Watch Out Dublin, Here I Come

So I arrived in Dublin on the ferry at 6am this morning. Had to walk through some form of customs on the way in. I say "some form" because it wasn't much. One old fella that was asking people "what's your nationality." If you replied with an EU member nation (and he believed you) he waved you in, otherwise you had to step aside and wait for those folks to filter through (didn't take long). I was the first in line for non-EU nationals. He greeted me and apologized for the wait, which was by normal customs standards almost non-existent. As he was looking over my passport he noted, "a lot of those folks [referring to the EU nationals] are drunk enough that I could have turned them away" (remember it's 6am). He followed this up with "I guess Ireland's the only place that lets you in when you're drunk. Have a nice stay, thanks for your patience." ha!

I went directly to the B&B I'm staying at to drop my bags and then intended to grab some breakfast. On the walk to the B&B, though, everything seemed to be closed (it was near 7am by now). I asked the guy manning the counter at the place whether he could recommend somewhere close by that served good breakfast. He looked at me quizzically and said, "It's too early."

Ok, no breakfast yet. Let's go for a walk to the city centre and see if we stumble across something open on the way. Luckily there was a convenience store open that had a coffee stand inside, so I at least was able to have an Americano. I continued on to the city centre and made it a point to check the signs on places to find out when they open. Many of them opened at "10ish." That is exactly their words, no paraphrase :). Even the breakfast at my B&B isn't available until 8:30.

After not having gotten much sleep last night and with the intention of hitting the pubs tonight this will probably end up being a good thing tomorrow.