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Holyhead and Dublin - Day 8
14 years ago
So today was a travel day, which was kind of a nice break from all of the walking (at least my feet and their blisters approved, yeesh) we've done over the past week.
The day started pretty early, caught a train out of Euston station for Holyhead on Virgin Rails around 8 am. We had to train swap at one point to another train partway through the trip down though, but even that was relatively painless.
One thing I will say to North American tourists going to Europe, don't expect an enormous room. Our London hotel was only big enough to contain the Double Bed and the meagre space to walk around it. The bathroom was maybe six square feet, including shower stall.
Anyways, train!
I slept the first half of the train trip, which seems to be pretty standard (especially when woken up at 5:30 am) for me at this point. Not too bad, after the train swap I stayed up, watched a lot of sheep pass (which is neat for me, as in my neck of the woods, we have mostly cattle). I also made a sizeable dent in The Witching Hour by Anne Rice on my e-reader.
By the way, e-readers, best things ever for travelling... My husband brought the first three Discworld books by Terry Pratchett and is almost done the second already, and we have a bunch of longish train trips left, not to mention an 8 hour flight home. I have a Kobo (the equivalent to a Kindle, for the Amazon fans) and not to mention the 20 books I have loaded and purchased, I already had 100 books pre-loaded. I think I win, but I may compromise with him. If he finishes his books, I'll swap him the Kobo for the Discworld books and we'll both be happy.
After the train trip to Holyhead (which is pronounced 'holly-head' to me, despite the lack of second 'l' in the word) we had a nice lunch at a pub in town (as most of the town, it being Sunday, was closed for some reason). We then caught a first class ferry out of Holyhead for Dublin.
The ferry ride was quite pleasant, despite my inherent unease around travelling over large bodies of water (I nearly freaked out on the plane when crossing the North Atlantic) without sight of land. The ferry was pretty good though, and we landed in Dublin around 7pm.
We were picked up by a private car service from the terminal (which was awesome, as apparently a private driver is the same price as the local taxis). Though for the life of me I can't recall his name, I quite liked the fellow, who gave us an impromptu tour of Dublin itself while driving us to the hotel, including advice on some of the local pubs and nightspots. He also gave us some history on Dublin itself, which was all quite appreciated by both my husband and me.
Now, we knew on booking that the hotel we'd selected was under new management and would not be exactly what we booked. We ended up paying 550 Euros or something near (approximately 750 dollars) for the week here. Now... When we got into the lobby, I thought we had the wrong hotel... This place is amazing!
Now, we're here for 7 nights, which comes down to a little over 100$ a night. Where we're from, that's a Best Western or a Holiday Inn. This place is simply stunning, and the room is as big as our Living Room at hgme! Fook! I want to steal the hotel room when I leave! This place is EASILY worth at least 200 to 300$ per night...
Anyways, I'm gonna chill for a bit before bed and enjoy the view of the cathedral across the street. I'm already in love with Dublin, I may need to be dragged back onto the plane when we leave. >.>
The day started pretty early, caught a train out of Euston station for Holyhead on Virgin Rails around 8 am. We had to train swap at one point to another train partway through the trip down though, but even that was relatively painless.
One thing I will say to North American tourists going to Europe, don't expect an enormous room. Our London hotel was only big enough to contain the Double Bed and the meagre space to walk around it. The bathroom was maybe six square feet, including shower stall.
Anyways, train!
I slept the first half of the train trip, which seems to be pretty standard (especially when woken up at 5:30 am) for me at this point. Not too bad, after the train swap I stayed up, watched a lot of sheep pass (which is neat for me, as in my neck of the woods, we have mostly cattle). I also made a sizeable dent in The Witching Hour by Anne Rice on my e-reader.
By the way, e-readers, best things ever for travelling... My husband brought the first three Discworld books by Terry Pratchett and is almost done the second already, and we have a bunch of longish train trips left, not to mention an 8 hour flight home. I have a Kobo (the equivalent to a Kindle, for the Amazon fans) and not to mention the 20 books I have loaded and purchased, I already had 100 books pre-loaded. I think I win, but I may compromise with him. If he finishes his books, I'll swap him the Kobo for the Discworld books and we'll both be happy.
After the train trip to Holyhead (which is pronounced 'holly-head' to me, despite the lack of second 'l' in the word) we had a nice lunch at a pub in town (as most of the town, it being Sunday, was closed for some reason). We then caught a first class ferry out of Holyhead for Dublin.
The ferry ride was quite pleasant, despite my inherent unease around travelling over large bodies of water (I nearly freaked out on the plane when crossing the North Atlantic) without sight of land. The ferry was pretty good though, and we landed in Dublin around 7pm.
We were picked up by a private car service from the terminal (which was awesome, as apparently a private driver is the same price as the local taxis). Though for the life of me I can't recall his name, I quite liked the fellow, who gave us an impromptu tour of Dublin itself while driving us to the hotel, including advice on some of the local pubs and nightspots. He also gave us some history on Dublin itself, which was all quite appreciated by both my husband and me.
Now, we knew on booking that the hotel we'd selected was under new management and would not be exactly what we booked. We ended up paying 550 Euros or something near (approximately 750 dollars) for the week here. Now... When we got into the lobby, I thought we had the wrong hotel... This place is amazing!
Now, we're here for 7 nights, which comes down to a little over 100$ a night. Where we're from, that's a Best Western or a Holiday Inn. This place is simply stunning, and the room is as big as our Living Room at hgme! Fook! I want to steal the hotel room when I leave! This place is EASILY worth at least 200 to 300$ per night...
Anyways, I'm gonna chill for a bit before bed and enjoy the view of the cathedral across the street. I'm already in love with Dublin, I may need to be dragged back onto the plane when we leave. >.>
pj wolf
~pyrostinger
Damn. That's a pretty sweet find.
