To Ireland

Another longish travel day. Part of me is telling myself I need to get over my dislike of flying so that I can get from A to B much quicker. The other part says enjoy the journey.
I’m currently on the Irish Ferries ship Ulysses. We are still about an hour from Dublin.

I took the train from Euston station to Holyhead. That was an interesting trip although I missed the most interesting part! A lot of people had reserved seats (as did I). When I got to my seat I found a family sitting there. It turned out they had reservations next to me, across the aisle and across the table. I sat in their seat across the aisle and I had a very chatty Irish lady (Margaret) opposite me. She was very clear in telling me we were in a quiet carriage and once we got moving people weren’t allowed to speak. If your phone rang you had to take it in the corridor. I was quite happy with this until we reached Crewe. Some people got on there who kept on talking. That was the sign for everyone to start talking and so I heard a lot of the Margaret’s history. Due to the way we were seated I found it hard to look out the window and take photos without being rude. The last part of the journey was definitely the most interesting. The weather was getting wild. Some of the summer holiday places we passed looked quite forlorn in the wind and rain.
As we approached Bangor Margaret started packing up and getting organised. At one point she asked me if I was going to get ready. I think it quite stressed her out that I wasn’t standing at the door 10 minutes before we pulled into Holyhead.
We were an hour late getting into Holyhead. The trip should have been 9:10-12:50 but it was 9:15-1pm. By this stage I was infected by Margaret’s anxiety and joined the rush to het from the station to the port checkin (a short walk). Once there we found out due to the rough weather the boat was only just getting in and we would be an hour late boarding. So I stood in line for an hour before getting a boarding pass and climbing onto a bus to be driven into the ship. At no time was I asked for any ID. Apparently no one cares who leaves the country. I don’t know if there will be any passport control in Dublin.

Once on the boat I upgraded to club class which gave me a nice seat, good view and free snacks. Surprisingly the voyage hasn’t been rough at all. The boat is big and meant to be very stable but I do think things have calmed as well. In the bus we had to take to get to the boat I seemed to be surrounded by people who’d done the crossing before and were dreading it plus crossings by their other boat Swift were cancelled today. The Stenaline boat which was due to leave 20 mins before us was running 4 1/2 hours late and hadn’t come in by the time we left. A lot of those passengers transferred onto this boat.

Sitting down especially it seems quite calm. Fortunately I haven’t experienced any sea sickness. I did nap for a bit otherwise just read my book.

I had decided to take a taxi from the port to my hotel as there were only two choices - taxi or bus that drops you at one of three places. Turns out there was only one choice as there were no taxis. I was told to get off at the second stop which was the city centre. My phone had 1% battery and no service. A security guard showed me where I could catch a taxi and I was soon at my hotel. By this time it was 9pm. So it took me 13 hours to get from hotel to hotel. Fortunately they do room service here so I had a sandwich and am now ready for bed.Read more