Here is a summary of public transport in Ireland. Besides the transporate I am going to mention here, there is a coach called Bus Eireann or long-distance trains in Ireland. However, the transport that I am going to mention here are only those I used in real life or I considered using, which are mainly transports in Dublin.
If you seem to use public transport in Dublin , you should probably count how many times you may use public transport, and how much you may need to pay during your stay in Dublin, beforehand.
Leap cards are used by the locals, and it’s available among the travellers too.
When I travelled to Dublin in 2019, I was visiting places where an Irish movie “Sing Street” was shot, and I had some other visits, so I bought a Leap card valid for 72 hours. It cost 16 EUR.
This time on the trip to Ireland in JUne, 2022, I bought a 24-hour Leap for 8 EUR. Only I bought, who knew that the frequency of using public transport is high enough. My boyfriend didn’t buy a Leap card.
2. App you can use in Dublin
When you move around by using public transport in Dublin, the following apps may be useful.
a. Dublin bus app
The UI is antique, and it looks the same as in 2016, and yet it does still work.
However, you shouldn’t trust any timetables basically. It’s always delayed. (Or maybe I should say it doesn’t follow the timetables. It looks like no one cares about the time as the Dublin buses’s speed is too fast.)
On the other hand, it’s still useful when the Journey Plan app below doesn’t suggest any good routes, or when you look for bus numbers.
b. Journey Plan app
The Journey Plan app is more recent. The UI is up-to-date, and yet the suggestion isn’t that good. However, basically it’s an OK level, so not problematic.
If you are a bit worried, compare the suggestions from the app and from Google maps.
3.Public transport in Dublin
Since Dublin’s public transport has some characteristics, I summarise in this section.
a. How to take a Dublin bus
On a Dublin bus, they accept only Leap or cash. If you don’t know this, you may need to use a five-euro note or even more than that for one drive.
This is because they don’t give changes.
If you want to take a Dublin bus, you need to show that you want to get on when the bus is approaching you. Otherwise they don’t stop in front of you. Also if there is no one to take on, the Dublin buses just keep going without stopping. (Plus the speed is very fast. 😂)
When riding on the Dublin bus, and tell the driver where you want to go, they tell you how much it costs. It cost 2.60 EUR from Dublin airport to the city centre of Dublin (as of June in 2022).
My boyfriend, who doesn’t like buses, doesn’t use buses even in Tallinn. Besides, since it was a different country, he had no idea how to get on the Dublin bus. (Of course.) Plus, since I brought a bunch of coins, I paid for him, and he got on the Dublin bus by using my Leap. Therefore, everything went smoothly.
Since buses require passengers a faster speed than any other public transport, it might be profound for beginners. However, since you can calculate fares in advance, if the environment is well enough, you can prepare cash, particularly coins. (I did before going to Ireland as an exchange student. Thanks to it, everything went smoothly.)
On the Dublin bus, you need to get on from the front door, and get off from the back door. Don’t mix this.
b. How to take Luas
Luas means “fast” in Irish. However the real speed is as “fast” as bicycles. 😂 It’s basically a tram, and yet it’s easy to take one.
There is a Leap card-reading machine at Luas stops, so Leap card holders just need to read the Leap cards there. If it makes a sound, it’s OK.
Given that you need to buy a ticket, you can buy one at a Luas stop. You can pay by card, so no cash is needed.
You can get on and off at any door.
In Dublin, you should buy a Luas ticket. It’s really random to get inspected. Unless you have any tickets, you will be kicked out from Luas. (I’m not sure if they really charge fines. This point is the same as Tallinn.)
c. How to take DART
DART is a Dublin train. You can use it when you go to Dún Laoghaire. Aviva Stadium’s nearest stop/station was DART. Given that you travel around only in the centre of Dublin, you may not need to use it.
Since my boyfriend didn’t need to go anywhere by DART, I don’t know how to buy tickets at a DART station…
By the way, some Dublin buses have USB charging ports, and yet DART doesn’t have any. (At that time, my phone charge was very low, and I wished there had been.)
4. Taxis
We used taxis in Dublin too. I usually don’t use taxis wherever I am. However, we had no choice but to use a taxi at some point in Dublin.
a. Bolt
Bolt is from Estonia, and yet we could use it in Ireland too. Therefore I didn’t need to download any other taxi app additionally ,which was a good point. (Eventually I did though.)
In Estonia, when taking Bolt, the fare is shown in the app, and when getting off, the price never goes high or lower than that. If it shows 5 EUR, the final price is 5 UER.
However, in Ireland, even if you used Bolt, they used a metre system, so the app showed the price range.
In fact, when we used the Bolt taxi, it was more expensive than the shown price range.
Because of that, I thought “I probably won’t want to use Bolt again even if I need to use a taxi again.”
b. FREE NOW
FREE NOW seems to be used in other countries including Ireland. However, it’s not available in Estonia, so even though you can download the app, you can’t use it in Estonia.
FREE NOW was like Bolt Ireland, and it showed the price range. FREE NOW’s price range was more trustable. I eventually paid the cost between the actual price range.
Therefore, from my experience, if you want to use a taxi in Ireland, perhaps FREE NOW is better than Bolt.
By the way, when I lived in Dublin in 2015 and 2016, Uber was the only option. Has Uber gone anymore? Anyways, in the first place, I deleted the Uber app from my phone… (a long time ago.)
5. GoCar
GoCar is an Irish car sharing service. There are different cars. Although it’s not that common in general in Ireland, AT is available there too.
Due to this fact, we planned to use GoCar to travel to Ireland, and yet I found that the driver’s verification might take 48 hours one week before the trip. Because of my occupation, Compliance verifies sometimes manually, so if there are lots of registrations, it would take a longer time than it’s written there, I thought. Therefore, I immediately shared that information with my boyfriend, but
he registered on the first day in Ireland…
I thought:
You didn’t check my message properly.
😂
Of course it took more than 48 hours to get verified.
(I thought like that because I was able to guess thanks to my occupation. However, from a pure customer’s perspective, taking more than 48 hours may be unexpectable. In the web page, they mention “We try to verify within 48 hours”. My friend A’s husband also said “They verify within 48 hours”, so they cannot guess. Of course people tend to take it as written because in any page it was written “it may take more than 48 hours”.)
Eventually the car rental was cheaper, and the trip style was that we decided where to go right before going, and this is why the car rental cost more cheaply. If you have a determined destination, and the route is determined too, then car sharing may be cheaper in my opinion.
★Summary
When going to Irelna, I wanted to take aDublin bus at least once, so I was happy to take one. As for Luas, it is easy for travellers, but boring for Dublin bus fans. 😂 This is just because the Dublin buses have two floors! (In the Continent, long buses are more common, but the two-floor buses are more fun to ride, and I think it needs less space.)
In summer 2022 when my boyfriend and I were travelling, it was post COVID, and since the number of travellers increased (or got back to normal?), every airport in Europe was crazily crowded. (Tallinn airport wasn’t an exception, but it seemed to be better than Dublin airport or Manchester airport according to news.) Therefore I decided to write a post about how Dublin airport actually was.
First of all, June is generally a vacation season in Europe. In Japan it’s the rainy season, so there may not be many tourists, but in Europe many people take longer vacation days from their annual leave between May and August to travel.
Ireland is one of the European countries where many people go, and of course people mainly go to Dublin, therefore Dublin airport gets very busy and crowded too. For this reason, the airport is more congested than any other season in general.
However, it was a post-COVID time.
