tried to eat at 2 times before.

We went in and the restaurant was closed, but they were serving all the food in the pub. It was tuck in time. I wasn't too hungry so I got a small salad and some potato wedges. I also decided to get a drink because we were in a pub. The bartender brought out the cocktail menu because it wasn't busy at the bar. I ended up getting something called a Jager Mint (Jägermeister & Céme de Mente). It was yummy, and the wedges were heavenly. I think I actually ate all of them. 

On the bus we got comfortable pretty quickly. In the bus station a guard let me use the bathroom without having to pay the 20p. Yay! I made a friend on the bus, kind of. I couldn't find him on Facebook, but oh well. I've made lots of friends here.

We arrived in Dublin and caught the 1 straight home. We were all sooo tired. It had been an amazing, yet tiring weekend.