Thursday, 24th July                   DUBLIN

Robyn writes: Today was moving day; we said goodbye to Paris and hello to Dublin.

The alarm went off hideously early this morning at 6am (5am Ireland time, actually 4am if you take out the Daylight Saving!) We had packed last night so all we had to do was get dressed and throw in the last minute items, and we were out looking for breakfast just after 6.30. McDonald's, our first port of call, wasn't open and none of the local cafes were but luckily the bakery across the road was, so we grabbed a bottle of juice each and a pastry and headed for the bus. Unfortunately we then discovered that the OrlyBus only goes to the other airport, not Charles De Gaulle which we needed, so Plan B was the RER Railway system. Two tickets cost us 19 Euros, and we were soon on the platform waiting for the 6.58. It took us about 40 minutes to get out there, then we hopped onto the shuttle which took us to Terminal 1.

Then we started the interesting exercise of getting on the plane. We knew that Aer Lingus have a 20kg limit and that our bags would be a bit over, and had tried to buy extra kilos online, but it wouldn't let us. So we'd made sure to get there more than two hours ahead of time which the internet site told us would be enough time to purchase extra weight. We weighed our bags - mine was 24 kilos and Lex's about 23. He pulled a lot of the electrical cords, hard drive etc out of his bag and put them into his backpack and we headed for the check-in counter, figuring at least we'd only have to pay excess weight on one bag now. Amazingly, the girl on the counter didn't seem at all worried! Lex's bag came in at 19.9kg and she just put it all through for us and said nothing about extra payment. We scurried out of there very quickly in case she changed her mind!

Then we had to go through security etc, so we joined the line in the terminal. It hardly moved at all in 10 minutes. I went wandering to check things out and noticed the next gate was empty. I showed the bloke there my boarding pass and he said yes, that it was fine for us to go through there! So we abandoned the huge line (they are all probably still there) and got straight through to the top storey where we went through the scanners and finally made it to our gate. Well, we thought so - our boarding pass said Gate 13 and there was a choice of 12, 12B and 14...in the end, they announced that we were actually boarding through 12 anyway so the superstitious need not have worried! Charles De Gaulle is one of the most confusing airports we've been through - you really need lots and lots of time to find where you need to go.

Finally, we were on our plane and had a nice comfortable and quick flight over to Dublin. We were down on the ground by 11 Dublin time and caught a taxi to the pub where we were picking up the key to our unit. The taxi driver was very friendly and chatty and speedy and I think only went through one red light that I saw, but we made it in one piece for 27 Euros and had soon picked up the keys and walked the block up to our unit. It's on the first floor of a renovated set of units and has one nice big bedroom, lounge, a decent bathroom and a tiny but fairly well equipped kitchen. It's very centrally located only about two blocks from the post office, and we noticed the tram line is only a block up too. We headed out to the nearby supermarkets to get some groceries for lunch and the next few days. Dublin is having beautiful sunny summer weather at the moment - 26 yesterday and it felt close to that today as well. The locals are in ecstasy.

Lex in front of our unit (that's our bedroom window behind him)

We were both fairly shattered after the Paris rush, late nights and early mornings, so we both had naps this afternoon and I put on a load of washing. It was a nice lazy afternoon, just what we needed. It's so nice to have room again, space to cook and a washing machine! Lex has taken advantage of the reasonably good internet access here to do a few computer downloads as well.

 The Liffey

 Both of us at the famous Ha'penny Bridge

Time: about 8.30pm!

After tea (a nice chicken and noodle stirfry with LOTS of vegetables!) we went for a walk into the city at eight o'clock - still broad daylight. We enjoyed exploring the neighbourhood and walked down to the Liffey. It's now quarter to ten and it's still not dark - the eternal day goes on! At least we have good thick curtains. Am dreaming of a sleepin in the morning before we go out to explore Dublin properly.