that night. Well shoot. Turns out I had to figure out how to get to Rossmere first. I couldn't get a ticket for the ferry online because their site was jammed (wonder why?). I walked to the bus station and figured out that the bus took 3 1/2 hours. So the latest I could leave was 1:30. That meant I had time for one activity before I left Dublin. My choice? The Guiness factory. That's how I ended up drinking a beer at 11:30am. (and yes it does taste different, and much better in my opinion, at the factory)I had to see it before I left though. So I hurried there, did the tour and drank my Guiness and made it back to the hostel to pick up my stuff. I called home in the interim and woke Mom and Pops up at 6am (they love me) and asked them to try and get the ferry ticket while I was on the bus.The bus ride was beautiful, this is a little church I saw on the side of the road during the
trip. I made it to the ferry dock. Turns out most of my bus was also trying to get on this ferry. There were people everywhere. I made it to the desk and thankfully the lady said they had a few more spots for foot passengers. Whew. Paid my 67 euro and jumped on the boat. Man it was impressive. I don't know what I was expecting but it wasn't a cruise ship with restaurants and a cinema! It was awesome. Until I had to sleep on the ground in a foyer, that wasn't awesome, but it wasn't horrible. The boat ride was 19 hours. Yes yes, I know. Quick observations from the trip:- teennage boys annoy the crap out of me, but only, like normal men, when they get together with a bunch of other boys (men) their same age, I don't get it
- while waiting in one of the bars, I was sitting alone and there was a French couple behind me. younger couple, maybe early 20s. This woman walks into a relatively quite place where people are watching soccer match and was followed by 5 guys who looked like they were in her family. Anyway, the point is she got to the front of the room and turned around and in English said "There are seats up here" quite loudly. Well the couple behind me said under their breath (but loud enough for me to hear) "Loud Americans". Only problem?? This group wasn't American! She definitely had an accent that was not American. Sometimes I think we get a bad rap because every time someone hears English they thing the person is American because often they can't tell the difference between English accents. I so wanted to turn around and tell them she wasn't American, but I didn't.
- As noted before I had to sleep in a foyer with maybe 20 people lining the outside of the room. At about 4:30 in the morning I was awoken from an otherwise fitful sleep by a guy standing in the middle of the room blowing his nose like a train. Please dear god someone tell me how he thought that was a good place to do it? There are 20 people sleeping and he had already gotten up enough to make it to the middle of the room, why couldn't he have gone t
o the bathroom or walked 20 steps and gone out on the deck of the boat? For the love of jellybeans, have some consideration!!! I gave him an evil eye, but I'm not quite sure it was all that easy to decipher from a half-open groggy sleepy eye.My next adventure in returning home was to find a train in Cherbourg, France to get back to Clermont. When I got to the train station (after a 4 km walk from the port) I asked the lady for a ticket. She gave me a ticket to Paris and told me to use the ticket I already had to get from Paris to Clermont. There was a train at 9:10 she said. So I wander around Cherbourg trying to find food at 3pm, of course not an easy task because the French eat at pre-determined hours. Then I jump on a train to Paris. 2 1/2 hours later I arrive and find the subway to take me to the other Paris train station. I arrive at the station at 8:40 and am trying to find my train platform, except I look at the board, no train. I panic, uh oh, what if she didn't tell me the right final destination or something. So I go to the ticket desk, only 462 people in front of me. Super. Another worker asks me if I need help, I tell him what is going on, he looks at the board and says, "I don't see a train". Einstein apparently. At this point, after some frantic looking for a train, I realize the lady screwed it up. She must have looked at the wrong destination. I realize that, in fact, I will not be getting to my own bed tonight. Ugh. I wait in line for an hour and get up to the ticket counter and the guy tells me I have to buy a new ticket because I didn't exchange the old one. I explain what happened and the lovely man gave me a free ticket. at 7:01 am the next morning.
Next up on the magical travels of Kate: finding an inexpensive place to say in Paris. I considered staying at the train station, but instead called my roommates and they found me a place. But it required getting back on the metro (and I couldn't take the direct route due to construction of course), then walking a quite scary walk to the hostel. I wasn't exactly sure where I was going and there were some creepy dudes on the street so I ducked in a store and they helped me. I got to the hostel and asked for a room, the guy said, "I'm not sure if we have one" I told him my roommate had called and he said, but yeah he's a guy and we have a spot for a guy. The poor man didn't know I was about to throw something really far. He found me a room, but when I got to the third floor, the room was full. Went back downstairs, he found another room. Got in, slept for 5 hours and woke up to return to the train station and catch my train. No adventures in the morning, everything went smoothly and I made it back to Clermont, 45 hours after the journey began, in one piece but in desperate need of a shower and a good night's sleep.
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