What started out as a slow morning turned into a bit of a race to the train by the end. I got up and worked a bit and caught up on some things on my computer. After getting the girls up and warning them to get packed while we were out, Rob, Barbara and I walked over to the train station to pick up our tickets. Unfortunately, I made the mistake of wearing my Birkenstocks, and my shins were killing me by the time we got to the train station.
We printed the tickets off from the machine with no problem. On the way home, Barbara stopped at the gift shop while I ran home to get the girls ready to go. They were ready, so we got ourselves and our bags out of the apartment and down to Daybreak and Gourmet Tart to pick up some snacks for the train.
The six car train was mostly empty, and we had eight seats for ourselves around two tables. The onboard wi-fi worked fairly well, but Rob and the girls played games and did homework. Once we arrived in Dublin, we found our way to the tram and figured out how to use the machine to buy tickets for the tram. After we got to our stop, Barbara and I walked up to the leasing office while Rob and the girls waited in a Starbucks. The sidewalks and streets were dense with throngs of people, many of whom were wearing blue, kilts and waving Scottish flags – did we miss our stop? Had we landed in Glasgow and not Dublin? (We eventually figured out that there was a big championship soccer game between Ireland and Scotland in Dublin this weekend.)
The leasing office was a little tricky to find and there was a complication with the credit card, but finally we had the keys and were on our way back down the crowded sidewalk towards Rob and the girls. We found our way into the “Blood Clinic” – which was the entrance to the building and up to the right floor using our fob. The apartment itself is in the exact center of town and has a lovely view; all of the rooms are nice and bright. However the internet didn’t work and there were many little things that didn’t work right.
Rob waited for the repair guy to fix the internet (but he couldn’t fix it) while Barbara, Camille and I went to Forbidden Planet (closed), to look for a geocache on Ha’Penny Bridge (blocked by someone asking for money) and the grocery store. We had dinner at the apartment. All the noise from all the soccer revelers down on the street kept us from sleeping well, unfortunately.