According to my Dublin friend F, people forgot the rules for the cabin baggage, and some of them have actually brought big whole bottles of shampoo. Because of such passengers, it seemed to take time for security checks. But this is merely one of the assumptive reasons, and yet mine is:
People were not able to travel owing to COVID, as per which the security checkers were laid off, but then now it’s post COVID, and they need more employees at security checks.
I don’t think airlines and airports increase the number of flights all at once, so I believe we cannot say it is because of the increase of the flight numbers.
In our case, perhaps because our flight was in the morning, the situation was much better than I was worried. However, I thought if it had been a flight in the afternoon, the situation might have been chaotic.
2. From Dublin city centre to Dublin airport
Our plane was planned to depart at 9.30 in the morning Usually, personally I go to the airport 2 hours before the departure, and yet I received an email from Ryanair that the passengers should be at the airport 2.5 hours, and 3.5 hours before the departure if the passengers have check in luggages.
I talked about this to my Japanese friend A’s husband in Dublin, he said he would have been at the airport at 6 am, i.e. 3.5 hours beforehand.
I wondered, and decided to be there at around 6.30 am.
From the accommodation in Dublin to Dublin airport I personally wanted to take the Dublin bus, but we decided to take a taxi the previous night. (I didn’t think about anything, but my boyfriend thought the taxi fee would be cheaper in the morning than when we saw.)
Then, when I was about to call a taxi, he asked me the price, I said “It says maximum 27 EUR.” and he said “Let’s take a bus…”
Man, it’s too late. 😂
If I had known the situation in the airport, I might have been able to change the plan, but the situation was unknown until we arrived there. Since I need to get a visa check at Ryanair and it’s too late to depart by taking a bus, I called a taxi.
As for the taxi, there will be a different article.
It took approximately 10 to 15 minutes by taxi from the centre to Dublin airport.
3. Ryanair’s visa check
When going back from Ireland to Estonia, of course I needed a visa check.
At Ryanair’s check in counter in Dublin airport, there was only one counter for the visa check. Another five or six counters were used for those who have check-in luggages. Even at past 6.30 am, the queue was already organised, and therefore the visa check-in counter was also used for check-in luggages. However, it was meant to be for a visa check, the Ryanair staff let me though prioritised.
Probably because this time we went to the check in counter together, the Ryanair staff gave me two boarding passes.
He looked a bit happy.
I’m happy too.
By the way, the paper that I printed out just in case was not necessary at all as they don’t give us a stamp anymore. There is no point in bringing the printed stuff.
4. Security check at Dublin airport
We were waiting for the security check for quite a while but less than one hour. It took more time than Tallinn airport, and yet we didn’t need to worry about our flight.
However, it took around one hour in total for the visa check and security check eventually.
5. Security check isn’t the only one you would queue in Dublin airport
At Dublin airport, the security check is not the only one you may queue for.
On arriving at Dublin airport, the airport staff asked us if we came for the departure, and then guided us to the specific lane. (The route to the checkin counter was the same as before though. It was a bit irritating that we had to be guided.)
In addition to this, cafes in Dublin airport also had long queues.
I craved coffee, and I was hungry, so I decided to buy something at a cafe near our flight’s gate. On Ryanair’s flight, you can get a cup of coffee (and maybe other non-alcoholic drinks) for 3 EUR, so the price was almost the same. It depends on you whether you buy at the airport or Ryanair’s plane.
★Summary
Eventually, when we arrived at the flight gate, we had enough time so we have no idea how crowded afterwards at the security check in Dublin airport it was. Maybe there was a longer queue. It could happen at that time. Therefore our decision to go to Dublin airport earlier was right.
We arrived in Tallinn at 3.30 pm, and we both were exhausted.
Before the trip, I had seen a post on Facebook thatTallinn airport was crazily crowded, but in real life it was not like that actually. However, I thought we should perhaps be more careful in other cities (especially popular cities in summer).
Being at the airport earlier is better than having a too tight schedule or being late.
Even when you have been on a diet, on a trip you want to eat something you want to try, don’t you. Of course we were not able to afford eating at restaurants and cafes for every meal, but still we enjoyed many restaurants and cafes in Ireland. In this article I include some restaurants where you can eat something Irish!
First of all, let’s talk about Dublin! Dublin is a capital city in Ireland like Tallinn in Estonia, but Dublin is much more urban and you can have a lot of international cuisines.
When I travel from Estonia, I want to eat something not only local but also international which is scarcely available in Estonia and with better quality (because it is not tasty and/or it does not exist in Estonia)…
a. Boojum
Boojum is an Irish burrito chain restaurant. My first burrito in my life was Boojum in Dublin. I still don’t know what super authentic burrito is, and it seems real Mexican burrito seems to be different, but still I like Boojum’s burrito as it tastes good. In Estonia, it’s not easy to get a burrito. (The portion isn’t enough, or personally I’m not satisfied with the contents of a burrito in Estonia.)
We happened to find a Boojum restaurant in Smithfield where we were supposed to stay, so we went there. In Boojum, you can customise your burrito. However, it might be difficult if you don’t know how to do it. (My boyfriend seemed to be struggling a bit, and when I ordered a burrito at Boojum for the first time, I struggled too.) Since it is a chain restaurant, they handle orders really fast.
He had never eaten burrito before, and wanted to compare it with kebab. 😂
The result: kebab is better. 😂
I like both.
They also have a menu called burrito bowl, and yet be careful as the portion is bigger than burritos. (In Estonia the portion of a burrito bowl was better than a burrito at a Mexican restaurant…)
They had light breakfast as well as sandwiches. The sandwiches were hot. The portion was big enough. It was tasty though.
They have teas and coffees but it seemed they didn’t have many kinds of juice. I don’t basically drink juice, but he drinks. It appeared to be only juice with some kinds of vitamins.
As for teas, they have both English and Irish breakfast teas! Of course I chose the Irish one. You don’t need to tell them to give you a jar (?) of milk as they for sure give you with tea. By the way, they serve you tea in a pot, so maybe you can ask for two cups to share? Although It is normal to get served in a pot even for one person in Ireland and Scotland…
I searched some cafes in advance, and on Tuesday morning in Dublin, we went to a nice-looking one (as he didn’t care, I chose there), it was full. The cafe seemed to be small and popular, so we took plan B.
But, it was full too?
What on earth are they doing on Tuesday morning?
I had only 2 plans for breakfast, so I was a bit disappointed, but I immediately searched again on site, and we went to La Pausa Caffe.
Four days in a row, we had Irish breakfast at B&Bs, and he liked it, so he was about to order one again there. However, eventually he chose sandwiches, saying
I understand that feeling. When it comes to something local, I want to eat the authentic one too.
By the way, later he asked my friend A’s husband and friend F if they have Irish breakfast every day. I felt like he had been asking Japanese people if we eat sushi every day, so I enjoyed that moment. (This is because he barely knew Ireland at that time.)
Unfortunately they have Irish breakfast only a few times a year.
I get it, we can’t eat that heavy stuff as a breakfast for 365 days. 😂
The breakfast at La Pausa Caffe was good, but since I have temporomandibular joint dysfunction, I had to close my mouth manually once. It happens regularly, so I know how to fix it and wasn’t surprised, but it bothered me, yes. My boyfriend was surprised. 😂
At La Pausa Caffe you can have bagels too. I chose a bagel. I didn’t have any energy to customise it, hence I selected simply the one with salmon, cream cheese and vegetables. When I came to Dublin in 2019, although it was a different place I had a bagel too.
