Well, the weekend started with the same issue as these past few days: electricity! There was none (of course) and my room was pretty darn cold and I wanted to get going. So I knocked on Toni’s door and asked if he had any more cards and that it was either his or Elena’s turn to buy one. He’s like “I’m too tired right now. I can give you some money and you can buy some.” Not really what I like doing first thing in the morning (go outside and buy power cards) but I said whatever and went outside. Well, there was no one there to buy a card from! Suckers! I waited in the cold in my PJ and coat for 10 minutes but then went back to bed (felt warm now that I’d been outside of course) and tried again an hour later. Luckilu the security guard was there then and tada, there was light!
So after that I got ready and took the bus to the city centre. I started exloring town north of the river and honestly wasn’t too impressed. Kind of shabby looking. Found an Asian store (actually two, this is the second one) and I finally found sushi rice and nori. Sushi doesn’t seem to have had its break-through here yet :(. So now I can make some myself. Yay! I also found a Polish store and they had a good deal of German products like Roibush tea so I was happy, too. Still puzzles me why there aren’t that many tea flavors here.
At the check-out of that store, my Mom called and as I was walking down the streets she actually traced me in her guide book and read historical facts to me. That’s what I call a tour guide! They’re visiting me in March so she’s looking at tour guides now. 🙂
Anyways, I continued walking around Dublin, passing Christ Church Cathedral, St. Patrick’s Church, Dublin Castle, City Hall and then got to St. Stephen’s Green Shopping Centre where I browsed the stores and then had a tiny Quiznos sub (think 5cm for 4,50euro…) and a yummy juice. From there I walked back to the North via Grafton street and then took my bus back home. Nice day!
Sunday I woke up pretty early again because the EEM (Evil-Electricity-Meter) beeped again around 8am. After turning over once more I got up and head breakfast. Sunday started out owing up to its name – it was nice and sunny outside. So I decided to enjoy the sun and get out of the no-power-place and I took the DART (like an S Bahn/ metro train) to Howth. It’s a small peninsula at the north of Dublin Bay and it had looked really pretty when I flew over it a week ago. About 15 minutes after I got there, it started raining (as they say here: If you can see the mountains it’s gonna rain. If you can’t see the mountains it’s raining.) and I didn’t bring my umbrella seeing that I didn’t know about that saying yet. Oh well. It wasn’t too bad and I had a hat so that was good. Howth was beautiful and more like how I had Ireland imagined to be like. I walked once around the peninsula, which took me 4.5 hours and were roughly 10km. Yikes! Well worth the pain in my legs though with beautiful cliffs and pretty views. Thankfully it didn’t rain the entire time I was there!! 😉 By the time I was back at the station the sun was actually back out but I was so exhausted that I took the train back to town. Good thing I did because once there I still had to take the bus to my suburb and that took 2 hours(!!!) (normall 15-30 minutes) because some rugby game had been going on downtown and traffic was horrendous.
Back at my place I just cooked a quick green thai curry and then went to bed oh and talked to Michaellyn who called before I was sleeping.
As for the living situation, I looked at some online adds for rooms and I might actually move. It’s just so stupid with the electriciy and other places don’t have that but everything else I need. Plus it’s not like my roommates and I are best friends and will do much stuff together so hopefully I’ll be able to find something nicer with cool people. We’ll see. Need to talk to my colleague if it’s possible.
Flickr is still not working properly from here but hopefully I’ll have access tonight from my place. Going to try and at least upload the EEM for your viewing pleasure though. 😉 This is it: