The last day of the saga! Let me tell you all about it.
(Disclaimer: I don’t have many pictures of this day because not that much actually happened)
Morning
By now, you already know what my mornings consist of. Today was no different: wake up, breakfast, shower, brush teeth. The only thing that was different was that my roommates weren’t awake yet so I had to be quiet.
After the usual morning routine, I had to pack my bags because I was supposed to check out before 10 am. It was now 9:30, and still none of my roommates were awake. (Who goes to a foreign city and wakes up after 9?) This meant that I had to try and not make a lot of noise while packing my bags, which turned out to be more difficult than anticipated. My backpack was stored in a kind of storage space underneath the bed, and it was very creaky and noisy when you moved it. I’m sure I woke some of my roommates up at some point, but they didn’t really say anything about it.
Having packed, I headed downstairs to hand in my key card to my room.
Noon and afternoon
Now, my flight wasn’t until 7:30 pm, so I still had an entire day to fill. At this point in time, it was about 10 am. After checking out, I headed down to the locker room to store my heavy bag until I got going to the airport. Now, here comes the most exciting part of the day – at least, for me it was.
Getting tattooed!
Yes, you read it correctly. I got a tattoo. I feel like this requires a bit of a backstory, so here goes. A couple of months back, I was planning my trip to Dublin. Around this time, I was also really interested in tattoo designs, and I looked at a lot of them online. I then realized I wanted to use my own body as a canvas, and started looking into what I could get. I was sure I wanted a tattoo that wasn’t too big, as I didn’t want it covering my whole body.
After a lot of research and looking at different portfolios and tattoo explanations, I decided on a design.
This is the thunderbird. It has two proper meanings and one meaning I’m giving to it.
- The thunderbird is a symbol of the Native Americans, standing for sacred bearer of happiness unlimited. Infinite happiness. Who wouldn’t want that?
- In other Native American contexts, the thunderbird is a mythical creature meant to represent the best that mankind has to offer. It is said that the bird could throw lightning at creatures in the underworld and create thunder by flapping its wings. Here, it stands for power, dominance and an undefeatable fighting spirit.
My personal added meaning is the spirit of adventure. I got this tattoo on my first solo trip in Dublin. The point of this trip was to be adventurous and try things I’ve never done before. Whenever I look at my new tattoo, I’ll think back of the good times I had there and the courage I needed to get tattooed by myself, in a foreign country.
The actual tattooing
The day before, I had made an appointment at The Ink Factory at 10:30 am. So, when the clock struck 10, I left my hostel and started walking toward the tattoo shop. Well, I was there around 10:15. And around 10:30. And also around 11. Turns out, the artist that was going to tattoo me didn’t know he had an appointment at 10:30 and the studio normally didn’t open until 11.
He eventually did arrive, though. We worked out the design and size of the tattoo, had some trouble with some kind of printer and then headed down to the tattoo stool. I must say, I wasn’t quite as nervous as I thought I was going to be. It’s actually kind of relaxing to see a needle go into your skin hundreds of times per minute.
After about 40 minutes, I was a tattooed person. The guy covered it in some foil that had to stay on for three days and sent me upstairs to hear about the aftercare. I thanked him for my piece of art and headed up.
Afternoon
As I had nothing planned for my last day, I headed back to my hostel, where I sat down in the lobby and looked around, checked my phone and read a book. After all, I would still be in Dublin until 7:30. Eventually, I got up, took out my backpack from the locker and faced the rain once more. I walked to the bus stop and waited for a bus to the airport to arrive.
Once it got there, I got on, paid for the fare and sat down in the back. What followed was half an hour of looking outside in the rain and being irritated at the guy sitting across from me chewing gum and calling someone way too loudly. Either way, I arrived at the airport about 3 hours before my flight was due.
Late afternoon
I checked in, dropped my bag off at something called oversize luggage check-in and went through identification check and security. Having forgotten that I left a new spray can of deodorant in my bag, the staff took that away from me. I was quite sad about that.
After getting through all the formalities of airports, I sat down in some kind of lobby with my laptop and GoPro. I decided to use the time I had left to edit my travel video (not available on mobile devices because I’m using copyrighted music or something). When that was done, I had dinner at Burger King, because there was nothing else in sight.
When my gate got announced, I started a 10-minute walk there. The boarding went quite smoothly, and before we knew it, we were all seated on the plane. After sitting there for about half an hour, the pilot announced that there was a mechanical defect and we would all have to move out and transfer to another plane. This led to our flight leaving about an hour late, which isn’t really what you want when you know you won’t be home until 2 am. Anyway, other than that, the flight went smoothly and we arrived in Belgium around 11 pm.
Night
Before my trip, I had looked up how I would get back home the night of my return. I found out that there was one train leaving about three minutes after my flight was supposed to land. As the flight got delayed, I didn’t catch that one – and I probably wouldn’t have caught it if my plane was on time either. The next train, which was the last train of the day, left Brussels Airport at midnight.
By this time, my phone wouldn’t connect to the airport wifi and my mobile data wasn’t working, so I had to ask three Belgian girls to help me. One of them looked up which train I had to take on her phone, and I thanked them for their help.
This train wouldn’t go any further than another train station in Brussels, though. I had a connecting train to my home town about half an hour later. By now, I was tired and all I wanted to do was sleep. I got on the train home at 12:30 am and everything went smoothly from there.
When I got to my home town, I realized that there weren’t any more buses driving around at 2 am, so I had to take a taxi. Do all taxi drivers drive way too fast or is that just me? I wouldn’t know because I barely ever take taxis.
Anyway, that’s how I got home and that’s the end of my update post. There will be one or two more posts about Dublin in the near future, so there’s that to look forward to. Thank you for reading!
-S