This is because in Estonia bagels are not sold one by one, and it is not popular at all. LaterI found you can eat bagel sandwiches at a cafe called Ruby in Tallinn. However, I would say that is the only place you can get a bagel not in a dozen or anything. On the other hand Estonia’s neighbour – in Latvia bagels appear to be more frequently eaten. Perhaps due to such cultural differences (More Jewish are in Latvia), he had no idea what bagels were. That actually surprised me as Latvia is just over there for us.
The con in my opinion is that they served me a cup of coffee even before the meal. I wanted it after the meal. However, the overall was good.
In 2016 when I lived in Dublin, I came here some times with my friends. Before going there, suddenly I asked my boyfriend “Do you know Irish coffee!?” and he was like what-the-heck-is-that.
For those who have no idea what Irish coffee is, it is
coffee with Irish whiskey.
It’s alcohol.
Therefore, at Vice Coffee Inc when we were about to order something, I asked him “Do you want to try Irish coffee?”, and he immediately said yes.
Irish coffee
I don’t know the price of Irish coffee at Vice Coffeeto Inc as it was on my friend F, but in general Irish coffee is often a bit less than twice as expensive as normal coffee.
Spiked hot chocolate
That day I tried an unfamiliar drink too: spiked hot chocolate. It’s not just hot chocolate but with Bailey’s (cream liquor)!
Both Irish coffee and spiked hot chocolate tasted good.
If you are not tolerant to strong alcohol or not a fan of coffee, the latter one might be better. Both are eventually alcohol though.
e. White Rabbit
A Korean restaurant that my friend F recommended to my boyfriend who wanted to eat something Korean is White Rabbit. It was also because White Rabbit is close to Vice Coffee Inc.
It was more like a canteen rather than a fancy restaurant, and it seemed partially the menu was a Japanese fusion.
We chose a bowl with sweet and spicy pork, vegetables, and egg, which were on rice. At White Rabbit you can choose a sauce, and we both chose gochujang.
We liked it!
It cost around 20 EUR for two.
f. Pho Kim
We went to Pho Kim with my friend A and her husband.
As per his request to have some Vietnamese cuisine, they selected a Vietnamese restaurant which was their favourite too. The only tasty Vietnamese restaurant that I know in Tallinn is Pho bar. I like pho, and Pho Bar’s pho is good, but they don’t have many varieties.
Since we had a late lunch, we ordered Vietnamese spring rolls and something like an omelette.
We (friend A, her husband and I) thought it’s called spring rolls nevertheless it is deeply friend or raw, but technically speaking it’s officially called summer roll or Vietnamese spring roll. (This is said to be because the fried one is Chinese.)
In Germany where my boyfriend once lived they call it summer roll.
We found this fact because he said “Is this spring roll summer roll? In Germany they called it summer rolls.”
I personally want to go to Pho Kim again, and want to try other dishes. They have lots of menus, and the restaurant appeared to be run by a Vietnamese person.
g. Fibber Magees
The place we spent the last night on this trip was a bar called Fibber Magees. My friend told my boyfriend who loves metal, and since we promised to go for pints a the last night, we went there.
He ordered Guinness twice. He said he loved it.
I had long-hoped Swmithwick’s! It’s red ale. While travelling in west Ireland, I couldn’t buy it as one can… On the final night, I finally could enjoy it! I chose cider for the second pint, but I thought I should have chosen Smithwich’s again or Guinness.
Fibber Magees also had Asahi beer (Japanese beer)!!
If you love metal, you should probably try this bar.
2. Galway
In Galway we went to only two restaurant and cafe! Our accommodation served as breakfast, and I bought microwave meals for one of the two nights.
a. Donnelly’s of Barna Restaurant & Bar
Donnelly’s of Barna Restaurant & Bar is a gastro pub 2 minutes by car from our accommodation in Barna in Galway. (A gastro pub is like a restaurant and bar.)
Perhaps since Barna is a countryside town, there were lots of old people, but they were having fun.
Looking at the menu, we said
“This is expensive…”
However, I thought that in the first place the price range was normal for me, and wanted to pay for his meal as he drove a car a lot, so we stayed there.
I ordered fish and chips, and he ordered a burger with Irish beef. His burger was slightly more inexpensive. The price to dine out in Ireland was as expensive as to do in Sweden. (That is, it costs 1.5 times more expensive than Estonia.)
I like both fish and chips, but I’m not a fan of fish in fish and chips. I ordered it to enjoy malt vinegar. It’s very tasty to add malt vinegar on chips with salt.
In Estonia you can also get fish and chips, and bars have them as part of their menus, but they never have malt vinegar. That’s why I want to have it, and therefore I was satisfied.
I planned somewhere else, but since it seemed they offeufrred only takeaways, we went to Galway Cakery Café in the shopping centre.
At Galway Cakery Café we had an Italian menu. My boyfriend chose calzone, and I ordered panini with goat cheese and vegetables. It didn’t taste like goat cheese… It was good enough though.
In my case I had possibilities to choose cheese. The other option was perhaps feta cheese. (I don’t remember that much…)
3. Mayo
In Mayo we went to only two restaurant and cafe too. This is because on the first day we had sandwiches that the owner of the accommodation in Barna, Galway, for lunch, our B&B in Mayo served us breakfast, and we got food at a supermarket in Castlebar (Mayo’s county town) for one of the two evenings.
a. Maple Chinese Restaurant (Take away)
In Ballinrobe where we stayed in Mayo, there was nothing. We planned to get food at a supermarket, but the kitchen in our accommodation was not for guests, so we were not allowed to use it. In the dining room, there was no microwave either, so I chose Maple Chinese Restaurant where we still didn’t have to pay a lot.
I still don’t know why he selected Chinese, and he found one, but it offered only takeaway. Later we found another Chinese restaurant which was Maple Chinese Restaurant, and we went to the town of Ballinrobe.
However, they closed the restaurant, and they accepted only takeaway orders, so we eventually brought food to the accommodation.
They had lots of dishes though. He chose Chow Mein. I chose the one which I could select the main and the side for, hence I chose the stir fried beef and vegetables in a spicy way, and rice as a side dish. (Of course they offered chips as a side dish! It didn’t cost extra if the order was rice or chips, but it seemed to cost extra if you choose friend rice, etc.)
The price was the same as what he chose, but
“Yours looks tastier than mine…”
😂
The portion was quite big. I was satisfied with two thirds. He ate the rest. I’m glad he enjoyed it.
Personally it was okay, but since we didn’t have many options to get food itself, I don’t make any complaints. 😂
b. Supermacs
Supermacs is Irish McDonald’s. (Of course there are original McDonald’s in Ireland.) This is not in the west or County Mayo but on O’Connell street in Dublin, too.
I have known Supermacs since I lived in Dublin, but I’m not a huge fan of burgers or fast foods in the first place, so I had never been there, whilst my boyfriend loves burgers and sometimes goes to Estonian (or Blatic) McDonald’s – Hesburger. (However he’s not fat at all. How envious it is that he doesn’t have to care about it.) Therefore, as he had wanted to go to Supermac since I talked about Supermacs, we went to Supermacs in Castlebar for lunch.
Beides, he loves bacon. As I expected, he chose a burger with bacon. (Once he was told that the cholesterol level was high, and since then he less frequently had bacon.) I didn’t have anything specifically I wanted to try, so I ordered the cheese burger meal.
If it’s McDonald’s in Japan, we can choose vegetable-fruit mix juice, 100% fruit juice, coffee or tea, and yet in Supermacs they offer only sparkling soft drinks and water.
Me? I chose a bottle of water.
