First stop, the big schhmoke, Dublin!!!

The Merri and Jessi adventure tour began in the completely frozen over, ice skating death trap known as Dublin.

I met a jetlagged Merri in the architectual muddle that is Dublin Airport. I'd been certain that her flight would be delayed, Merri had arrived in the middle of what the media had dubbed 'The Big Freeze', conveniently coinciding with 'The Big Freeze' on the 2009 budget.

The day before Merri arrived the Airport had been shut, in traditional Irish Style, as a nation we are unable to cope in any severe weather conditions.

She did however arrive on time, 7.30am. Merri had had the wonderful experience of flying for the first time, with our wonderful airline that is Ryanair. Luckily, every British and Irish person had forewarned her of the extra charges which the airline likes to lamp on. This however, had not prevented Merri from cramming her carry on luggage to the max, exceding the 10kg limit by .65. To avoid the extra charges, she was told to take something out, which, obviously, she put straight back in once the baggage had been weighed.

We got the slow moving Aircoach into town, Merri giggling about the irish accents all the way. Like most foreigners that come to these shores, she had a thing for the way we add H's everywhere and concentrate on the R's. Its something thats easy to take for granted, until your an Irish person abroad, I like to believe we're everybodies favourite.

It was my first time in Dublin since I got back from traveling, but it wasn't how I remembered, everything was white! It was my first time to see snow on O'Connell Street, and that was only the beginning. We got off at Trinity, and quickly learned that walking would be quite the task that day. What had started off as snow all over the city, turned into a condensed layer of thick white ice. It really is no exaduration to say it was like an ice rink. We had to walk slowly and carefully, with many near slips. The city was remarkably quiet for a time when most people should be making there way to work. I put it down to the ice, and not the neverending recession.

After a breakfast in Bewley's our next stop was good old Trinity College, the oldest and most discriminative college in Ireland! Oh and most prestigious. Secretly, I do love Trinity, putting behind the lack of Catholics in its early years, it did educate some very great minds, such as Bram Stoker, Oscar Wild, Samuel Beckett and Ernest Walton (that ones for Mark/Smithers). I rang my old Castlebar buddy Mark, who shall for this article be referred to by his nickname, Smithers, who was in his on Campus accomodation. We called up for yet more tea, a chat, and then this Physics student gave us our own person tour of Trinity. It was a good thing too, Merri had already coped on that I wasn't shaping up to be the greatest tour guide, not knowing it was Daniel O' Connell on the great big statue on the top of O'Connell Street...

Smithers showed us around the equally slippy Trinity, but because the students weren't back yet, alot of building were closed. We did see some good ones though, and hats off to Smithers, he really knew his stuff. He also got us into see the 'Book of Kells' for free with his student card, although I'm not sure that Merri really appreciated one of our national treasures by exclaiming, 'Who's Kells??'

After our lovely tour, we left Smithers back to his project and to figure out the chill factors at 3am in the morning (what Physicists do when they're bored apparently). Next stop was the Dublinia. So, I'd seen these signs for Dublinia around Christ Church when I lived in Dublin but never actually knew what they were all about. I believe its something you do in part of the Vikings Splash tour, which, like many tourist things, in January was closed. So we just went to Dublinia, which is just really a shitty museum about Vikings. Our main motivation for going there was potential warmth, and of course history. We were tragically disappointed though. It was fecking freezing in the 'museum' and the whole thing looked dated and crappy. And childish. I am a still a secret nerd however and stuck around to read about those crazy vikings. We also found one functioning radiator which we loitered about for a bit.

Having had enough of being a tourist for one day, and the below minus temperatures in the day time, we decided it was time for soup in the pub followed by pints of Guinness! We went to the 'Stags Head' and waited there in warmth until Emma rang. We would be crashing on Emma's couches for our time in Dublin. She was a wonderful host supplying unless pots of tea. That was to come though, first we met up with Emma in Grogans, one of my favourite pubs in Dublin, tiny and long and always packed. We had hot ports and then the three of us carried on to Brogans, where we met all the Graphics folk ad stayed for a few drinks before sliding our way all the way back to Emmas for more yummy warm soup and tea!!

Day one of Ireland on Tour had come to an end :)