DUBLIN, IRELAND

We arrived in Dublin Tuesday night and checked into our hotel before hitting the city. We went out to a fun little Italian restaurant and walked around before heading back to our hotel. We had a 6am flight the next morning for Edinbourgh, Scotland so we made sure we were all packed up and ready.

Wednesday morning we got up at 4am to show up at the airport and were immediately thrown into total mayhem! We got in line for the Ryan Air desk and waited, and waited, and waited. We finally made it up to the desk and the extremely rude employee informed us that our bags were over weight and they were going to charge us 200 euros for them! I was trying to rearrange a few things in our bags to get them to the right weight while she was telling us that we had waited in the wrong line. There was no posting anywhere about what line to get into!! So after her taking about 10 minutes or so she said, “oh your gate closed 7 minutes ago.” That was it, no “I’m sorry” no “let me see what I can do”. Just told us to go stand in another line and we could try to change our tickets…for a fee of coarse. So we get in the other line and the lady tells us that she can get us on the next flight at 8am but we have to get back in line and then she’ll help us. So Ryan goes to the back of the huge line while I run around trying to find a place we can leave one of our suitcases. After finding a place I go back to the line fling open both of our suitcases and am madly sorting what we need and what we can leave behind.

While doing that Ryan gets to the front of the line and the same girl says that that flight was actually at 8 that night. All that for nothing!!! We got our flight worked out but we were so bummed because we had a whole day of activities planned in Scotland and a 3 hour drive from Edinbourgh to Inverness. We decided we had to make the best of our few hours in Dublin so we called the Hilton we were going to be staying at when we got back to Dublin the next week and they were nice enough to hold our luggage so we could enjoy the city. By the time we got into Dublin we were exhausted, hungry, and a little grumpy from dealing with Ryan Air.

Walking around Grafton Street looking for a place to eat

We headed into T.K. Maxx for this tiny little suitcase to avoid being charged at the airport later that night.

On the bus tour of Dublin, it gave us a good layout of this city while being able to sit down

The throne inside the Dublin Castle, they had to cut the legs down and add a foot stool so that Queen Elizabeth’s legs didn’t dangle while she sits in the chair!

The lookout tower at Dublin Castle, Ryan looks like he’s going to fall over!

Underground chambers where the dungeons used to be

The entrance gate to Dublin Castle

Driving past St. Patrick’s Cathedral

In the fields over looking St. Patrick’s

Eating lunch above the main street

Ryan looking like a total tourist

Finally getting on the plane…We can’t even describe how awful Ryan Air is!!!!

After a long exhausting day we arrived in Edinbourgh, got our rental car, and started the long drive to Inverness. Had we arrived that morning we had a few places we were going to stop along the way but since we got there at 10pm there was no where to go! Luckily with the summer solstice being so close it didn’t get too dark and we could see where we were going and all the deer on the side of the road. We made it to our B&B a little after 1 where our great host was nice enough to wait up for us to let us in. We were so glad we were there!

We got some rest so that on Thursday we could go enjoy Inverness