Although you may think “You should have chosen something else cos water costs nothing!”, I don’t like the afterwards of fullness in my stomach with fizzy drinks, so water was fine for me. (Plus, it was helpful for us to hydrate ourselves with that water. Everything was alright.)
The burgers were, even though he chose a big one, small unlike the images, so you don’t need to worry about the size and portions. Therefore, the cheese burger that looked normal size in the image was smaller than I thought so I wasn’t full at all.
In terms of chips, I do prefer McDonald’s. especially the saltiness. For some reason, Supermacs served a tiny bag of salt for chips separately. (They will give you even if you don’t ask.)
Overall I like McDonald’s better in my opinion.
★Summary
When I lived in my hometown, as a family trip, I went to Cairns in Australia and Guam in the US. Although we stayed in the hotels, we always had bread, cheese and fruits that we bought for breakfast beforehand at a local supermarket to enjoy local foods and get them like a local, instead of hotel meals, which was my mum’s idea. I was a teenager at that time, and I was interested in different cultures and felt different and special when it comes to non-Japanese foods which are different from Japanese products even though they were normal in local and normally available in local supermarkets. Therefore I liked this style of travelling.
Because of this, on this trip to Ireland, though I wondered if we would keep going to cafes and restaurants all the time or if we could get food in supermarkets as this was the first time to travel abroad with him, it was something middle of those styles, so I was comfortable. (I was like “Oh you are also okay with supermarkets’ ham and cheese only.”) Since I felt comfortable, I was rather glad that there was no impression that the “Random foods from a supermarket are fine” mentality was not frugal. (My main reason is surely financial. It’s too much in everything if I eat out every meal.)
Even on a trip with friends, the way of thinking about how to spend money is important, so it was good that ours are similar. I thought my solo trip was too frugal though.
In this article Included Irish foods and drinks, and yet those are just part of Irish culinary culture. There are more Irish dishes. Since I love Ireland too much, I want to cook Irish (or Guiness) stew or coddle now. 😂😂 It’s such a pity that I can’t get Irish sausages in Estonia though…
After enjoying Galway and Mayo in Ireland, my boyfriend and I came back to Dublin. We randomly or accidentally set the date and time of the 27th of June, 2022 to return the rented car in Dublin, hence we had this kind of schedule, but honestly I agreed with him and actually wanted to stay in those counties more…
However, I was still personally satisfied in Dublin because I could see my friends as well as sightseeing. By the way, in addition, it seemed to be noisier in Dublin than before. In this article I summarised what we did in Dublin.
1. Harry Styles’s Love on Tour 2022 at Aviva Stadium
The original reason why I decided to go to Ireland was because of Harry Styles’s concert.
Further originally, Harry Styles’s concert that I was supposed to go to was planned to be held in 2020, and it was 2019 when I bought a ticket. It was planned in Oslo, Norway in May, 2020. However, owing to COVID, his tour in Europe had been postponed without any new dates determined, and eventually everything was cancelled. Instead, they expanded the tour itself, and made a new list of the tour dates.
Then I found one in Dublin.
“If I go to Harry’s concert, Dublin is the only option!” I thought. In addition, I wanted to go to Northern Ireland, and I invited my boyfriend as I thought it would be more fun if there was any travel companion. Since in Ireland the traffic side is opposite (to Estonia or the US), he wanted to try (to drive there) and agreed to my suggestion. (Of course, I told him “There will be a moment that we will need to do something separately as I will go to the concert” at that time!)
The concert was held on our first day on our trip in Ireland.
When I was an exchange student in Dublin, I went to lots of concerts and gigs in Dublin, and I have watched Gaelic sports live, so including that, I know Croke Park, 3 Arena, The Academy as well as The Olympia Theatre.
This time I went to Aviva Stadium. Aviva Stadium is located a bit far from the centre, and it’s not too simple to access there. Aviva Stadium is gigantic. As a Japanese person, I can tell you Aviva Stadium is as huge as Kyocera Dome.
Unlike Japanese artists’ concerts, non-Japanese artists’ concerts always have opening acts, so if you are not interested in them, (and if you have a selected seat not General Admission) then you can go there later, which shouldn’t be a problem. (The merchandising might be sold out though.)
Until the time I should be at Aviva Stadium, I spent time with my boyfriend, and eventually I didn’t stay at the concert til the end. We were going to sleep at my Japanese friend who I met in Dublin in 2016 (called friend A)’s place, and I felt bad, leaving him alone in an unfamiliar city, so I left Aviva Stadium earlier, but I perfectly enjoyed Harry’s music even at the DART (train) station while waiting for it.
By the way, as for the transport to and from Aviva Stadium, I used Luas (tram) and DART (train). I knew how often I would need to use transport in Dublin before hand, I bought a 24-hour Leap (8 EUR) at Dublin airport beforehand.
While it seems Aviva Stadium is one of the top 10 sightseeing places in Dublin, personally I wouldn’t go there unless there is a concert again. If interested, then maybe you should go there.
2. If you drive a car in Dublin…
On the trip to Ireland in June 2022, we used a car as a main transport, and yet since the flights were to and from Dublin, the beginning and the ending of the trip was in Dublin.
Therefore, the origin of the main trip was Dublin. Dublin is a capital city in Ireland, and though it is not as congested as London, it’s still crowded enough and noisy, and there are lots of cars and buses. Bedies, there is Luas the Dublin tram which is an unfamiliar transport for the Japanese when it comes to driving.
Furthermore, there are a number of traffic lights, and for drivers for sure it’s time-taking.
What is worse, if you encounter drivers who don’t really follow the traffic rules or who are not really good at driving, it’s irritating.
In Dublin the driving progress wasn’t smooth so my boyfriend seemed to have a tendency to get stressed out.
3. Exhaustion and irritability
When we went to Galway from Dublin, the final destination was Barna which was located beside the country roads along the sea, so there was not so much traffic, and it was comfortable, and even if we got tired, we still had some more mental capacity.
However, when we went back to Dublin from Mayo, the situation was the opposite. It takes around three hours on one way both between Dublin – Galway and Mayo – Dublin.
We left our accommodation in Mayo in the morning, heading to Dublin, and we were all good until we entered County Dublin. After driving for a couple of hours, my boyfriend exploded.
What was worse, we wanted to change the route in Waze, but since he was driving, his Waze accepted only voice. However since my English isn’t American English, Waze didn’t recognise my English. Then I was guiding him based on Google maps on my phone, but perhaps because he was not able to check the map with his eyes, he got much more stressed out.
When arriving in Dublin, we still had some more time to check in the accommodation, so we returned the car, and I took him to a cafe, and I told him:
Can you please stop using swear words to me. I don’t care when you use to others, but not to me.
😅
After this, we checked in the accommodation, and I had him take a nap. I knew if he took a nap, he was able to recharge himself physically so he gets better mentally.
However, in general, you should be careful with going to Dublin from somewhere in Ireland. It was daytime during a weekday, and yet there was a lot of traffic, and I repeatedly wished I had been able to take a turn with him if I had been able to drive…
4. Dunnes Store
Dunes Store is a retail chain in Ireland, and you can buy fashion goods, groceries, houseware, and so on. I bought a green turtle neck sweater in 2016 when I lived in Dublin, and it lasted for 4 or 5 years. If it’s a capital town in a county even like Castlebar in Mayo, there appeared to be Dunnes Store even in the countryside. (Not very sure, but there was, in Castlebar.)
