So here begins the adventures for Dublin...

Day 1 - 15 Feb 06 - Stansted/Dublin
Woke up at 3.30am, left my room at 4am, in order to catch the 4.30am train to Stansted, so that i could catch my 6.30am flight to Dublin. It's soooo tiring! Especially when I was rushing to finish my work the night before and works till 12+am... *yawnz* But it was all worthwhile..

Reached Dublin around 10pm, was greeted by Harivinthan s/o Sellappan at the bus-stop. Put some of my stuff in Hari's room before setting off to visit some cathedrals.

St Patrick's Cathedral. Some people will know that Ireland/Dublin is pretty famous for its St Patrick's Festival, and i think it has something to do with the cathedral. Anyone knows? haha...

Also went to visit Christ Church Cathedral after that and then met up with Hari again for lunch (he went off to do some shopping first) Harivinthan s/o Sellappan. The only reason why I was in Dublin was to see this guy! Apparently it's become quite popular to visit this guy, cos a group of my friends were over just this weekend to visit him too! But only for a limited time now, for this guy heads off in 2 weeks time back to Malaysia...

Kenny with his Irish stew... yummy yummy...

And what better way to spend an afternoon than to visit the Guinness Storehouse to enjoy some Guinness right after lunch!

I must say that I was somehow really excited and happy to visit the Guinness Storehouse.. it's like wow... haha.. "Lovely day for a Guinness" it says.. But it says so everyday though.. haha... ;p

After the tour, which takes u up 7 levels, you reach the Gravity bar where you can exchange a token for a pint of Guinness! woohoo! What a fantastic view too! Here's Kenny with his lovely pint of Guinness.

Went to meet up with Hari again after that cos he had lessons in the afternoon and went for the Evensong at St Patrick's Cathedral. It's been quite a long time since I've been for a service, I think the last being Louisa's wedding. But I must say it was a really nice experience to have a service in a nice old cathedral where the voice of the choir (of just 8 people) resounds through the cathedral. It was a magical experience.

After the Evensong, we went off to this italian restaurant to celebrate one of Hari's friend's birthdays, where I kinda got to meet quite a number of Hari's malaysian counterparts. (It does seem like I'm having lots of interaction with the Malaysians these days, what's with Malaysian night, food feast and this... *rolls eyes* haha) Anyway, it was a really enjoyable dinner and got to know some of the Malaysians too. Then we went back to Hari's apartment where we had lao1 yu2 sheng1 or lou hei.... and the strange thing being.... it was Hari's indian housemate who was organising it! haha... how weird when i didn't even have yu2 sheng1 here in Cambridge and I had it in Dublin with Hari's indian housemate... =)

Day 2 - 16 Feb 06 - Dublin/Howth/Stansted
So being really tired from a day of travelling and weeks of fatigue, when Hari tried to wake me up at 8am the next morning to see if i wanted to go for his lecture, I decided I'd just stay in bed. But never did I expect to wake up and find the sun way up high already! (11.45am) Haha. But well, it was much needed rest anyway. So while Hari went off to work, I went to visit this coastal town called Howth. It's about an hour's DART (kinda like Singapore's MRT) ride to Howth.

Kenny at the Howth Harbour Lighthouse...

And seeing the rolling hills and cliffs in the distance, I decided to go for an adventure and head for the hills. And that proved to be a decision well made. Having found a off road dirt path that was trodden by hill walkers, I decided to follow the trail, to be led to this lush open pasture where there were horses roaming freely, galloping happily through the fields. It was simply gorgeous. And then I saw this rock cliff/hill which was the highest point on the lands around and decided to climb up the hill so as to take in the sights from a bird's eye view. It was quite an adventure to climb up this slope though. It was a steep cliff and I literally had to rock climb up this rock surface. Thankfully for all the rock climbing I've done, that proved to be quite simple. It was just 5-6m up the side where I had to climb anyway, although without a harness and support, suddenly it feels so scary. (And did i mention I have quite a phobia of heights?)

Kenny sitting in front of the structure he conquered. Except that this photo doesn't quite show the right relations to the height, because the mound in the background was actually quite a distance away.

And of course, I failed to notice there was this sign on the other side of the mound, until I was on the mound, because I had chosen an off-road trail... hmmz...

Finally the view of the coastline. Isn't it just gorgeous. They say that "Pictures speak a thousand words" but this is a situation where while pictures speak a thousand words, they fail to describe the other million words associated with it. It was just so beautiful.

So having spent the whole afternoon at Howth, it was time to head back to Dublin city centre to get my stuff, and went to look for Hari at his work place before I left. Had a chat and a sandwich with him before heading to the airport to catch my flight back to Stansted.

My flight having been delayed by 20 mins (Ryanair.. *frownz*), meant that I had to catch the later train back to Cambridge, but upon arrival at Stansted, I was greeted by "Urgent Engineering Works" on the Stansted Express Railway... and when I went to the coach station which was supposed to replace the train service, I was told the coach was only going to Liverpool street. After making a fuss of how I already had my ticket (where I was supposed to change a train at Bishops Stortford), and how I was not gonna be able to make it back if I was to head down to Liverpool street, the manager came over and told me that, since I already have my ticket, then they'll hire a cab for me to go down to Bishops Stortford. OOh.. how cool is that! So I caught the cab and reached Bishops Stortford 5 secs before the train was due to depart for Cambridge. How lucky. And finally got back to the warmth of my room.

What a tiring trip to Dublin but a really really enjoyable one too!

More photos are available here. (Trust me, you want to check them out.. especially day 2)