Oh, This is Why People Don't Go to Ireland in the Winter

And just like that, my vacation is over. So how was it? Well, it had its ups and downs and I think what I'll do is split the story into two posts for absolutely no real reason. Deal with it. Wow, why am I so abusive? I have like 3 people who read this thing and you'd think I'd be nicer to them.

Our flight out to Dublin on Thursday (Jan. 7) was due to leave Logan at 6:10 or something and so being the good lil' doobies that we are, the Wiff and I got to the airport at just after 3 pm. Neither one of us thought to check to see that the flight was going to leave on time since the weather in Boston was clear and sunny. Yea, that may be so but in Dublin it was snowing so the plane was delayed. Our new departure time was 8:30. Crap. Ok, we now have 5 and a half hours to kill. Let's go sit in the terminal and watch people walk by! And that's pretty much what we did.

Then the flight was delayed again. And again. Finally at about 9:30 we were allowed to board and we took off at about 10:15 pm. Boy, that sucked but whatever! We're on vacation bitches! Dublin here we come! I didn't sleep on the plane as my usual position for sleep is not sitting upright with my knees getting crushed as a baby screams nearby while some dude shares his H1N1 with everyone around him. Good thing the air in here is totally recycled. Oh good, the baby just shit itself. Awesome, only 6 more hours to go.

When we land in Dublin I got my first sight of the "terrible weather" that had crippled the airport and caused so many delays in and out of the airport. They had received 5 centimeters of snow. Do you know how much that is in inches? I do. I looked that shit up. It's just under 2 inches. Really Ireland? You can't handle 2 inches (hee, is that the other side of the "Irish curse"...ahem, sorry)? After customs, baggage claim and a cab ride we got to our hotel at 11:45 am on Friday the 8th. All we wanted to do was have a nice warm shower and maybe take a nap. Check-in was at 3 pm but we were told by our travel agent that since it's the off-season, most likely the room will be ready earlier than that. Nope. That was totally not true. The woman behind the counter was not moved at all by our whimpering and said that we could not check-in early. We asked if they could watch our bags for us while we decided what to do with ourselves for the next 3 hours and they said they would ... for 3 euro. Oh, fuck you.

After paying the 3 euro (shutup), the Wiff and I tried to come to a decision about how to kill the time. The main problem is that we were both so goddamn tired by this point that we ended up just hanging out and napping in the lobby of the hotel. We paid 3 euro for nothing is what I'm getting at here. We had thought about just exploring the immediate area around our hotel but did I mention the snow? Let me explain: in Dublin they DO NOT PLOW the streets. Nor do they shovel the sidewalks. Oh, but surely they must treat the surfaces, otherwise the whole city would become a skating rink within a few hours right? No, they have not invested in salt and have never heard of ice-melting chemicals. They even have a shortage of  "grit". What is grit? Grit is fucking dirt with rocks in. That's all. No, seriously. Ireland doesn't have enough dirt and rocks. Navigating around the city in the snow is a very risky proposition indeed. The local news kept going on and on about how dangerous it was and would show this video of a dude wiping out while walking down a street in the city. Over and over they'd show him. Walk, walk, walk, slip! BLAMMO! And then they'd cut back to the studio and some concerned news anchor lady would say "Hope he's all right". Oh, I'm sure he's fine. He only bounced his skull off the stone sidewalk once.



The Wiff went back up to the front desk to basically beg to be let into our room and they finally allowed us in at around 1:45 pm. We gathered up our shit and headed up to the spacious and luxurious suite they had prepared for us. That would be sarcasm by they way. The Russel Court Hotel is in a Georgian-style building and in serious need of updating. I pressed the button to call the elevator and when the door finally opened we were greeted by the tiniest lift ever. It was so tiny that we couldn't fit both us and our bags inside (we each had one large suitcase and one small carry-on). The Wiff said she'd just walk up (suckah!) and even though our room was on the 3rd floor, she managed to beat the elevator (I think one of the hamsters used to raise the car died when I was halfway up or something). We get to our room and it's pathetic. There was a ratty, old love seat that converted into a sleeper (seriously), a shitty TV from the early 90's and a dumpy bed. Whatevs, I need a shower.

Guess what (chicken butt)? No hot water. That's right. None. Fuck me. The Wiff calls the front desk and there's no answer. She decides to go downstairs to ask about the hot water and the woman at the front desk says "Yea, we haven't had hot water since yesterday. The pipes are frozen and the water pressure is really low." Ok, great. We decide to "freshen up" somewhat with the I-cannot-stress-enough-just-how-fucking-ice-cold-it-is water and take a nap. About an hour into the nap the fire alarm goes off. Twice. Each time for about 15 seconds. There is no announcement as to whether it is a legitimate alarm or a test or whatever, just two alarms and then silence. So we chose to ignore them. Luckily, the hotel was not actually on fire. We napped until about 6 pm and then went downstairs to the grab some food at the hotel restaurant.