I knew there was Tesco (British supermarket chain) in Jervis shopping centre in Dublin, but it was a bit far for us at that time to walk there, so we grabbed something to eat in Dunnes Store. So the purpose of the use of Dunnes Store for us was just to get food. 😂
On the contrary, I personally think Dunnes Store isn’t satisfactory as a supermarket.
If I needed to use a supermarket in Dublin, I would go to Tesco, Lidl, or Aldi. (And when I lived in Dublin, I literally always went to those supermarkets.)
5. First-time meet up in six years
In Dublin, I met my Dublin friend for the first time in six years. I pinged him before travelling but there was no reply, and no answer when I called him on the first day. It seemed he was sick, and after his recovery, he met us.
We talked a lot. In Europe, even if you don’t really have degrees, you can still get some proper jobs, but Ireland seems quite similar to the UK, so he said it was difficult to get a job in a company if a person does not graduate from a university. Also in his case, there was a company which responded to him after he had been waiting for six months. Overall even for the Irish, it’s very difficult to get a job in Ireland (or maybe in Dublin).
In my personal experience, I have had a first interview with a HR person from a company in Manchester, and she indeed asked me what I had done and what I learnt in the university. This is real.
Besides, Ireland is getting more and more expensive. Of course the rent has been increased, and if you live in a shared flat near the centre of Dublin, around 1000 EUR would be gone every month. (I searched.) In addition there are utilities. Even if the salary looks good, depending on an occupation and a company, the whole salary can be gone for only the cost of living.
Since salaries in general don’t give us an opportunity to save money, I thought Dublin might no longer be a place to live in my life. (But maybe it’s okay to live in the suburbs. As repeatedly said, if I have a car.)
It was great to see my friend again. We also asked him one question as my boyfriend was spoken to by homeless people who thought he was Irish multiple times while he was wandering around Dublin on his own. Though I didn’t agree, my friend said
“You don’t look from Dublin but Galway.”
😂
He appeared to be Galwayan.
😂
We were talking in one cafe in Dublin, and yet as for the cafe, there will be a separate article.
6. Churches in Dublin
I’m more like a castle lover than churches whilst there are multiple churches in Dublin. (Based on my bias, Irish castles seem to be located in the middle or the west in Ireland like Glaweay.) We visited three churches, so here is a list of those churches that we attempted to visit.
a. St. George’s Church
St. George’s Church is a church that we coincidentally found while we were looking for a cafe for breakfast in Dublin. My boyfriend constantly said “This is not a church”, and indeed it didn’t look like a church. However, when we looked at the map, it was marked as a “church”, and he said “This is pagan. (Because there are something like Greek letters) this is not Catholic.”
As I googled, St. George’s Church appeared to be a hybrid of Gothic and Greek Revive.
His mum is Cathoilc, but he himself doesn’t like Catholicism as it’s mentally not good (according to him). Also he has rich knowledge about religions. That’s why he was commenting like that.
You can visit St. George’s Church by walking if you stay in the centre of Dublin as this church is located in the Northern part of the city centre.
b. St. Michan’s Church
St. Michan’s Church was a church that I wanted to go to if we had time. There are mummies, and I wanted to see them.
However, when we visited St. Michan’s Church, it was too late to see mummies. We were 30 minutes late. So given that you wish to see mummies at St. Michan’s Church, you should go there earlier maybe.
You can go there by walk in Abbey street to Smithfield (to the west side of Dublin).
c. Christ Church Cathedral
Friend F recommended us to go to Christ Church Cathedral. I’m not sure if I’m just not interested in remembering names or not good at remembering names, but I was like “where the heck is that”, and yet when we arrived at Christ Church Cathedral, I thought
I have come here before.
😂
However, we couldn’t enter again and only the choir members were allowed.
Christ Church Cathedral is located in the south of the city centre of Dublin after crossing the River Liffey, and just beside the main road.
7. Need to print out something?
I wondered if I needed a printed visa check paper for Ryanair’s visa check, so we went to a stationery shop (Kings Stationery) just in case. This shop is also located in the city centre. You can walk there.
However, in order to print a stuff out, I needed to use an incredibly super old computer (with Windows 7) in the shop, and it cost 1 EUR for 10 minutes. We both didn’t have a 1 EUR coin, and the machine didn’t accept smaller coins, so my boyfriend asked the shop owner to exchange, and she did. (We exchange a 2 EUR coin or two 0.50 EUR coins, but if you have only 5 EUR note, then it might be difficult.)
In addition to the old computer, the mouse didn’t work properly either. (It froze frequently.)
Since there was a 10 minute time limit, I rushed myself, and mistakenly printed out an unnecessary part too. However, it cost only 0.10 EUR for two one-side papers in black and white. 😂
I tend to get stressed out when a machine is super slow, so I peson;ally don’t recommend this shop. (Besides, you probably don’t need to have paper stuff for Ryanair’s visa check.)
In this shop, they accepted a card payment only when the total sum is over 5 EUR. This is a different point than Estonia. In Estonia, even if you print something out in a small stationery shop, and the payment is only 0.10 EUR, you can use a card. I was lucky that I had coins (as I knew I would need for Dublin buses).
I googled several places in Dublin, where I might have been able to print out beforehand, and coincidentally King Stationery was located in a walkable distance, so I chose there, but there are more options if you need to print out.
However, there are still lots of machines that accept only coins, hence I would recommend bringing coins anyway.
8. Hello again in a more proper way
We also met friend A and her husband who helped us on the first day again.
My boyfriend said he wanted to have Korean or Vietnamese cuisine, so we went to a Korean restaurant for lunch, and a Vietnamese restaurant when we met them again. (There’ll be a different article about this too.)
Friend A is around five years older than me, and my boyfriend asked me “Isn’t she your ‘Senpai’?”
“Senpai” means students or colleagues usually who are older than you. Sometimes they can be “senpai” even if they are younger than you but if they join your company or enrol in a university earlier, or if you failed yearly admission exams, decided to study more for your ideal school and enrol in in one year or more. Or if you study further like for a master’s degree, and then join a company.
Friend A is none of them, so she’s not “senpai”.
When I was an exchange student in Ireland in 2016, I joined an independent film shooting team as a crew, and we met there. When I visited Dublin in 2019, we went to a cafe with another post crew who is friend K and lives in Dublin now with her husband and son. However, she got COVID after her business trip, so we couldn’t meet. She’s as old as friend A. Since they are not my “senpai” in a company or school, I use the word “friend”. (And I don’t think it’s wrong.)
My boyfriend was always withdrawn in Tallinn, but perhaps because it was a different place, he met my friends without any disgust. (I often want to meet people who I hung out with a lot in the past when I travel to a place where they live now.) I’ve never been a person who wants to meet new people a lot, and yet I rather want to avoid such occasions, so I understood him, but I’m a person who wants to meet old friends a lot.)
9. Metal bar in Dublin recommended by a local
I was wondering if I should have written about this place in an article where I talked about restaurants and cafes in Ireland, but since this place was the only place for both of us just to have pints, I decided to list it here. I included this place in the other article.
As we met my Irish friend F, due to the fact that my boyfriend likes metal, he was asking the demand of metal in Ireland to friend F. Then friend F recommended us Fibber Magees. It was located just across the Vietnamese restaurant that we and friend A and her husband went to.
The prices of alcohol were normal I guess. They had Asahi beer (Japanese beer). We had Guinness, Asashi, Smithwick’s and Bulmer’s (Irish apple cider).
I asked my boyfriend if he liked Fibber Magees, and he said “Normal”, but his face looked happy. 😂
It seems they had many songs that he knew too. (I don’t really know metal. If we talk about music genres, then I prefer (Japanese) rock.) Therefore, if you are a metal fan, maybe you should go there.
