london—dublin

We could not have faced our NZ-based Irish friends had we lived in the UK for two years and never made the short hop across to Ireland. With Bronwyn's 30th for impetus we booked a short break—our first overseas trip for just the weekend.

In a mix of muddled thinking, some limitations in our geographical knowledge, and a period of too-stressed-to-plan, we hadn't really been thinking of this trip to Ireland as going “overseas” per se. It was an afterthought while packing for me to get out our €100 left over from our last trip and put it in my wallet even. But by the time we'd finished packing we'd got ourselves straight.

The trip to Luton was uneventful though we were left slightly bemused when Duncan's Wimbledon-Kings Cross plus St Pancras-Luton Airport Parkway combined ticked was £10.20, while Bronwyn's ticket for just the (shorter) second leg came to £10.40! We made it to Luton nonetheless, Bronwyn reflecting that with £2.50 fares Wimbledon-Heathrow on the tube, flying on “cheaper” flights from Luton wasn't always the deal made out to be. We've now racked up flights out of almost all of London's airports though—Heathrow (a number of trips), Gatwick (Berlin and Prague I think?), Stanstead (Rome), and now Luton—with the sole exception of City airport in the Docklands. Flights from there tend to be pricier thanks to convenience, but the view on takeoff and landing over the city are reputedly more than worth it.

Our Ryanair flight 50mins to Dublin was uneventful, bulkhead seats leaving sufficient legroom for oversized D. Were that the bus journey so uncomplicated... Though we agreed to catch the €5pp shuttle to the city due to the hour (9.30pm), when faced with the option of a €1.60 local bus I got all huff-huff-tourist-tax and we caught the local.

To be continued... Internet cafe closing.

Sitting upstairs on the local bus we became steadily nervous about the time we'd arrive at our B&B as the time ticked by. I was working hard to positively reframe the excessively noisy and profane youths in the back seat... with some success until we were partly drenched with strawberry milk. The still 1/3 full projectile itself wedged in the seat-front next to me, giving the man in the row ahead the most thorough of our lactose baptisms. Bus came to a halt. Police ("Garda") called. The youths in question eventually scarpered, after quite a while but in time to not answer for their apparently racially-motivated milk crime. A number of angry passengers, not least the black Frenchman at whom the missile appeared to have been targeted.

We arrived at the city, reading at that point (and for the first time) the part of our instructions for our B&B that noted we must confirm our arrival time. Phonebox provided an opportunity, playing police-related-incident-on-the-bus trump card for sympathy. Route 19a soon had us at our final destination anyway.

B&B nice. Sloping roof on Duncan's side of the bed made for amusing rising. TV in the room a sleep-delaying novelty—as always, even the ads are entertaining since we don't have TV at home. Ireland strongly reminiscent of New Zealand in tone, a feeling reinforced by their television programmes. Another midnight lights off, ending a week of foolishly late nights.