Up to this point, my travels alone
have consisted of a couple of flights to Ecuador—met on the other end by
friends who might as well be family—and making my own arrangements and
traveling to places within the States. So, to preface, this was my first time
making my own travel arrangements and getting myself around in Europe, and
somehow it just seemed… bigger, I suppose. More intimidating.
I saw the
rest of my May Term classmates off early Wednesday morning, and then had a day
to myself in Greystones. Which mostly consisted of uploading my last photos
from Ireland, packing, going into town for food, and finalizing travel
arrangements with Jon’s help. Talked to Mom briefly and sorted out what I
thought might be a ferry crisis, but it didn’t end up being one, fortunately.
I’m still amazed at the way the timing all worked out. I didn’t know anything
about my trains at all until I sat down with Jon that morning before I left, so
it is sort of incredible that everything went off without a hitch.
I woke up
at 4:40 a.m. to finish my last minute packing, have time to shoot off a couple
of messages, and get some breakfast before heading out by 5:40 to get to the
train station before 6:00. I left Coolnagreina, bags in tow. Halfway through
the ten-minute walk my arms were already starting to feel tired and I began to
worry that I would be able to manage the bags all day long.
I took the 6:00 a.m. DART into
Dublin—something I was well used to by that point since I’d done it probably
five times while we’d been in Ireland. One-way fare is just a little over €5,
so I purchased the ticket and asked the man behind the window if there would be
cabs available outside the Connolly Street station. In the time we’d been in
Ireland, I’d only ever gotten off the train at Pearse Station or at Tara
Street, and so didn’t know. He informed me there would be plenty of cabs, and
was nice enough to open a door for me so that I didn’t have to struggle with my
ticket and then with getting the bags through.
The DART was fine. I was very
sleepy and kept having small panic flashes that I would accidentally fall
asleep and miss the Connolly Street stop. I fought it down, but the knot in my
stomach wasn’t pleasant. I managed to get off at Connolly Street, and realized
that it was even bigger than the Pearse Street station. I asked a man at an
information desk where I could get a cab.
“Down the escalator on street level—they’re
all right there,” he said, shifting his eyes to the next person almost before
he’d finished talking to me.
“Thanks!” I called, lugging my bags
through the terminal door. The escalator wasn’t working. Grand. Ah! A lift.
That’ll do. I took the lift down to the street level and saw four or five cabs waiting.
Perfect. I checked the time on my phone—I needed to be checking in at the ferry
dock within the next few minutes. But I’d already crossed the river on the
train, so it couldn’t be too much farther in a cab, right?
A black man who must have been
French got out of the
first cab I approached and put my bags in the back.
“Ferry port, please,” I told him,
getting in the back of the cab. I listened to the Irish announcer on the radio
station. A woman was talking about Caesarian sections.
“Which terminal?” were the only
words he said during the course of the seven-minute drive. “Irish Ferries,” I
replied, and watched as we wound around inside the docking area, following the
signs for “Irish Ferries” and “Foot Passengers.” I recalled how, talking with
Rebecca (one of the Coolnagreina employees), she had said that when she thought
of taking a ferry, she thought of driving on, because that’s what you do on a
ferry.
The cruise ferry was huge. It was a
sunny day and I wondered what “adverse weather conditions” had caused them to
cancel the swift ferry. We pulled up next to the port station and taxi man
helped me get my bags out.
“Do you have change for fifty?” I
asked, pulling out a fifty-euro note. I had wanted to be prepared, and also
wanted to already have money with me when I came back through Ireland to catch
my flight home instead of having to find an ATM. He asked for €52
and gave me €40 in change.
I checked in at the desk with no
problems. The man gave me my boarding card for the ferry and an envelope with
my name on it that he said contained my train tickets. I put a baggage claim
tag on my big bag and asked him could I keep both the smaller one and my purse
with me? He nodded and told me to go through and put my big bag on the belt.
They waved me through the security check without so much as glancing through my
smaller bags. I guess I must not look threatening.
Up the escalator to boarding. They
checked my boarding card and told me to take the stairs, then saw my bag and
said, “Ah, better use the lift.” So I did. I didn’t realize when I was actually
on the ferry. It just looked like another building at first. I asked the man at
an information desk where I was to go next and he said, “Just sit anywhere you
like.” I felt dumb.
I settled into a spot near the
café. The cruise ferry was nice. And a sticker announcing free Wi-Fi caused me
to immediately dig my phone out of my bag and begin to send off some messages.
I was hoping I would find some more Wi-Fi throughout the day but couldn’t be
sure, so I wanted to use it while I had it. Almost everyone at home was in bed,
of course, but mom answered my text anyway. I felt slightly triumphant to have
conquered the first two steps in my plan without a problem. The hardest part,
though, I figured, was still to come: the trains. Which I still knew very
little about. Only that, supposedly, all the rail fare should be covered under
my SailRail pass through Irish Fairies, even though the details of it all were
still not clear to me. I had only paid €50 total for the SailRail, but the train
trip alone, when I looked it up separately, said it would cost over £60,
which made no sense to me. I also knew I had to take three different trains.
And that I only had ten minutes in one of the stations to change trains. This
could prove interesting.
(To be continued...)
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