The Adventures of the Restless: Welcome to Dublin

Today started out with Charlie and I waking up at 5:30 in the morning. I blame the anticipation for this awful time. After finalizing the packing and cleaning up the house, we headed to the airport. The flights overall were pretty uneventful. He had a longer layover in Chicago than we expected, but it was only about an hour longer - due to a rain storm.
After the gruesome 15 hour travel day, we finally landed in Dublin at 10:30 in the morning - which was 3:30AM back in good old Utah. (Mind you, we didn't really sleep during any of this travel - maybe an hour). Knowing we had a full day ahead of us - there was no time for sleep. We collected our luggage, and headed to pick up our rental car. That in itself was a humorous lesson...
Before we reserved the car rental, we knew that we would be driving on the opposite side of the road, and the that the vehicle would be manual - not automatic. When we got the car though - it took us about 10 minutes just to figure out how to get it in reverse. LOL, I bet we were a sight to see driving around in the parking lot for all that time. From there, we used the GPS to get us to Isaacs Hostel - where we would stay for the night. Though we drove past it a couple times, we were still learning how to navigate the roads and were in no hurry. We got a pleasant surprise when we arrived. Take note - we were fully expecting to get to the hostel and realize it wasn't the ideal situation - and head for a hotel. However, it was a lot better than we expected. The atmosphere was great. The place was packed with a bunch of travelers like us, same age, just looking to explore the world.
Being the middle of the day, we headed out for a walk around Dublin. We stopped at 'The Celts' bar for some authentic Irish food (yes, I had 'bangers and mash' for the sheer desire of saying 'I had bangers and mash') and it was delicious! I had my first real, Irish Guinness beer, and reveled in the glory of it... LOL - to be proceeded by more street wandering and beer. (NO, We didn't get drunk or even buzzed - I'm far to paranoid for that).
Anyhow, we have been awake for 30 hours straight and are exhausted. Just a brief post and some pictures below to check in. Tomorrow, we will be driving up to Northern Ireland to see a lot of the landscapes and scenery - to be posted about later. For now, I will leave you with some of our photos of our first (tiring) day in Dublin.