★Summary
In this article at some points the stories weren’t really about sightseeing, but I included them as this article’s topic was most suitable for those stories.
Maybe because I lived in Dublin before, I feel Dublin is no longer a bucket list country to travel to, and on the other hand, I still want to visit Dublin because I want to see my friends. I thought maybe it’s a good idea to go to Ireland for a year when I don’t go to Japan (as both countries are pricey).
Although the duration of staying in Estonia is much longer than in Ireland, Irealnd is still my second hometown. Estonia can never be.
When it comes to travelling, accommodations are important of course. Otherwise you will be a homeless traveller. As some of you might already know, I usually use a hostel on my solo trip. This is just because it’s cheap. Sometimes I’m very sensitive to sounds that roomates make, voices and foot sounds by other stayers who come back from clubs and bars in the middle of night when I sleep near the room door, and bathrooms with way less cleanness, but since I want to spend more money on other activities as well as foods, I tend to choose inexpensive accommodations.
On the other hand, my boyfriend needs privacy a lot, and cannot definitely share a bedroom with strangers or other people. For this reason, he didn’t go to his company’s event either.
I have had rough sleep multiple times at airports, and used a shower in Sheremetyevo international airport in Moscow, so I’m not very very serious about this point, or you can say I’m a type of a person who is satisfied with minimum things I can do in a daily life during a trip. Therefore, I was adjustable. (Yes, I adjusted to him, but it wasn’t hard for me at all, and yet rather I felt good because it was more luxurious than usual. I actually thought maybe I should do the same even on my solo trip.)
As written “I adjusted to him” above, when we were talking about accommodations before going to Ireland, he said “a hostel would be good, and it’s cheap”. At that time I thought “?? He can’t share a room with multiple unknown people, but a hostel in a travel destination is fine?”
Then I searched some accommodations in Hostelworld and Booking.com three weeks before the trip, made a list, and asked him to choose one and decide. (This is because I had no idea what was necessary and what was important for him at that time.)
The list included one cheap hotel room, but he chose a hostel called Generator Hostel, where we were required to stay at least two nights.
As we arrived in Dublin, we checked in, entered our room, and saw five beds. Although I booked two beds for the two of us together, it was not like bunk beds were for us but just vacant beds were for us. (I have travelled with a friend from Japan a few times, and we always had one set of bunk beds or our beds were next to one another. Hence it was abnormal for me.)
Then he saw those multiple beds and asked me “This room is only for us, right?”, so I said “It’s a hostel, there are other people.” Then he panicked saying “I can’t sleep here!”
I told him “You mentioned a hostel was fine”, and he said “In the US (where he travelled in the past) a hostel wasn’t like this…!”
I thought:
I bet that was a motel.
After a while he said “I guess what I meant was a motel…”
I thought:
I knew it. 😅
If he was not able to sleep, we could not stay there, so I searched for a temporary accommodation with privacy in Booking.com, but everywhere cost over 300 EUR for one night in Dublin. That was way too expensive just for one night.
However, where we were was Dublin. I gave it a try; I called three friends in Dublin… but no one answered right then. The first one was a friend who said something like his family member or someone had an accommodation in Airbnb a long time ago, so I recalled it. I also messaged him, so I called him again when he replied to me, but nothing was available. The second friend had no responses. (Later he told me he had been sick.) The third one is Japanese, whom I saw again when I travelled to Ireland in 2019. She called me back, and I explained the situation. It was so kind of them – she told me that she can let us stay at their place as her husband’s friends stayed there once too. But only one night. (This was because it was so sudden and happened in the middle of the week. We so appreciated their kindness.)
I asked her to explain to my boyfriend directly on the phone, and she gave us some time to consider. Later I told her that we would like to have stayed at their place.
That day, since I went to a concert, my boyfriend and I had separate activities, and at the end of the day when we met again in the hostel he started saying “I’m too tired… I’m okay with the hostel…”, and yet my friend already prepared a bed for us, so we took a taxi, and headed there.
To be honest, in the plane from Tallinn, I felt “This too smoothly going… there will definitely be something…!”, and indeed it happened. 😅 (I feel something happens whenever I travel.)
On the next day of the stay, both my friend and her husband had to work from home at 9, we promised to leave there by 9.
Whilst I feel we were lucky because we were in Dublin, I reckon “Well I’m blessed with people in the end.” 😂
I’m not sure if we will travel together again, but I will definitely avoid any hostels. 😂
2. Day 2 and 3 (Barna, Galway)
After leaving my friend’s place, we rented a car, and decided on the next destinations and an accommodation in the next destination at a cafe in Dublin. The very first destination was Wicklow, but we just dropped by there, and the final destination of the day was Galway.
We decided to stay at a B&B at the coastal areas in a town in Galway called Barna.
a. Where is Barna?
Barna is located in Galway 15 to 20 minutes by car from the city centre of Galway. It was a B&B, so we stayed in one room in a house for two nights.
From the B&B accommodation we could see the Galway bay, and also the mainland in the opposite direction due to the geography.
It was challenging to find an actual accommodation in Barna, but when we called the owner, she came to the nearest supermarket, and guided us to the accommodation by car.
b. What is “eircode”?
The reason why it was challenging for us to find the house is because we were unable to find the exact place even in a map searching by the address, and we arrived somewhere as a destination which was on the opposite of the road, and the road ended.
When ringing her, she told us “The eircode is in the confirmation email!, but I had no idea what it was even though I have lived in Dublin because it was possible to find places by their addresses like in a regular way. (When we went to my friend’s house, we used the actual address in teh amp.)
Googling what the eircode was, it seemed to be an Ireland-specific thing, and if we enter it in the map, the exact location was shown.
You may wonder “Why didn’t you check the confirmation email”. Although it was me who paid, the email address used was my boyfriend’s, so I had no idea.
c. Seaclusion B&B
The accommodation we stayed in Barna, Galway is called “Seaclusion B&B” which also has a room with a private bathroom. In our room, there was only a double bed and some furniture, and we needed to use a shared bathroom.
In Booking.com the score of the accommodation is pretty high marking 8.7 out of 10. Without a car it would be hard to go and stay there, so I wouldn’t choose it on my usual solo trip in terms of its location, we (both) didn’t care that much how far it was as we rented a car.
This accommodation is a B&B, so you can have a buffet and Irish breakfast in the morning. It was good as the menu slightly changed daily.
In the morning when checking out, the owner asked us where we were going next, and she gave us lunch (sandwiches, jelly and cupcakes). It was really appreciative.
3. Day 4 and 5 (Balinrobe, Mayo)
The next destination after Galway was Westport. It’s a small town in county Mayo. Therefore, I booked one accommodation somewhere around there while staying in Barna.
a. Small mistake in terms of the accommodation location
Westport in county Mayo faces Galway bay, and the B&B we booked was also close to the water area, so we both thought the B&B was in Westport, and yet searching the actual location in the map, we realised the accommodation was near a lake in county Mayo. 😅
We kind of made a mistake, but as we rented a car, it wasn’t a big deal. (However, he as a driver was really tired, of course.)
b.“Journey”
He always uses an app called Waze that shows the traffic information as well even when driving in Estonia, but it seemed that it didn’t work properly in the countryside in Ireland.
On the way to the accommodation, Waze told us to go straight to the one way road which width was for just one car, so went and kept going forward as we were not able to go back, and we encountered
sheep!!!
Besides there were two sheep!!!!
