Ireland: Day 1 – Friday, June 29, 2007

I traveled from Frankfurt Hahn to Dublin by plane. RyanAir has great prices, but I had to forego sleep for a night since there is no early morning train from Ulm to Frankfurt. I would of course catch a few winks on the bus to Hahn and on the plane. My initial experience was a bit dampened by Bus Eireann, whose website allowed me to buy a ticket for a route that apparently doesn’t exist (from the airport to my destination). I wound up buying a ticket for the 747 Dublin Express city bus from the airport to the bus terminal for 6 euro. At the terminal the bus driver told me he did not issue tickets even though my printed online ticket said to take it directly to the driver. So I was sent to the ticket window. The brightly red-haired and red-freckled agent told me to tell the bus driver to change his route to Dublin Airport so he could print the ticket. I went back to the driver, who informed me that he “did not print tickets when the station is open.” Again sent to the ticket window, I asked the agent to go tell the driver what he had told me. After getting three additional people involved, including radioing people for a Dublin Airport route number, and considering buying another ticket, one of the workers in a bright yellow vest coaxed the bus driver into just letting me go. As the bus door was shutting he was telling me, “You just go on and we’ll get your account all settled for ya now.” I am very happy that someone there had my feelings in mind.

I took several pictures of the beautiful Irish landscape along the route. It was an insanely long route, taking several detours to pick up people in each city and town that we neared. After about four hours I was in Sligo. From the bus station I walked to the Eden Hill hostel along Adelaine, Temple, Mail Coach, and Pearse roads. I passed Market Yard, which I remembered from the Internet as having a bike shop called Flannery’s Bikes, so I stopped in to check it out. Here I saw my first Feeney business: Feeney’s Garden Center. It is next door to Flannery’s. I inquired as to the price of a bike rental, and was told they didn’t have any bikes in right now, but if I came back the next day he could see about getting me a mountain bike from somewhere else for 50 euro/week. Since this was the same price as the bike rental at Eden Hill, I decided to just go ahead and get the one from Eden Hill. I also unexpectedly passed the tourist center, which contained the Sligo County Genealogy and Heritage Center, so I took a note of their opening hours.

I found out that there is no early bus line from Sligo to Dublin so I decided I would have to forego sleep once again and take the last bus from Sligo the night before my plane back to Germany. Thus it was 90 euro to stay six nights at Eden Hill. I spent the late afternoon biking around Sligo, even all the way up to IT Sligo just so I knew where it was. I returned by foot in the evening since the bike did not have a headlamp and apparently you need one by law here. I had hoped to find people my age partying it up somewhere, but I found none. A few went to the Cinemas but the rest seemed to just be heading home. I could find only people older than I filling the bars that dotted the streets with names like “Connolly’s” and “O’Conner’s.”