Ah, Dublin!

I've just spent a terrific four days in Dublin, staying with Mad Irish Julie and joined by sister Sophie and Nicola F-B. I don't really know where to start, so how about at the very beginning. Are we all sitting comfortably? Good, then I shall begin.

We arrived at Dublin airport, slightly agitated after a Ryanair flight - for why, Sophie repeatedly asked, did they have to deck their planes out in such cheap nasty colours? Isn't the service bad enough to remind you that you are travelling with a budget airline? Anyway, we promptly found a bus that was going to Trinity, where we were supposed to be meeting Julie. But unbeknownst to us, we had got on a Dublin City bus rather than an air coach. This meant that, instead of being driven to Dublin in relative coach-style luxury, complete with in-journey video and a polite driver, we were greeted by a driver swearing and being abusive towards a load of foreign students who were attempting to board his bus. "Just shut up", he said (after being confronted about rolling his eyes and saying "for fuck's sake" behind their backs) "and get off my fecking bus". Sophie and I meekly requested our tickets whilst trying to disguise our English accents.

There then followed a comedy of errors in trying to meet Julie (we were on the Dublin City bus, not the posh one) and she had to return to work, having waited for us for some time, only to inform her colleagues that she had managed to lose two English girls. Sophie and I, meanwhile, had found a pub that did delicious toasted sandwiches and it bothered us not that we didn't even know which part of Dublin we were in.

Dublin is great. Living there must be just like being in an extended episode of Father Ted. We were there for the Liffey swimming race, and the commentator said things like "Well, the leader in the ladies' race is also a reserve in the fire service - mind you, I'm not sure I'd want her putting out a fire in my house but she's a lovely, lovely girl".

Dublin is currently hosting a whole load of hare sculptures, and we spent a lot of time posing in front of them - something that I'm sure you'll all agree was highly original and amusing! Well, it kept us entertained for a while...

Other points of note for the earlier part of our stay:

• I had the best Chinese food I've had since I left Beijing. Julie very considerately lives near the local equivalent of China Town and it has some terrific restaurants, some of which even have little individual karaoke booths downstairs. We planned to do this on the Sunday night but stayed home in our pyjamas and watched Bridget Jones instead. However, Chinese food = fantastic - they even brought the rice to us right at the end of the meal, which means it's a Proper Chinese Restaurant!
• Dublin is a fab place to go shopping. Lots of little vintage shops and great fruit and veg markets and fantastic little Italian delis. Sophie and I are seriously considering relocating for the shopping opportunities alone.
• Julie has a great flat right near O'Connell street. So close, in fact, that Sophie and I will be able to find our own way there next time we visit. And we plan to visit often. Oh yes, Julie's going to regret letting us know where she lives!

So, on to the Saturday. Well, Nicola F-B arrived, we did some more shopping (cos it's great) and then got ready for the evening's entertainment. Instead of opting for a traditional English hen night (and Dublin was host to a good many that weekend) which usually means wearing matching hats and t-shirts with names printed on the backs, we decided to have a bridal dinner chez Julie. We bought our dresses from charity shops or e-bay or, in Layla's case, fashioned our own. We had a wonderful evening and all felt like very beautiful brides. In fact, Julie and Nicola even got confirmation that they were beautiful brides from members of the public when they had to nip out to buy more wine! I'm not sure how Nic managed the walk, seeing that she must have been staaaaarving. You see, Julie managed to leave a knife in the oven, which then melted, caught alight and covered Nic's monkfish with noxious fumes. But, as we repeatedly pointed out to her, that's what you get for being a vegetarian.

That's all the blogging I can manage for the time being. I'm rather exhausted after our trip home which involved a taxi strike, huge delays at the bus stop, realising when we reached the airport that we had booked flights for September the fecking 11th, landing on one wheel of the plane and careering all over the runway (I heard one passanger say very knowledgably "That was not a manual landing". Someone asked him how he knew. "Well", he said "you'd have to be a complete fecking eedjit to land a plane like that, wouldn't you?") and then having to help a poor lady who fell flat on her face on the tarmac getting off the plane. This involved mopping up blood from her face, getting her into the recovery position, seeing her off in the ambulance and wandering around baggage reclaim trying to track down members of her family who had wandered off completely unaware that anything was wrong. We found them and told them what had happened. "Thank goodness for that!", her sister said "I was starting to get worried about her!".

I leave you with some photos of us lovely, lovely brides: