Well I had the funniest Irish 24 hours. Arrived into Dublin reasonably late in the day and stayed at the lovely Hotel 7 in the centre of the city. Dublin is such a tourist city. There were Americans everywhere and lots of singing of Irish tunes. The Pogues were blaring out of shops and Guinness was running freely. I needed to find some cash as the parking meters only took coins. I must have visited ever single ATM in Dublin before a lovely man explained why they were all out of order. Seems it is a regular occurrence every Sunday night when the machines run out of cash. I climbed back up to the hotel and managed to do an Irish deal to get the precious coins I needed. Of course I had some evil UK currency but I might as well have been trying to pay with rocks.
I strolled out on Monday morning and thought I had walked into some sort of major incident. Well I had, sort of. Boris was in town. I have never ever seen so many men with guns. I stayed well clear and left Dublin headed North again. I got to the airport in plenty of time (thank goodness). I pull up at a brand new fuel station that was self-pay. I put my credit card in and it was rejected. Went through four credit cards all refused. They don’t take cash. I thought it must be the pump. Moved the car to a different spot and then started the whole process again. Still rejected. In desperation I picked up the phone. In the broadest Irish accent ever – ‘oh no luv – we haven’t had time to fix the machines, so they take those foreign cards. The kids have been sick, the wife is tired and I really need to lay off the whiskey’ – Oh I just need to get fuel. He sent me up the road a few miles. By this time I was getting a little angsty about my flight. I found the fuel station, handed over my credit card – oh no – he looked at my card and then the whole Kenny discussion started again. I managed to escape but obviously there was a problem with Easy Jets credit card too – some raving message about no fuel, a flight delay and to have a drink – I literally only understood half of it, the accent was so strong. What a lovely time I had.
Sleeping under the stars 