THURSDAY, SEPT. 6
The hotel beds were so comfortable we slept in and missed breakfast service downstairs. We spent the morning preparing for Chloe’s appointment with a Dublin modelling agency, and caught the bus with plenty of time to arrive for the 2:00 appointment…or so we thought. The data on my phone still wasn’t working so we had to use a physical map we picked up at the hotel. I prefer old fashioned maps anyway because I like to see a city’s layout. We would soon learn, however, an — important takeaway — Irish maps aren’t usually to scale.
MISGUIDED BY AN IRISH MAP
We ended up walking endlessly. Starting at Trinity College, we covered the length of the campus, walked through St. Stephens Grey (a lovely park with pond and ducks), down a wide street, considerably longer than indicated on the map, along Canal Road, past foreign embassies, up a side street, and as chance would have it, down a narrow street, Pembroke Road, where the agency was located in a garage-like office. Every moment we felt lost.
Chloe put on her high heels and went in while I waited outside with the agency’s tan, short-haired dog, who was very friendly.
After all our rushing, Chloe learned the appointment had been changed. She was asked to return in a few hours.
Food and money were our next priorities. Off came the high heels and we set out on another long walk. I wanted to take out as much cash as my limit would allow before we reached West Cork. We found our way to the Dublin HSBC building, only to learn that it is an office building, not a bank. I imagine Chloe was worried about traveling with me at this point. She was starving and I put the bank before food, and chose to walk, several kilometres, rather than taking a bus.
But then we found a large, gourmet grocery store with prepared foods and a huge salad bar and ate on the patio with a peaceful view of the docks.
RETURNING TO THE AGENCY
It was after 4:00 when Chloe returned to the agency.
She felt her meeting didn’t go well, and we talked about it on the way to the Grafton Street “3” store where we would buy an Irish sim card for my phone. The young man who helped us explained that the Irish and English 3’s were separately owned and operated, something our sweet assistant at the London airport must not have known. The clerk in Dublin was quite rude, and we were starting to doubt what we had been told — that the Irish are friendly.
We found a place to get cash, then wandered a bit…browsing in a bookstore and in Flying Tiger, where Chloe found a green phone charger that lights up like Christmas lights and a matching green plastic sloth to sit on the cable and I bought some watercolors. Grafton Street, a pedestrian street, was lively with many talented buskers and lots of shoppers. Then to Starbucks to use the wifi and book our Oct. 17 departure flights from Dublin, which I sent off to the custom’s officer.
We arrived back at the hotel at 9:30 and had dinner in the hotel restaurant.
