The meandering to Kilkenny had begun towards Prestwick Airport. A fraught drive down the A77 gave me about half an hour to spare to do those niggly little things like park the car, check in and board the plane – for my last travel through Prestwick, I arrived about two minutes after the gate closed, so props to the Ryanair staff that day for letting me on the flight at all!

An uneventful flight across the Irish Sea took about 40 minutes including the push back from the stand at Prestwick. While we were waiting for our departure clearance, some poor embarrassed Irish lass had her birthday announced over the tannoy by the first officer, while her friends sang Happy Birthday to her – I still don’t know if they expected anyone else on the plane to join in (none of us did). Sabrina’s flight was delayed, so I made my way to pick up the hire car. Had a bit of hassle with Hertz for some reason, so we nabbed a pretty good Marea estate from Sixt, which worked out at around €240 all-in for the four days we’d have the car, including the cost of the petrol at the end.

However … having a car meant driving, and having to drive meant directions. I had some directions from the Airport to our hotel on Bow Street, but the whole of central Dublin is being ripped up to make way for a new tram system, which totally threw us off our game. We drove right past the right side street to take us to the hotel, and ended up going on an impromptu tour of Dublin by car 🙂

We got there in the end, natch, and discovered that the hotel was – to quote Sabrina – all furcoat and no knickers.