Summer 2008 Trip to Ireland and Croatia

We arrived in Dublin early in the morning. We were staying at the Ashbourne Marriott a few miles away from the airport, and they had a free shuttle that would take us from the airport to the hotel. I called the hotel from the airport, and they arranged a shuttle to pick us up. Check-in time was 3 PM, I believe. We arrived around 10 AM and asked if we could check in early. The hotel staff was very accommodating and said they would try to get us a room for early check-in. By the time we arrived in the hotel almost 4 hours earlier than the scheduled check-in time, our hotel room was ready for us! We were too tired to go to Dublin the day we arrived, so we took a nap once we settled. When we woke up, we decided to go to the Ashbourne Village, a small town just a couple of miles from the hotel. It's not a tourist town, so it was nice to see what the Irish suburbs look like. We got something to eat at a McDonald's, went to the grocery store to pick up some bread for my daugther's peanut butter and jelly sandwiches, and a couple of other things. Later that day, we decided to go to the hotel's pool. We stayed in the pool until closing. I believe we left the pool at 9 PM, and the sun was still not down! We took a bath and tried to go to sleep because we had a scheduled Dublin bus tour for the next day.