"I am thankful to be alive and that's only a slight exaggeration! We left our lovely hostel and saw some of the sights in the Burren. The coolest part to me was the portion where we could just wander on the rocks on the sides of the hills- so very interesting and awesome. We saw a cool portal tomb and some other ruins. It began raining again as we drove to Portloaise and Glendalough. The roads just kept getting worse and worse and were flooding over so much. We were on windy mountain roads and were terrified at times! We finally arrived in Glendalough as we realized that our gas indicator was flashing. We had been so distracted by the rain that we didn't notice we were running out of gas as well! We put in 6 liters and it still flashed!!! We had been going on fumes for who knows how long! Yikes! We put in more gas and went to the monastery and looked around in the pouring rain. I didn't even bring my camera because it was raining so much. When we got back to the parking area one of the lots (where we nearly parked!) was totally flooding. We booked it out of there and drove a better road back to Dublin to return the car. It was still pouring and we got drenched as we ran to the bus stop.
Finally headed towards our hostel only to quickly realize that all of the roads were flooding and the bus was having a hard time getting to all of the stops. The bus driver eventually told Karen that he was just trying to get the people off the bus as soon as he could because it was actually breaking down! There was also water sloshing along the floor of the bus. He dropped us off as close to our hostel as he could but we still had to go 5 or 6 blocks with the suitcase in the pouring rain.
When we got to our new hostel we immediately felt that it was not so nice as we previously thought. There was a really creepy drunk/high man in the lobby that they were trying to get out, but he kept getting let in by random people. We were brought to our room which turned out to be a mixed dorm and there were 2 guys and a girl staying with us. Also the bathroom/showers were co-ed as well. And dirty. We were so creeped out that we didn't even brush our teeth. No TP in the bathroom either. Our roommates ended up being nice enough, but all of our stuff was drenched and we didn't feel that comfortable leaving it all out with people that we didn't know. Also, changing was a bit of a chore!
We went and found some food and nearly decided to just sleep out in the rain, but ended up going back and ate in the disgustingly dirty kitchen area. There were a few people playing cards at the table next to us who told us all about how crime-filled this hostel is and how the police don't even bother coming anymore because they would get called numerous times a week! Nice. Litton Lane looks pretty awesome by comparison at this point!"
This was truly one of the scariest things I've experienced. But we survived! A while ago I looked up the hostel online to see if I had the name right and sure enough it was. I began reading some of the reviews and was just blown away by how universally horrible this place was! Karen and I read and read the reviews and laughed until we nearly cried...insane! Here's the link in case you think I'm exaggerating: Chelsea Hostel in Dublin- reviews!
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