Tom had a later start this morning so he joined me for breakfast. I had the full Irish breakfast this time and Tom had scrambled eggs with rashers of bacon.
I joined up with my group of day tourers and headed out to County Wicklow, about 1.5 hour drive south of Dublin. The trip took us to some famous areas that were included in movies like P.S. I Love You, Braveheart, and Excalibur.
Today was Tom’s first day at golf and my first day traveling alone.
I started off with a couple of poached eggs and a tiny tomato with some toast and a cappuccino. I went back and took a few more shots of Trinity College with less people around, amazingly, there was still a large queue to the Book of Kells.
Tom tagged along today after his meet up with his teammate was a no show (funny as he had discussed it with him the night before!). First up was the Full Irish breakfast offered by our hotel at 6 Euros each. It was quite good and allowed all you can eat cereal, orange juice and coffee – which of course Tom took up immediately. As we’ll find out over the coming days, the full breakfast lacked mushrooms and pudding.
After stopping at Abu Dhabi in the middle of the night and with 36C outside, we touched down at Dublin Airport at around 7:30am and made our way to the baggage carousels. We went through a security check in which they asked how long we were intending to stay and stamped without further hesitation. Whilst retrieving the bags, Tom got his immediately but we waited for mine for what seemed to be close to 30 minutes. It wasn’t just me but there were many others from the plane waiting as well. It felt like they only had one baggage personnel on hand. The airport was quite empty. We then made our way through the final checkpoint: customs. When you think of customs, you think of massive queues, intense questioning, border police and possibly some tears as you consider the oft chance of being refused entry. Instead, Dublin’s was a single officer standing in the middle of the exit gate (probably 10 metres wide) who asked where we were from and then left us saying “enjoy our stay”.
Our fast food binge had already started as we sat down munching away on some McDonalds at Sydney international airport. We hadn’t even left the country yet and already resorted to primal instincts. Hopefully not a sign of things to come…
