Dublin/Belfast

Chapter 5

Sightseeing in Dublin and Belfast
on 26th July 2004

Scribe and Photo by Website Kang
Date: 31-08-2004

The weather was fine and the flight was very smooth, we touched the airport of Dublin 10 mins earlier. It was 8.00 am. It never occurred in our mind that the republic of Ireland was a separate country from England. We had to go through the immmigration check point and our passports were stamped. the currency they used was Euro dollar. One thing we cold not understand was that the passport was never stamped out when we went to Belfast which belonged to Northen Ireland later. Anyway, we had to change some Euro dollars in the airport before we could move around. We took a bus to the city center. We did not book an accommodation this time because we were told by the locals that there were many hotels. hostels, and guest houses near the bus station.

We reached the city center half an hour later, and we dicided to put up in Holyhead Guest house with twin sharing room, because we felt that the hostel was too crowded and the security lockers were not so good and convenient.

We went to the bank to change some more Euro dollars, and again we overchanged than what was necessary as we thought Belfast was using Euro dollars too. but it wasn't!

We boarded a city tour bus which took us to quite a number of interesting places of which one of them was the Guiness Stout factory. The factory was established in 1759 and occupied a 65 acres of land in the town center. Dublin is the home to Guiness Stout. We went to a park called Pheonix Park where there was a zoo claimed to be the second largest in Europe.

It was a very busy city and everywhere were crowded with people, tourists as well as locals.

Later part of the evening, we went ahead to buy tickets for Belfast and also booked two nights in Belfast by phone. Thanks to the long daylight, and we were able to have enough time to roam around in the city. Things seemed to go well. The next morning, we were served breakfast in our room, which was quite a luxury.

We took a bus to Belfast, and the scenery on the way was as beautiful, and we reached Belfast at midday. It was quite a distance from the hostel, the Linen House, we booked in, so we called a taxi to fetch us there. The taxi man was quite talkative, and we suggested him to pay Malaysia a visit since he was so curious about where we came from.

We had to put up in Belfast for two nights and the city was a bit different from Dublin in the sense it was more run down and not so clean compared to other cities so far we had covered. After 7.00 pm in the evening, the whole city was dead, hardly one could find a single soul around. In fact, Sing Sung and Drug buster when out having dinner at a Burger King restaurant, were stalked by strangers such that a police officer came to warn them. the stalking appeared in the CCTV screen and the police officer on patrol was informed and came to warn them. They quickly retuned to the hostel. I missed this scene as I was not well and stayed back in the hostel to cook myself some soupy meal.

During the day, the city was equally busy, lots of people, rushing here and there. We took our own sweet time to tour around the city the next day. We checked out with the bus station and found out that they did provide service to cross the ferry and straight to go to Inverness. We felt much relief as this would save us trouble to chart out our bus route to Inverness.

We bought the tickets and got to leave the hostel by 6.00 am early next morning, and had to reach the bus station by 6.30am. This was important as we could not afford to miss the bus and so the ferry boat.