10bastards

We discovered the bad part of leaving it until the night before to book flights - they were double the price - still very reasonable though. The bus into the city from the airport was pretty interesting, we sat next to a genial Irish man who had been partaking in a wee bit of the whiskey me thinks. Add to that the fact that our bus driver seemed to have a death wish and we were pretty psyched to actually get off the bus alive.

The first night went without a hitch and when we finally awoke we decided to leave a night early and get started driving around the north coast. Shelley went to try to get the money that I'd payed voluntarily to the hostel for the next night back. She was told that only the price of one bed could be refunded! We decided to stay then which actually worked out pretty well. We organised the next three legs of our trip and got our washing done.

Shelley decided it was my turn to drive. We picked up our Peugeot (automatic, of course!) and I started to look forward to heading into some bendy tight Irish roads. The route we took was breathtaking. I started to doubt the worthiness of much of our traveling in the UK (apart from the Lakes District and Scotland) but this drive is an absolute cracker. We found it ridiculously easy to find a place to stay on the coast. This mightn't seem strange, but in the UK, most of the hostels in the towns we ended up in had closed for winter.

We took our return trip in a roundabout way, going to the small town of Ardboe. This might seem a bit random (it is really), but a wonderful lady I work with is always raving about this town and a pub in it. Shelley was a bit taken aback I think, because I just drove up to a home of someone my workmate had told me to visit. We were invited in without bother, stayed for a couple of hours, then headed to the local for a few pints. Bud (the lady of the house) picked us up and took us to her friend Bernadette's place. Christmas takes on a different dimension in the colder climes I think, and Bernadette's house was a fantastic example. She had a lit nativity scene in her front yard, and every surface seemed to have a Christmas theme. We had food and drink crammed down our throats until we thought we'd burst. Bud took us home around midnight and shared a bed so that we had a place to stay. I was blown away by their kindness to someone they had never met. I can't begin to imagine how much I owe them for such unselfishness. I can see why my workmate keeps the people of Ardboe so close to her heart.

We left Ardboe as the sun rose (around twenty past eight) in order to get our hire car back by ten a.m. We got the car back without a hitch (much to my surprise) to the drop-off point in the centre of Belfast. It was then only a short walk to the bus station and off to Dublin. It was all going well, we found the departure point of the bus, and were ready and waiting for it to arrive. A bus from another company turned up in the bay we were waiting at and we waved as we watched it leave. I hopped around nervously for about ten minutes after the scheduled departure of our bus until I decided to ask a staff member if it was late. It wasn't. Turned out the bus we watched leave was the one we were waiting for. We were told a different company and a different route number! On the up side though, even though we had to wait for another hour, we had a ripper toasted sandwich during our wait.

After settling in to our hostel, we headed off to the Temple Bar district of Dublin for a feed and my first Guinness in the Republic of Ireland. Looking at price lists, we clued on to the fact that finding a meal and a pint for twelve aussie dollars in Temple Bar wasn't going to happen. A pint is ten dollars. Hurts me to my soul that does. We retreated in disgrace to our hostel and found that the area we are in is all priced pretty much the same, due to the number of tourists in the area.

Due to the amount of time we spent in the UK, we have to up and leave for the continent before our holiday runs out of time! This is going to leave Ireland a place that I'm not going to experience to the full. We had planned to go to Cork and to Blarney castle on the morrow, but again we are going to be short of time. It's an eight hour round trip by bus to Cork and we're looking at further travel time to Blarney. To do that we need and extra day, which isn't going to happen now that we've booked our flights. At least I know that I can come back.

Poor Shelley seems to have been plagued all our trip. As well as having a nasty reaction to bed bug bites, she's picked up a cold. This is to go along with her upset stomach and sore back from her backpack. At least it won't be long until Christmas and a well deserved rest.