After the Grand Final, we got back to hotel maybe around 12:30 in the morning. That left us tons of time (heh) to finish packing up and be ready around 7AM to hopefully find a car that could take us to the train station.

That translated to roughly 5 hours of bad sleep, like, waking up every half hour wondering “did I sleep through an alarm?” sleep. Suffice to say the day started very much in Zombie mode. At the hotel reception I tried to check out of a room that didn’t exist, but we got that cleared up pretty quickly. As everybody would be trying to gat out of the city all at once, I was bit concerned we’d have trouble finding an Uber, but I think it was only about 15 minutes before we were able to get one. We built in a lot of extra time just in case (worst case scenario would have been walking 2 km to the station with out luggage, eek!) – but in the end we got there with a bit over and hour to spare. Beats stressing about it though.

Happily there was somewhere to get coffee and somewhere to sit while we waited, and found our way down to ‘Platform A’ from where we’d catch our train. And here’s platform A just because.

First leg was from Liverpool Lime Street to Chester, the train wasn’t crowded so it was not much bother with us and the luggage. At Chester we had about a 25 minute changeover time, so that was just enough time to lug the bags up some stairs (always such a joy) and over to the correct platform. Again we found somewhere for the luggage, and saw some beautiful countryside roll by, including a stop at THAT train station in Wales:

This train, despite being only 3 carriages, still had someone going up and down with a refreshments cart, which was kinda cool – I guess this leg was a little over 2 hours so it makes sense. After all the scenery (and much that was missed due to snoozing), we arrived at Holyhead, Wales. Happily, the start of the Ferry terminal is directed connected to the end of the train platform, so that couldn’t get much easier if we tried. Again to be on the safe side we allowed a ton of time in case trains were late etc, but they weren’t, so we had about 2 hours to kill at Holyhead. They had a comfy cafe/shop area with some lounges so we baggsed one of those and settled in for the wait, had some machine coffee and refreshingly cheap bags of chips (crisps).

Boarding was fine, we booked a spot in the “Hygge lounge” on the ferry, not so much for its “luxury seating” but more for the “children under 8 are not permitted”. It was indeed quiet, still some dick decided watching videos on his phone at full volume was totally ok. Super glad of the earplugs I had in my pocket, originally for Eurovision but now to make the quiet room actually quiet. Bliss.

The Irish Sea ferry crossing has a bit of a reputation for being pretty rough, so I did the right thing and bought some travel sickness medication just in case. But to cut a long story short, the whole thing was about as smooth as glass, at least the small bits I remembered, as happily I slept for at least two of the three hours it took to get to Dublin. I remember back in the day when we caught these super big ferries to Mykonos and Santorini we were all herded up like cattle with all the cars in order to get us out of there as quick as possible. Stena Line was a bit more refined -calling truck drives, then car drivers, and lastly foot passengers. WE ended up kinda herded into a stairwell for quite some time, but that was OK. So, down the stairs, into a bus (which is on the ferry), which then drives off the ferry and deposits us at the port, where we pick up our luggage (so glad we were able to check that in and not manhandle it up and down the ferry!), then onto another bus to get us in to the middle of town.

It was then just a short walk to the Hotel, which is really quite nice because it wasn’t even open when we booked it – so everything is super super fresh. It looks like an area that is undergoing a bit of gentrification because among the brand new hotel and graffiti-ridden smashed-window old warehouses, but hey at least it creates some contrast.

We were both so totally chock full of energy we just went down to the hotel restaurant, which was pretty nice, and all that’s left to do is finish this blog and have a bit of an early night to hopefully help make up for last night.

Dublin, we have arrived!