We rose early and IT WAS SO COLD. We were rugged up in our thermals but even then the cold made its way through to our bones…I've never been so cold in all my life. After catching a ferry to the bus station we caught a bus to Treviso Airport, just over an hour from Venice, to board our 10:10am flight to Dublin.

As we travelled along the canal to the bus station, we began to notice that not everyone was feeling the cold like us…they were dressed in shorts and t-shirts! As the number of shorts and t-shirt clad people increased we decided there must be a fun run or similar happening on the limited land available in Venice. I guess after some time they would warm up but was it worth freezing to start with?

Accompanied by wild applause, our Ryan Air flight from Venice landed safely at Dublin airport. Hayley had previously told me how this had happened on other inexpensive airline flights she'd been on, but I hadn't counted on how unnerving it could be when it actually happens. Are they just happy to have arrived at their destination finally…or celebrating that the plane didn't crash…were they expecting that it would…or both?

We were finally in Ireland, home of The Corrs and Ronan Keating, amongst others, and somewhere I'd always wanted to visit. From the airport we caught the shuttle bus into Dublin and walked and walked to our next home for two nights…Abraham House. What a pleasure it was to be in a country where English is the norm…though with the thick Irish accents I still found it difficult to understand what the locals were saying.

It was mid-afternoon and we hadn't eaten since the night before so we dropped our backpacks (after climbing three flights of stairs) and headed out to eat. By this time we just wanted food, any type, didn't matter if it was authentic Irish cuisine or not, so settled for a delicious toasted wrap.

As we walked towards the Liffey River we saw a very tall silver spike which turned out to be a sculpture called the Spire of Dublin…but is affectionately known as the 'Stiffy on the Liffey' by locals, amongst other names. We spent the rest of the afternoon taking in the sights, both scenic and at the shopping centre, then headed back to the hostel to try to catch up on some blogging.

We were sharing our room with three others, a guy who had lived in Germany for the past ten years but was looking for work in Dublin, and two girls from England who were getting ready to hit the town when we arrived back. We chatted with them for ages, then their two male travelling companions arrived expecting that they would be ready…oops. We then spent the next hour or so splitting our sides laughing with the four of them…one of the boys was really funny…I had tears running down my cheeks.