20 °C Hello from Sunny Dublin (and yeah that is borderline oxymoronic -but true).
Out of the 5 days I've been in town, about 3 have been moderately sunny so it was a pleasant welcome to this rainy city. Though the presence of the sunshine doesn't exactly equate to warmth. Summer began here just over a week ago and the locals are lapping it up. When I arrived on Wednesday, the thermometer must have hit about 20. So everyone seems to be cruising round in shorts and t-shirts like it's 40 degrees! Meanwhile, Belinda is shivering away in a jumper and jeans. Having come from a month in Asia, the weather was a bit of a shock - especially when you have in mind that it is SUMMER!
Dublin is really a very attractive city, and contrary to popular notions that it is packed with drunken yobbos, I haven't found it all that bad - so far. But then I've been going to bed pretty early. Well as early as humanly possible considering it is still light outside at 10.30 at night!!! And then the sun peeks its way out at around 4am. It's very disconcerting. I have no concept of what the time is here - aside from what my tummy tells me. Considering how expensive the food is here, my tummy tries not to tell me too much at all at the moment, but hey you gotta eat! If you use the McEconomic scale, Dublin is on par with the whole of Switzerland and London. One large Big Mac meal will set you back EUR5.90!!! Basically that's the same for everything here. Same price as in Aussie dollars but it's Euro. So a cup of coffee is EUR2.50, and a sandwich is at least €3 etc. The only cheap thing I've found so far is internet access at 60c an hour if you go early enough!
Something peculiar to Dublin is the overly peroxided ladies that hang about on the street corners of the inner city suburbs selling fruit from prams! I would never have thought to set up shop from the back of a pram, but it's not such a bad idea. Considering the number of young ladies with babies here, I guess it makes sense. Whereas the chicky babes at home with small babies would tend to be in their early 30s, there are many girls who can't be more than early 20s carting their bubs around in prams. Must be the long cold winters!
So what have I been up to......not a lot. Aside from orienting myself (I have a shocking sense of direction as some of you will know - I get lost walking back to my hotel in the middle of the night in pretty much every place I go to), and finding all the good places to eat and shop (got a new
handbag, now need some new shoes), I've been searching for a place to live. At the moment I'm staying with Jill, a friend from uni in town, but will need to find something permanent before I start work, hopefully next week if everything goes to plans. I still have some paperwork to do that I wasn't told about before I left home so it may be 2 weeks before I start working to teach these Irish folk how to speak properly!!!
I've heard people go on and on about the Irish accent and had expected to have far more difficulties but so far haven 't had too many problems. But then, I'm in the centre of town. I suspect that when I start working, I'll have an interesting time. Where I'll be working is meant to have a pretty thick accent...so we'll see how it goes.
I spent yesterday in Kilkenny, purported to be the most beautiful medieval town in Ireland. It is definately a lovely place to spend a day, and I enjoyed visiting the Kilkenny Castle (nice but "same same" as all the other jolly ones I've been to!), St Canice's Cathedral and tower, Domincan Black Abbey, Rothe House etc etc.....but best of all, found a delightful creperie, which has divine bruschetta and the ONLY Spanish Hot Chocolate in Ireland!!! Apparently the locals aren't big fans but it really is divine. I'm definitely going back to Kilkenny just to eat at this place! Any of you folks who make it over here.....we'll do lunch here. Really top stuff.
My last few days in Thailand were really great - though a tad on the lazy side. I met up with the American-Israeli guys I met snorkelling on Ko Phi Phi and spent the time with them - eating, shopping, eating (hey last chance for good banana smoothies), and more shopping - oh and running away from persistent tuk-tuk drivers and food vendors ("I'll get fat" seems to work). Phuket wasn't such a bad place either. I'd never seen myself going there because of its rep as a glitzy getaway for honeymooners and fat German tourists (not to forget those grotesque middle-aged men salivating over 14 yr old local girls). All of that is there...but being the off-season and with people staying at home because of SARs/terrorism, it was a little on the quiet side. Instead of having the beach chocker-block with portly half-naked people sunning themselves on deckchairs, you had a beach of half-empty deckchairs - and not so many half-naked people. Plenty of beach vendors were still in force however trying to sell sarongs, ice-creams, drinks, fruit etc etc. Burying your face in whatever book you are reading when you see them coming seems to work though - even if you are very obvious about it!!
Not much planned for the next few days. I need to do the house-hunting thing, and might even squeeze in a bit of sightseeing too - considering i'm in a rather groovy city and all that....When going out for dinner the other night, I walked kinda straight past Trinity College without even batting an eyelid - hey I was tired after flying and waiting for nearly 24hrs!! Shame shame....
Anyway, it is very nice to be in a big city again with hot water (forgotten how nice a hot shower was), flushing toilets and a relatively organised public transport system...at least I hope so! Though I will definitely miss the steamy Asian weather, beautiful beaches, cheap tasty food, hassle and groovy people I met along the way.
Gotta go - more house hunting to do.
Ciao
Love Belinda
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