In the land of Irish accents.

As you can probably all guess, I'm loving being surrounded by people with Irish accents.  Although almost all the hostel workers we've come across so far seem to be French.  Go figure.

We managed to get through the Ryanair flight.  I was not a fan of the whole Beauvais airport thing.  We spent an hour on the metro, to spend an hour and a half on the bus to the airport.  We made it however, and got our baggage checked in.  Thank god I paid for the 20 kilo baggage allowance.  Sophies bag weighed in at a crazy light 8 kilos.  Mine was 19.  No wonder I've been struggling to get it on my back recently.  This could be a bit of a problem when leaving London with the shopping I plan to do.  I'm going to have to get brutal with throwing things out.

After eating a quick lunch we jumped in the security queue.  Oh dear.  It was another stinking hot day in Paris, and the air conditioning in the airport was, well, non existant.  Just as we got to the front of the line I noticed one of the border police leave the little checking box and wander over to a bag.  Unattended baggage, oh yay.  So we waited.  And waited.  The growing line of hot time pressured people not allowed to pass through the border check.  Eventually, after far too long a time, some guy came back through security to collect it.  The other people in line clapped him, I was frustrated I had no fruit (of the rotten variety) to throw at him.  That all cleared up we got through and practically straight on the plane.  Time for another delay, because of various hold ups we had to wait for clearance to take off, so left the airport 25 mins late. 

At least it was a short flight.  Just another delay in getting our baggage, and a long wait for the paddy wagon and we made it to the hostel.  Our hostel in Dublin has the fantastic service of free airport transfers.  So brilliant.  We'll be back there in a couple of days to see Dublin and to do one of the day tours.  For now though we're in Galway, which was a simple transfer between cities.  We just had a lesiurely get up, checked out and wandered the 100ms to the bus station, and caught the 10am express to Galway.  I have to point out, the nonstop express to Galway only means that there were no bathroom breaks, it didn't mean the bus didn't stop.  It did.  In four different towns, and two stops in two them.  However it didn't take to long, and an easy walk to the hostel from the station.

We went out for dinner tonight and wandered down the main shopping street in Galway, and I'm at risk of spending quite a bit of money here.  Theres a celtic jewellery store I'm particularly keen to check out.