I'm back from a wonderfull weekend in beautiful Dublin ("Baile Átha Cliath"), met a lot of nice people and had a lot of fun there :-)
Friday and Saturday, I spent most time going from one Pub to the next - mostly around Temple Bar - and tasting a lot of Irish Beer ...
The weather was absolutely awesome and so on Sunday, I did some sightseeing, walked around in the park and then finally found myself in another nice pub drinking
even more Guineess and other Irish beers. I had to wake up really early on Monday morning, my plane was supposed to leave at 7:00 am - but somehow I still managed
to miss it - it wasn't even that late, just about 6:40 am when I arrived at the airport, but they already closed checkin and I wasn't allowed to board anymore :-(
However, Air Lingus is really a very cool airline - they allowed me to change my ticket by just paying the fare difference plus a small fee. Unfortunately, the second flight on that day was already completely booked out as well as the 7:00 am one on the next morning.
So at about 6:55 am on Monday, when I realized that I was stuck in Ireland for another 34 hours, I decided to see more of this beautiful country and rented a car. It turned out that driving on the wrong side of the road wasn't even that complicated at all and the Irish people are really very nice and helpful - thanks a lot again for helping me out when I got stuck with a flat tire somewhere in the middle of nowhere, with nothing but cows and sheep around !
Galway and Cork were both really nice and Galway has some beautiful beaches. Unfortunately, it was very cold and rainy when I left Germany, so I didn't even think about swimming and didn't pack anything - so I just walked around the beach a little bit. I finally arrived at Cork late at night and was very happy to find a pub which was still open and they were also playing live music there :-)
The next day, I got up very early and started driving back to Dublin - I almost made it to the airport, just another 15 kilometers and plenty of time left - when I got stuck in a really bad traffic jam. For the first two hours, nothing was moving at all - I could have walked to the airport in that time, but I had to return that rental car ... - and then it started moving very slowly. I lost over 3 hours in that jam and when I finally arrived at the airport at 4:55 pm, I didn't even bother going to the checkin counter (my flight was supposed to leave at 5:00 pm) but run upstairs to the airport bar and just made it in time.
When I arrived, I saw my airplane already being pulled away from the gate and slowly moving towards the runway .... so I quickly ordered and when it took off, I waved goodbye with a Guinness in my hand ;-)
As I already said, Air Lingus is a really cool airline - changing my ticket a second time wasn't any problem at all and I got the 7:00 am flight the next morning.