Daniel in Dublin – Do Dublin Hop On Hop Off
What better way to see the city than on the top of an open top double decker bus? Great idea, right? So, with that in mind I set off to explore the city with Do Dublin and once again I was joined by my colleague Anna. We met up and headed for the pick-up point on O’Connell Street, I grabbed myself a coffee and away we went. It was a beautiful Irish morning, not too hot not too cold, Goldilocks would have been delighted with it. Since the weather was on our side we headed straight upstairs and for the back seats, after all that’s where the cool kids sit.
The tour itself is automated and can be received in multiple languages through a headset but the standard is English which is played through the speakers of the bus. Every now and then our driver John would pop on and give us a bit himself and although I was happy to pick up a few new facts here and there from the automated tour, it was John that stole the show with his jokes, stories and anecdotes. He was a proper character.
The bus brought us down many of the well-known streets of Dublin as well as some not so well-known ones. It’s always nice to see somewhere in your city you’ve never seen before. Anna and I were loving it, telling jokes and taking selfies and then right on que, the rain came. It wasn’t so bad at first, a light drizzle. Being locals and well adept to the rain we decided to hold our ground. We weren’t going to be forced from our cool kid seats at the back by what looked like a light shower at best, so we stayed put and allowed ourselves to be rained on a wee bit. We even had a laugh at the tourists who had run from their seats to seek shelter further up the bus. “Pfft, tourists” we said, “not able to play in the rain with the big boys” we said, and then just like that the real rain came and there we were two eejits down the back of the bus on our own getting absolutely belted out of it.
Wouldn’t you know it, the people we had made fun of from running from a bit of drizzle had taken the last seats that offered any kind of shelter. There was one seat that was half covered by the roof/half out in the open, so we ran for that, better than nothing right? Wrong! I was on the inside seat close to the window and whatever way the roof was above me it would collect a big pool of water and release it all at once onto my legs. I was drenched. At least Anna had a big ol’ coat and hat to protect her.
After a few minutes of this we retreated downstairs to stand since there were no seats there either. It wasn’t long after that the rain started to die down until eventually regressing to the wee drizzle that began the whole thing, so we headed back upstairs. By now a bunch of people had hopped off at Guinness’ so we grabbed some seats under the shelter, fool me once and all that.
Eventually the rain stopped altogether so we went back to our original cool kid seats down the back, only. The tour itself was brilliant! Can’t blame them for the rain. I loved John’s commentary and personality. I did come away with a few bits of new information I’ve added to my own tours so I can’t recommend it enough, just pack coat, a hat, gloves and umbrella and some swimming goggles if you plan on doing it…. just in case.
Daniel & Anna