We laughed a lot together. 😂
I knew that it was normal to see sheeps in the west in Ireland, but all the sheep I saw from a car were inside of the fences, so it was so beyond expectation.
Really, I wondered where they came out of. 😂
What was worse, even if our car went forward a bit very slowly, the sheep didn’t care at all. 😂
Perhaps they thought our car was some kind of a huge animal. 😂
My boyfriend was like “Oh my god 😅, what should we do”, but as I can think relatively fast, I said to him “Just a sec,”
“Uwaaaaaaaaa—–!!!”
I screamed and simultaneously was running toward the sheep, and they ran away too.
I dashed so it didn’t last long, and I went back to the car, but then the sheep stopped in front of us again as well. 😅
I opened the car’s window and screamed “waaaa”, but they didn’t seem to be afraid of the voice.
So, I got out of the car, and chased the sheep. 😂
I was unable to keep dashing, so from time to time I was walking, but when I showed myself as if I would start running and chasing them again (I just made foot noises), they escaped. So I repeated this a few times, and finally the road was separated into three directions, and fortunately the sheep went to one of them which we didn’t go to.
Zooks the shephers dog.
In addition, it was showering at that time, so of course I got a bit wet. But it was one of the fun and good memories. 😂
Also I realised again that I don’t have any femininity. 😂
c. Devenish Lodge B&B
After going through the countryside road, we arrived at an accommodation called Devenish Lodge B&B.
There was a gate, and we were wondering about how to enter, so I sank or swam, pushed the gatebell, the gate was just open without any voice.
Then we saw
sheep!!!
The sheep were staring at us (and our car).
That was a funny scene in a way though. 😂
Those sheep seemed to be moved to another field from time to time, and on the second day at Devenish Lodge, the sheep were in the field which we were able to look down from our room windows. (Also their voice was my morning alarm. 😂)
Devenish Lodge was also a B&B, so we could have some breakfast. In this accommodation there were two choices of Irish breakfast: full Irish breakfast or vegetarian breakfast, and during our stays, we both had full Irish breakfast.
As a buffet, there were also some cut fruits and muesli.
Our room was for three people at maximum with a private bathroom. (This was just a coincidence that such a room was available and cheaper than other rooms.) It was spacious, but the TV in our room didn’t work properly at all. In Devenish Lodge, the kitchen was not for guests, so in the room there was an electric kettle, instant coffee, some team bags, and biscuits.
As we were not allowed to use the kitchen, we could not buy microwave meals at a supermarket either. Therefore, we took away some Chinese dishes, and dined with dinnerware in the dining room for breakfast the next morning.
Moreover, there were bottled water which number was the same as the number of people who could stay in a room, and yet when I asked the owner if we could drink water from the bathroom, she said no. However, she had got a good head on her shoulders, and gave us a pitcher of tap water separately. (It was really great as then we didn’t have to buy extra bottled water.)
Devenish Lodge scores 9.2 out of 10 in Booking.com. (Something like a certificate was decorated in the dining room as well.)
However, the location could be problematic, so without a car it would be very hard to go there and stay.
I really felt that a car was so convenient…
4. Day 6 and 7 (City Centre, Dublin)
By 3 pm, on the 27th of June, 2022, we had to return the car in Dublin. After checking out, we immediately headed to Dublin from Devenish Lodge.
The accommodation in Dublin was of course more expensive than Devenish Lodge. (In addition, it was because the accommodation was in the centre of Dublin.) Anyway, it was a private room, he agreed, and I booked it, but later I found that that accommodation was used as student accommodation on regular days.
a.”Student accommodation” for the first time in a while in Ireland
In Ireland you can start living in student accommodation in September, and stay there until the entire academic year ends, but right after that you will be kicked out. It might also depend on accommodations, but during the summer accommodations not in a campus are offered to travellers for temporary stays. (Literally travellers use, and in 2016 when I used Shanowen Square, I needed a place to live as I extended my study-abroad period.)
The best point in the student accommodations in Ireland is that you can have your own bathroom in your room!
Personally this is the biggest pro. In Estonia there is no such a thing.
b. Yugo Kavanagh Court – Student Accommodation
We stayed in a “double room”, but the bed was too small for two people. (I felt it was like a bit wider single bed. My own semi double bed in my flat might have been bigger.) Besides, I always wonder why the beds are so small in Ireland although the Irish (guys) are quite tall. I’m 162 cm, and my boyfriend is much taller than me, so I thought he might not be able to rest enough in a bed that is supposed to be used for resting as the bed’s length was a bit shorter than him.
Yugo Kavanagh Court seemed to be relatively a new building, but as a travel accommodation, it was not satisfactory.
First of all, there was nothing in the kitchen! I saw a few plates and one pan in the dishwasher, but there was no cutlery. Since there were no mags and glasses, we were not able to make tea even though there was a kettle. In Shanowen Square where I stayed in 2016, there were mags.
Furthermore, although the outside temperature was around 20 degrees, astonishingly the heater was turned on, so I went to the reception to complain. There was some kind of switch that looked like it was for the AC or something, and I reckoned maybe that one was a switch for the heater, but I wasn’t 100% sure. When I told this at the reception, one of the staff members kept saying “There is no AC” for a while. So I said:
Whatever it is, the heater is turned on!
Then a female staff member called technicians for repair.
I didn’t care whether the switch was for the AC or the heater, or whatever. That was not my point.
After that, we also realised there were no linens for the duvet. I went to the reception again, got one, and was putting it on the duvet before going to bed. Then we found some kind of dirt-looking dirt whilst the linen seemed to have been washed. What was worse, that dirt was on the head (upper) side, so I asked my boyfriend to go to the reception this time. Then when he came back to the room, he said
“They said there was no linen, so they gave me a bunch of linens for the mattress. 😅”
😂
Again, I thought “Shanowen Square was better in terms of this point as well…” 😅
Eventually we just slept with two linens as it was hot although I liked that heavy duvet.
Yugo Kavanagh Court scorers 6.2 out of 10 in Booking.com. I doubted personally if it was worth 6.2.
Besiddes, you cannot check in Yugo Kavanagh Court before 3 pm. If you need to come earlier, they take care of your luggages though.
If I looked for an accommodation in Dublin, I would choose a better place. (If you plan to book way beforehand, then definitely there are more options.)
★Summary
To sum up, here were the accommodations that we used on our trip in Ireland in June, 2022! I personally praise myself a lot due to my actions that I took on the first day when we encountered the sheep. Also, really what you should have is friends! Since my friend and her husband helped us, I told her that I would thank her later, though it might be quite late.
Also, so far whenever I travelled by myself, I used hostels, but now I reckon that it doesn’t have to be expensive, but accommodations with a private space like hotels called business hotels in Japan could be my options. Honestly, I felt more relaxed in such an accommodation. A good sleep is important on a trip. While I believe I would still use hostels on my solo trips in the future as it’s cheaper, it’s physically hard to plan what to do and research something in a narrow space in bunk or triple bunk beds.
Due to the low JPY value, I was planning to visit Japan being a bit wealthy, if it’s affordable, I thought I wanted to stay in a hotel too.
In 2021, I planned to go to Northern Ireland and Sweden in March, 2022. Although I have been to Northern Ireland before, I spent only a short time in Enniskillen that is just beyond the border of the Republic. Therefore, I wanted to go to the eastern coastal area, Giants Causeway, etc on the trip in 2022. (The purpose of going to Sweden was to go to a gig by Louis Tomlison from One Direction, by the way.)
