What really happened in Dublin on day 1

Ok, now that I have some roots down here and things are starting to go well, I can tell you what really happened when we first arrived in Dublin. Let me just paint the picture for you:

During the flight, the person in the seat ahead of me kept complaining that I was kicking her seat until Julie stood up for me and told her off. I couldn't really do anything about it, my long legs would hit the back of her seat if I moved even slightly. After the first few complaints I tried my best to sit absolutely still during the 5 hour flight which was very tough.

When we land in Dublin, we see not really a metropolis but rather cow fields all around the airport. The weather is very grey and its raining.

Inside the airport, it was very dingy as well. Every airport I have every been in has always been pretty nice. They typically have very high ceilings and sparkling clean floors - not Dublin airport. The customs agent desks had old wood paneling obviously installed in the early 1970s and seriously needed to be updated.

The airport was packed tight with people. There was not nearly enough room for all those people. We got our bags and made our way through the people to the taxi stands. It was pouring rain at this point. We were still excited tourists at this point despite the fact that we hadn't slept much and were very tired.

We got into a van taxi and loaded our many bags in. We struck up a conversation with the taxi driver who seemed nice. Despite the fact that the driver seemed nice, his conversation kept turning to how shitty Dublin is. Once we got into Dublin city center, the traffic was bumper to bumper and not moving very fast at all. I asked him if it was like this often and he said every day. He talked about topics like where the bad parts of town are and how bad the bus system was.

He dropped us off at our hostel and we checked in. We had 8 bags between the 2 of us. We found out that our room was on the 4th floor and there was no elevator. We lugged 2 of the bags ups the stairs. 1 bag was 5o pounds, the other was 70 pounds. At about 3 floors up, the handle on the 70 pound bag ripped off. We managed to get those 2 bags all the way to the top, but decided to just lock up the rest of the bags on the main floor in a locker area.

At this point, we were still excited about starting our new life in Dublin. We were both tired and hungry - but still excited. We decided against taking a nap first and opted for getting something to eat first and then nap. I had read that in Ireland, they don't really have restaurants but rather they just had lots of pubs that would serve food (this is just dead wrong - it's exactly like Canada).

So we went to a pub for food. The inside of this pub was exactly something you would expect for a place to get extremely drunk, but not really somewhere you would expect to eat. However, I thought this was just how they did it in Dublin, so we sat down to eat. It was dimly lit, everything was made of wood, and it smelled very much like beer - it was a typical pub really but definitely not a typical restaurant. We got menus and I ordered the Fish, chips, and peas. I was trying to spend as little money as possible because we really didn't have any. The fish and chips I just ordered was pretty expensive in Canadian dollars and I wasn't terribly excited about paying that much - it better be good I thought. If I remember correctly, at this point Julie was starting to get nervous about the whole move. I started assuring her that we would make this work and everything would be fine. I was trying to be strong and supportive, but I was pretty tired myself and didn't have much energy for that.

Then the food arrived. It was typical pub food. This was not restaurant quality food. The peas weren't left in their shell but rather mushed up with a fork or something. I had a few bites. The food was edible but certainly not worth what I just paid for it. At this point I started to cry. In my head I was thinking "What the fuck did I just get myself into". I had a nice, safe, secure life back in Canada and I gave it all up for fucking overpriced, mushy peas. We couldn't very well go back to Canada because we had sold everything and rented our house out. I cried some more and Julie started now to console me.

We decided to go back to the hostel and get some sleep. Our room was tiny but nice. We slept for several hours.

When we woke up, we both felt rested and better but still shaken from the events in the pub. We walked around Dublin for a bit, bought ourselves a mobile phone, and took some pictures. After some time, we were ready to eat again, this time being very careful to select a nice place to eat. We stumbled upon small, modern, and attractive Italian restaurant. This was clearly a restaurant and not a pub. The food was still expensive, but looked good. I ordered the pasta with bolognaise sauce. When it arrived and I tasted it, it was absolutely amazing - possibly the best pasta in my life. We decided to celebrate and order 2 glasses of wine. From that moment on, everything turned around... and the rest is history.

It's amazing what some sleep and good food can do :)

Note: I cried just writing this blog post. Both of the above meals were life changing events.