Dublin

What started out as a simple trip to the airport this morning quickly became a bit stressful - even the native Parisians couldn't figure out what they were supposed to do. Long story short - they were doing work on the tracks between Gare du Nord and Charles de Gaulle Airport. The announcement inside the train kept saying that the train was a direct route to CDG but the announcements outside the train in the stations were saying that there may be interruptions. When we got to Gare du Nord, inside the train they were still saying that it was continuing on but outside they were saying to get off. People were getting on and off at each stop - not sure what to do. We got off, along with an entourage of people who were following us because they didn't know where to go (not sure why they thought we did!) and wandered until we found the right bus-stop. The fact that there were 200 people there with big suitcases should have been the first tip-off. Rather than having lots of extra buses to make up for the train issues, they just had the police there trying to keep us from spilling off the sidewalk into the street. After standing for a few minutes, someone near us mentioned that the wait for the bus to the airport was 1 1/2 -2 hrs...this resulted in a mass exodus to the taxi stand since most of us had to be on a flight in 2 hrs! It felt like we threw Matt, Jac & Sam into a taxi in a panic without a proper good-bye. Despite the fact that it ended up costing a lot more than we had anticipated, Eric and I made it to the airport with lots of time to spare. I'm not sure about the Hutchinsons since their flight was 30 minutes before ours.
The flight to Dublin was uneventful thank goodness. We felt very high class when we found our driver bearing a sign with my name waiting to take us to the hotel. He was very friendly and gave us lots of advice about what to see and do while we are here.
We were supposed to do a hop-on hop-off tour today but since they finish at 6 and we've just got into the hotel at 4:30, that isn't going to happen today. Instead, we are going to mosey over to Grafton St. and find a nice pub and get a good night's sleep before heading to Belfast tomorrow.