Dublin Here We Come......

Friday, 29th July 2011

The trip to Ireland was planned many months, earlier in the year. One of pakdokter's golfing buddy at our club, Mr Zahardin a.k.a. Mr Dean O'Malley - was planning to return to Dublin to visit his sister-in-law for her wedding anniversary. As pakdokter had never been to this island - Dean's invitation was gladly welcomed and a 'driving holiday' was planned well in advance. It helped to have someone in Dublin to suggest the hotels and the itinerary.

The flight to London on Malaysia Airlines took just over 12 hours. As it was a morning flight, pakdokter was awake throughout the journey and managed to finish one of the 4 novels by Yasunari Kawabata which pakdokter had packed for reading during the holidays. It was a great read and pakdokter was surprised that pakdokter did not read Kawabata's books earlier.

The transit at Heathrow was for about 2 hours - as our luggage had been checked-in to Dublin - we did not have to lug our bags from Terminal 4 where we arrived to Terminal 1 where the BMI flight to Dublin took off. It was only a short 45 minutes flight from London to Dublin.

Although we arrived at our hotel at almost 7 in the evening -it was still bright and sunny but fairly cold despite July being in the height of summer.

Pakdokter's partner had booked to stay at the Buswells Hotel some 3 or 4 months ago and she got a very good deal from the early booking. The room, with breakfast included, cost just below 100Euros a night - for a comparison - when she wanted to extend her stay in Dublin at the end of our holidays - all hotels in the same class sold for more than twice the price we got from our early on-line booking!

Hotel Buswells was located in the city centre near the Government House - as such the traditional and pretty bar at the hotel is a favourite meeting place of the politicians and celebrities. Throughout the 4 days pakdokter stayed there - TV cameramen and reporters were always almost stationed outside the hotel to catch some of the VIP's for their opinion and comments on current issues.

From the hotel, it was a short walk of 100 metres to Graftyon Street - the main shopping street of Dublin. The lovely historic Trinity College was also a short walk away. In fact the most of the main areas of tourist interests of Dublin were within walking distance.

As we were tired from the 16 hours of travel since we left home - we decided to have our dinner at the hotel's Trumaan Restaurant. Pakdokter took fancy of the fish dish which came wrapped up in 'bak choy'.