Greetings From Dublin

Well, I made it!
It was a long trip to get here.  After a great send off at YVR from Dad, Tara, Mom, Cindi and of course Brad, I was on my way to Heathrow airport for my connecting flight to get to Dublin.  The flight to Heathrow went well, pretty uneventful and I got to watch a movie and part of a TV show before falling asleep for about 4 hours.  The meal they served on the plane was pretty yummy too-and I even had a piece of caramel cheesecake for dessert! Once we arrived in Heathrow, it was a long and confusing trek to get to the Aer Lingus help/check in desk as we arrived in Terminal 5, and had to take a 10 min long bus to Terminal 1 to catch the next plane.  The flight to Dublin was going well and we were told that it'd be under an hour long-not too shabby. :) Unfortunately it was too windy to land in Dublin so our plane tried to wait out the storm in Belfast while fueling up.  The weather didn't improve so after about 2 1/2 hours of waiting at this point, we were all loaded up along with our luggage onto Coach buses and driven to Dublin from Belfast, about a 2+ hour drive away. So, about midnight, 6+ hours after I was supposed to get into Dublin, I arrived in Dublin, a little soggy and windblown and VERY tired. Paul, who is a co-workers' relative was going to meet me at Dublin airport and take me to the hostel.  Unfortunately with the delays, he could no longer make it to meet me.  Anthony who was sitting next to me on the plane and bus (he's a married engineer with two kids and he designs glass buildings including part of the Dublin airport, pretty interesting character), took me under his wing and offered to drive me to the hostel since everything at the airport was now closed-he also gave me some travel advice on fun and affordable places to visit in Ireland and Italy. He was very kind and helped me find the hostel and dropped me off at the front counter, gave me a handshake and said "enjoy your stay in Ireland."

The hostel is clean and the people are friendly so far, especially since I was trying to get settled when some people were sleeping (although a lot of people weren't in bed yet). I received a nice welcome from a room mate from Belgium on his way out of the dorm at about 1am, he still hasn't come back yet, must've been a good night for him :p.  It was pretty noisy until about 3am out in the street/bar area as I'm in a fairly "party" area of the city, but that didn't matter too much as I was super nervous and unable to get much more than a few hours of sleep.

Apparently the USIT building that I'm supposed to go to this morning for 8am as per an e-mail I received before my trip, actually opens at 10am so I had a chance to go for an early morning stroll down Aston Quay and take a couple of pictures.  Hope you enjoy the pictures that I took of the street the hostel is located on and some of the Quay this morning. :)

Hope to be able to post again soon-although the internet here isn't too stable thus far!
Cheerio!