At that time (in 2021), I also planned to go to a concert in Oslo, Norway by Harry Styles from One Direction too. However, the tour in Europe had been postponed without any certainty due to COVID. Thereinto, he cancelled all the concerts in the tour in the end, and yet extended the tour itself, so I had to buy a new ticket for a new date. Then, I found one day in Dublin in June! In addition to it, I wanted to visit Northern Ireland, see my friends in Dublin, and to try to travel with my boyfriend, so that was a great timing, and I decided to go there. I suggested to him to travel together with my solo plan to go to the concert, and he agreed “I want to drive a car in Ireland (because in Ireland it’s left-hand traffic opposed to the right-hand traffic in Estonia)”.
Well, eventually we didn’t go north but went west, but as planned we rented a car anyway, so here I’m going to talk about a car rental in Ireland.
1. In Ireland: manual transmission vs. automatic transmission?
First of all, you may be curious which transmission type is more common in Ireland: manual or automatic. In Ireland, the manual transmission is more common. It seems few people use cars with the automatic transmission.
On the other hand, according to a staff member in one driving school in Estonia, it’s fifty-fifty. There are of course the manual transmission-cars, but personally it seems more cars with automatic transmission are sold in Estonia. Unlike Japan, in Estonia it costs the same in a driving school for both driving licence for the automatic transmission and the manual transmission. In regards to the hand traffic, similarly to other Continental countries, it’s the right-hand traffic (the American way) in Estonia.
Therefore, my boyfriend constantly said “I need a car with automatic transmission if I drive in Ireland” (because he had to change the speed with the opposite hand). So we were looking for a car with the automatic transmission when I suggested to him to book a car, but in April 2022, the prices for cars with the automatic transmission got twice as expensive as before. (It seemed to cost around 500 EUR at the end of March given that we rented a car with the automatic transmission for one week, but after that the price increased to 1000 EUR with the same conditions and period.)
We both were just saying “this is too expensive”.
2. Car rental vs. car sharing
Later on, one Estonian that I knew suggested to me “Perhaps it’s cheaper if you choose something like Bolt Drive or Citybee (car sharing)”, hence I googled, and found a car sharing service in Ireland called GoCar. I shared this information with him.
A few days after that, I happened to check GoCar’s FAQ, and found a sentence like “We are trying to verify you within 48 hours”, so I shared this information with my boyfriend one week before leaving for ireland. However, he really didn’t like planning (and was not very good at planning either), so it seemed he didn’t do anything… (Also, his mental condition wasn’t great at that time.)
Eventually we decided to rent a car, and didn’t choose car sharing, but at the end of this trip we concluded that renting a car was actually cheaper, maybe if the travelling type was like ours. If you have a specific destination, and no plan to drop by anywhere, I guess you may choose car sharing.
3. How many days and where to rent a car?
I have also heard that if you rent a car on site, it could be cheaper than booking one beforehand, but from the perspective as a Japanese person, you can never do this, especially in Japan…. Basically you need to book everything in Japan, and otherwise you will be necessity-less…
The following morning after arriving in Ireland, I searched for a car on a comparison website like Skyscanner or Google flights as a car rental version called Carhire.ie. (In other words, on Skyscanner, you can see flight schedules and airlines or travel agencies that offer, but on Carhire.ie you can see some car options and which car rental company offers those options.)
I have a Japanese driving license, and it does allow me to drive a car with the manual transmission, but I had never driven a car since I got the license, and moreover, due to the Geneva convention, I was not able to apply for an international driving license as I lived in Estonia more than one year, for whom it required to get a driving license in Estonia by going to the driving school and taking exams like a local person. Plus, I had no idea or knowledge about cars, so I completely asked him to select a car. (He loves cars and driving, and he does watch some YouTube channels about cars, so he has a lot of knowledge.)
Then, we decided to rent a car from the 23rd of June until the 27th of June, 2022.
Why did we select this time period? I was searching on Carhire.ie, looking at his searching filters, so I just put the same period as he did, and it seemed he just kept that filtering, and booked a car.
Well, please check the filtering before deciding.
😂
On Carhire.ie we chose a car rental company called Europcar, and rented at the office in Spencer Dock in Dublin. (The place to return the car for us was the same as well.)
When going to Northern Ireland (since it is the UK), probably the rules are different, and in such a case you need to check further.
When booking a car, it cost around 500 EUR, but at the Europcar office in Spencer Dock, he customised a lot (a car with diesel, a screen that shows the back side of the car, Bluetooth connection, etc), so around 400 EUR was added, and the total sum was approximately 900 EUR.
Also, he eventually decided to drive a car with the manual transmission. (Well it made sense as cars with the automatic transmission were too expensive.)This is why the initial payment was around 500 EUR.
By the way, according to my Japanese friend’s husband in Dublin, the reason why the cars with the automatic transmission were so expensive was probably because they reduced the number of cars with the automatic transmission due to less demand affected by COVID, so at that time, there were fewer cars with automatic transmission available in Ireland.
4. What is “Pay and Display” in Ireland?
Our flights for this trip were to and from Dublin, so our car rental started from Dublin too, but it seemed very difficult and stressful to drive a car in Dublin. I was just sitting next to my boyfriend, but I felt it.
Driving in Dublin.
When we rented a card, we did in the morning so we hadn’t eaten anything yet. Hence we agreed to have something somewhere a bit outside of the city centre, and we were looking for a car park, but
no car park was shown in Google maps!
We randomly went to some street, and temporarily stopped a car there as we could see “P”, and noticed there was a description “Pay and display”. When I searched, it seemed to be a system with which you can pay for parking via its app, by call, or at the ticket machine in that parking area. In our case, the app was not downloadable (in Estonian app stores on both Google Play and iOS), and calling didn’t work, so I had to look for an actual ticket machine. Then I found one.
There the ticket machine accepted the exact amount of coins. In Dublin, unless you have a Leap card, you need to pay in cash when getting on a Dublin bus, and since I knew they didn’t give any change, I had and bought a bunch of coins separately. Therefore, we were able to pay the exact amount of the ticket.
In this system, you need to pay for parking first, and you need to put the ticket in the front glass until you get back there. (The detailed explanation can be found at the ticket machine.)
In Ireland many places had this system, so I got used to it while travelling. In the countryside, some were free on Sundays.
However, the problem is that it is not shown in the map, so it’s hard to find one.
5. Petrol price display in Ireland
My boyfriend drives a diesel car in daily life in Estonia, so I often checked the price for diesel from the Tallinn bus in the days when the petrol prices were rising. In Estonia, the price is shown like “1.99” per litre. This means one litre of petrol costs “1 euro, 99 cents”.
On the other hand, in Ireland for some reason the price was shown in cents, the display was like “219” per litre.
This one shows “216” cents per litre.
In my opinion, if we want to calculate on our own, the Estonian way of display is better.
This section is just for your information. It does not mean “219 EUR” per litre.
★Summary
I really appreciate my boyfriend who drove a car for such a long long time in Ireland, and yet while travelling by car I wished I would have been able to drive a car, many times. Because if I had been able to, I would have been able to take turns with thim. (After that I seriously planned to go to a driving school in Estonia.)
One way took three hours at maximum, so even though he loved driving, it was physically exhausting to drive in a different land and in a different system, I believe.
Also, what I can say for sure is that a car is convenient. (I know it’s taken for granted.) You know we often want to go to places we want to go to while travelling. I reckoned that with a car I could use my time more freely, and visit any paces I wanted to almost without any compromise. However, next time when travelling by car, I definitely want to book one in advance. Even if it would be a solo trip.
zooks.ee 
