We talk here in the public haunt of men

Alright, so now we're onto Friday!  We spent a grand majority of the morning (like an hour and a half after breakfast and packing to leave the hostel) trying to figure out the really annoying bus system in Dublin.  We couldn't find a simple bus map that would tell us the names of the bus stations or show the routes or anything.  You had to already know the names of the stops that you wanted to get to, and there wasn't a good map anywhere.  We finally gave up on it when even the tourist information couldn't help us, and we decided that we would pay two euros extra each to get a taxi.  Wasn't worth the time.

We spent the morning wandering around the first part of Dublin we had stumbled into.  If you remember, the first night that we were there everything was closed because it was past five o'clock, so this time we wandered through all of the shops.  You know, souvenir-y shopping.  Although I promise it wasn't all souvenirs!  We went into the really interesting looking shops too.  And we went and bought food from Tesco to be our dinner, as we would be on the train during dinner time.

Anyway, lunch time finally rolled around, so we set off to find a pub.  We found one that looked okay called O'Shea's.  It was connected to a hotel, but it seemed legit.  The food was pretty good too.  There was a stag party going on in the next room over at the bar, so that was kind of funny as well.  And we found sauce labeled HP, which naturally means Harry Potter sauce!

Come on, it's totally Harry Potter!  What else would it be?

Amy and I in the pub!

The funny thing about Ireland is that the food that they're most known for is their alcohol, and for obvious reasons we weren't going to get any of that.  So an Irish pub was about as close as we could get to the experience.  It was tons of fun.

After that we hailed a taxi and headed back to the dock to catch our ferry and then our trains.  We had some time in Wales in between the ferry and the train, so we went out on this bridge and took pictures and admired the absolutely gorgeous blue water.  I've decided that Wales is my favorite.  It was so beautiful.  And then we drove through Wales on the train, and it was so peaceful and beautiful.  I loved it, and took a bunch of pictures of Wales through the window.  Made me SO glad that I went.

Oh yeah!  We ate our fabulous dinner too!  Baguettes, and cheese, and apples.  It was freaking delicious.  Probably one of the best dinners that I've had in a long time.

Doesn't it look good?

And thus ended the excursion to Ireland.  Oh, although funny story.  For those of you who were attentive to my previous posts, you'll remember that Amy didn't have her passport with her, and we were trying to get into the UK.  So when we got off the ferry we knew that we were going to have to go through Customs and try to work it out.  So we're all praying really hard, and were rewarded with a miracle!  That day the border control decided to just check for suspicious activity rather than check passports.  So we walked off the ferry, grabbed our luggage, and struck up a conversation about chocolate or something equally frivolous as we waltzed right past the customs officials.  When we made it to the lobby in Wales Amy just about collapsed.  Okay, so we all did.  It was such a relief!  (For the record, she DID have a valid passport and everything, it was simply in London rather than with us.  So it's not like we were being really illegal.)

Anyway, when we got to London it was back on the Tube and then home.  Seriously getting back on the Tube felt like walking into your house after you've been on vacation for a long time.  London's becoming home for now.