Ireland

We, me and my girl friend Gina, visited Dublin this weekend. As I didnt have a free Internet connection in the hotel room, Id had to wait to get back home to write about my travel.

The journey began early on Friday morning; we woke up at 4.30, hurried ourselves through breakfast, packed the car and drove to the airport. The flight was at 7.10, an inhuman hour, but the price was cheap enough to justify the time.

Tax-free shopping lost its charm a few years ago, and now airports seem to be in par with high street shops thus we headed almost directly to SAS lounge. I got my gold card last year, and this was the second flight with it Probably there wont be a gold card next year.

SAS lounges are excellent, as they are spacious, well designed and quiet. They offer also fruits and bread, not just booze and cookies. I also managed to change our seats from the back of the plane to the front with the help of the SAS lounge manager.

The lounge had a splendid view to the runways, and my girl friend was really excited about the cars and planes. Maybe shes interested in engineering?

The flight was uneventful. Gina got an own seat, and dozed off after being carried on the corridor for a while. The plane landed in Cork International Airport a nd we took a taxi to motorway network 10 minutes from the airport not that bad.

Our hotel was located in the middle of Dublin . The idea was to pay a little bit more for the accommodation and avoid taxis . It worked really well. We had to use the taxi only twice, when going to and fro airport.

The Clarion Hotel was a luxurious one, big rooms, friendly stuff and an excellent breakfast buffet that included Voss water

Dublin was hot and humid, temperatures hovering around 30 Centigrade. We explored a little bit of the city for shops, cafs and restaurants.

I had also business to attend, but the lack of free Internet kept the most of the other parts of the day open. One would expect to have free Internet connection in a four star hotel I could exchange one of the three phones in the room (one in the bathroom, as required by some criteria for getting four stars) to Internet any given moment.

We met also friends that live in Dublin and southern Ireland. Really loved to chat with them and now we are waiting for them to visit London in August.

On Thursday there was a three hours black out in the vicinity of our hotel. Most of the shops and restaurants were closed, so we ended up to a Japanese grease spot that cannot be recommended to anyone my stomach still hurts when thinking about the lunch aftermath.

Fortunately, the black out was fixed before we had to leave otherwise we would have needed to go without the luxuries of electricity.

We got to Dublin International airport easily, fed Gina, checked in and went through the security checks easily. Having a beautiful gal along with you seems to ease your way.

Dublin International airport not exactly a business airport. Finding SAS lounge was a sort of an adventure. The main waiting hall didnt have any sign of any lounge. We had to ask for the directions, and then found out that the lounges are near the gates, in separate buildings.

We took the bus to the gates building and after a bit searching finally found a miniscule lounge with free drinks and cookies

The hot weather exploded into a thunderstorm that forced several planes to land in Luton, and it was unsure whether Blue1 plane could land on that night. The weather got gradually better, the plane landed and left after one hour delay. We were back in home at 3.00 (AM) on Monday morning, exhausted but happy.