Because of the smoking ban (similar to that in the U.S.), there is no smoking inside buildings. The way that most large clubs and hotels with bars have gotten around this is to have a "beer garden". This is basically just a courtyard outside where people can smoke and drink. This is also where we had to go to order our food. It was about 27 degrees out there and the bartender we ordered from had a big Russian-style hat on. We ordered our food and a couple of Guinness (first ones of the trip) and went to find a place to sit down. The bartender had given us one of those pager things and since there really wasn't a place to sit in the club area (and there was no way I was going to wait outside in the beer garden) we made our way back to the lobby of the hotel itself. The music at this bar was a bizarre mix. It'd switch from Frank Sinatra to some crazy techno dance song to Elton John to The Cure and then an obscure reggae song. I don't know if it was just someone's iPod on shuffle or what but that's the impression I got. Plus, it was really frickin' loud. No one needs to hear "Sad Songs Say So Much" at maximum volume.

After about 20 minutes the pager had still not gone off and we figured that perhaps they had forgotten about us (the whole hotel gave us the impression that no one was in charge). So the Wiff bravely volunteered to go check on the situation. You may have gotten the impression by reading this entry that the Wiff is in charge of communication and organization. She is. If it were left up to me, we would have just continued to sit in the lobby complaining for the remainder of the evening. She came back a few minutes later with our food. Apparently the range on the pager things does not extend more than 15 feet. Blah, blah, blah we had our food and drink sitting in the lobby all by ourselves. Outside it continued to snow and the Irish people continued to not shovel it.

After dinner we both decided that we were still too spent to try to venture out on the town that night so we went back up to our room to watch TV (I personally love checking out TV in foreign countries. It rules). There was still no hot water. In fact there was no water coming out of the hot tap at all. The sink was one of those old school types with separate taps for cold and hot water. It's called a mixing valve people, look into it. We watched the national news and that's where we found out just how ill-equipped the entire country is to deal with snow. They don't get much snow in Ireland and usually the small amount they do get doesn't hang around for very long. However, this was turning out to be the coldest, wettest winter in a generation. That's me and my amazing timing.

Our hotel was on Harcourt St. and that's where a lot of the nightclubs are. I didn't know this (although it does mention it on the hotel's website...I guess I didn't check that). Starting at 11 pm there was a constant "thump thump thump" of dance music drilling its way into my skull. But I was still pretty tired from traveling and such so I was able to go to sleep. At 3:30 am the club let out and hundreds of very drunk people spilled out onto the snow covered streets. Right under our hotel window they all decided to have a snowball fight. And scream. And yell. I lived in Allston for a while and I thought dealing with drunk kids running up and down the street was bad. Holy shit was I wrong. The Allston drunks are pikers compared to these people. Did you know when white people get really drunk they yell "WHOOOOOOOOO-HOOO!!" a whole hell of a lot? I thought that was just an American drunk white guy thing but it appears to be more universal than I had imagined. I looked over at the Wiff and said "This is the worst hotel ever". I was not wrong.



After a good hour or so of drunken assholes screaming outside our not-inexpensive hotel room (did I mention that said hotel room had no hot water? 'cuz it totally didn't have any hot water), they finally dispersed. I'd like to say that they all left because the police (or Garda, pronounced "GAR-dee" or "use-less") told them all to fuck off and go home but that is untrue. I think they left because they were out there for so long they started to sober up in the cold. This would all repeat the next night except louder and longer (the above video is from the next night, Saturday. I didn't capture the largest part of the snowball fight because I was so furious that I could not get out of bed). 

On Saturday we did get a chance to walk around the city and check out the scene. Unfortunately I had what I can only describe as a panic attack during our outing (I think it was a panic attack anyway. I have no idea what the hell it was. I certainly was stressed). I started to not feel well and I got all sweaty (what's up ladies?). We decided to head back. About halfway back I started to feel better so we went into a pub called the Auld Dubliner in the Temple Bar area. It was one of those places that when you open the door, everyone turns to look at you. Luckily there was only 5 people in the place including the two bartenders. We found a couple of seats at the bar and ordered a couple of pints. That was the extent of our interaction with the bartenders. Usually the best place to sit is at the bar in my opinion because you can chat with the people around you and the bartenders themselves. Not so much here. We sat and drank our drinks all the while sort of amazed at how unwelcome we felt. When we finished one of the bartenders came over and I assumed that he'd offer us another but he just grabbed our glasses, never once making eye contact. We left.

We ended up at a much better pub called O'Donoghue's on Suffolk St. We had a late lunch and another pint since it was a nice mellow vibe there. That evening the snow started to really come down and blow around and since neither of us was hungry we did what we do best on a Saturday night: Stay in and watch bad TV. That night in addition to the late evening/early morning wake-up call from the drunk jerks in the street we were also treated to the fire alarm going off a couple of times. Thank god we were leaving the next day. And no, we never did get any hot water in Dublin. By Sunday morning we both were so cranky and irritable (neither one of us had had a nice relaxing shower since Thursday morning) that when one of the hotel staff asked us how our stay was, we just let him have it. He apologized up and down and even went so far as to try to find us a place to have a shower (he failed on that front) but it didn't matter. We were leaving Dublin and hoping that Kinsale would be better. We needed to salvage this vacation.

Next time: Kinsale and Galway. Will it be better? Will we be able to wash our junk? Will we get to sleep through the night? Will driving on the opposite side of the road totally freak me out? These questions and more will be answered! How exciting for you!