[Dec 2022] Ireland Work Trip

 

Hi angels! It's been a long while hasn't it? I'm sorry for the lengthy and sudden hiatus but I really needed a break from creating content so I could focus on other things. My personal life got very overwhelming with work and more recently I lost my father so things have just been extremely chaotic and difficult for me offline. I'm doing my best to regain some semblance of normalcy and heal from everything so I decided maybe it's a good time to try and catch up on my backlog to distract me from my grief even if it's just for a little bit.

After my last post I did a lot of thinking and finally decided that I wanted to keep my blog but with more of a focus on lifestyle/diary-like entries instead of resource posts. I might still do the odd guide or tutorial here and there but for now I want to focus more on just capturing the feelings and memories in my life. I found that doing mostly gyaru resource content really burnt me out fast and made me not want to actually do anything so I hope to regain my passion for my hobbies by doing more things for myself. I hope you'll enjoy this change of pace too!

I literally have an entire year's backlog to catch up to so I apologize that you're going to be reading months and months of old content lmao. I really want to keep everything chronological so please be patient with me while I get all this out of the way 🙏🏻

My last few posts were in the weeks leading up to my first business trip in December. I had just gotten hired at my current job and they were flying me to Ireland for training!

I've never been abroad for work so this was a really new and exciting experience for me. I was so surprised they flew me business class and everything was paid for by my company 😱  I felt super blessed and was very well taken care of the entire time despite all the hiccups we experienced 🥰

I tried my best to vlog the experience so I won't ramble too much here about it. I'm still struggling with the footage for that video a lot so I'll update this post with it when I get a chance to finish editing and posting it. For now I'll just photo dump with brief commentary so we can get through this giant content backlog 😅

Day 1: Leaving YVR

My flight was around 6:30PM so I arrived at the airport a few hours early to get through security and I hung out in the lounge. I've never been in an airport lounge before and now I've been spoiled by them lol

My first flight was from Vancouver to Heathrow in London and I was supposed to make a transfer from there to Dublin.

My manager and I waited here for an hour or so and then headed to board our flight.

We flew Air Canada for this flight and this is what my seat looked like. I had my own little booth to sit in with some pillows, blankets, water, headphones, and a toiletries case.

The panel underneath my window had a handheld device for controlling the entertainment as well as adjusting my seat, though I could also use the touch screen on the side of my seat.

For dinner we got this menu to pick from. The options sound good and the food looked good too but tbh it still tasted like airplane food lol. I didn't really have any good in-flight meals during this entire trip but that's ok because all the other meals were fantastic.

I put on House of the Dragon and got ready for takeoff~

For dinner I picked the beef. It was NOT good. The blue cheese polenta was especially nasty not just in taste but also the texture was like eating a wet sponge. 

I loved the lemon tart dessert though, this was one of my favorite things I ate on all the flights.

Day 2: Arriving in London

I woke up for breakfast to this gorgeous blue view. The colors were so beautiful it was like being in a filter.

I actually get super motion sick when flying so I couldn't really eat this except for the fruit and bread. This was absolutely delicious and the fruit was so refreshing. I wish I could've finished the cheese but it was too strong for me to stomach.

We finally arrived above London and it was so cool to see the fog from the plane!

We got into the airport and had to scramble around for our transfer. Long story short the weather conditions were very bad so we didn't have a flight out of London from the Heathrow airport so we made our way over to the Gatwick airport to try and catch a flight there as they were still showing up online.

I don't normally drink sparkling water but this was very good!!

I was really tired so I didn't get many photos in London at all. I caught a shot of this factory on our way between airports and then immediately took a nap lol

When we got to the Gatwick airport it had started snowing so all the flights were cancelled 😭 We had to find a hotel and stay the night then try to get to Dublin again in the morning. The worst part about this was that all the hotels within a 20 mile radius of both airports were fully booked up so we had to scour the area for someone to take us in without a reservation. Thankfully we were able to get a last minute booking at the Hilton Cobham which was a lovely little stay.

We were stuck in the airport for hours and it was flooded
with so many people because everyone's flights were cancelled.

We had some nice airport food in between all the crazy flight nonsense. It literally took us an extra day and a half to get to Ireland so this is everything we ate in between all the transfers and flight cancellations.

This was super weird because I did not read that the 
ice cream was made with buffalo milk... it was sour lol

We saw a few cute toy stores so my manager and I both bought a little plush. I got this bean shaped monkey and he got a Paddington bear 🐵

By the time we got to the hotel it was already just past midnight so we ordered some room service and went straight to bed. 

I got mac n cheese and some lemonade. It wasn't that good lol

Day 3: Leaving London

I woke up absolutely exhausted still but we were determined to make it to Ireland. I had a bunch of fruit for breakfast and it was sooooooooo tasty.

Simple makeup to go suffer another 12 hours at the airport

We ended up spending another day in the airport because of cancelled flights but we were able to fly to Cork late that evening and arrived around midnight again. 

They had this cute Christmas display up at the airport

We spent the night at this gorgeous hotel called The Dean. This was one of my favorite places I visited and would definitely stay here again.

Since we arrived so late we had to order takeout. I tried
some butter chicken and was surprised to discover that
it was served with fries by default instead of rice or naan

Our travel buddies lol

My room was really cute! You'll get to see it in the vlog later cause I didn't take too many pictures. It was really late by the time I got back to my room and I had to shower then conk out for the night. We were catching a 9AM train to Dublin so we had to be checked out very early in the morning.

Day 3: Arriving in Dublin

Our train ride was about 3 hours from Cork to Dublin. We didn't have time for breakfast and they didn't serve food on the train so I was starving when we got there 😭

Leaving the train station

Not sure what this building was but I thought it looked cool 😅 

Thankfully once we arrived we were able to immediately check in to our hotel without any delays then we went straight to lunch with our coworker from the Dublin office.

We had lunch at this lovely little café near the office. 

This was a Greek chicken sandwich and it was amazing!!

I can't show too much of the inside space because of privacy and security reasons but here are some of the public facing spaces in our Dublin office.

Day 4-7: In Dublin

Since we lost so much time during our travels the first few days we really didn't get to do much outside of work. I managed to get out to see the shopping area near my hotel. There wasn't really a lot that was interesting to see but it was nice to explore anyways.

I saw these cute bags at Penneys but unfortunately
my luggage was already too full so I didn't buy one

The lights were so pretty on this building

I had a nice dinner with my team at this restaurant called Mister S. It's a steakhouse specialty spot and it was absolutely delicious! They served a lot of different types of beef but the one we tried was basically a retired milk cow. It was so interesting cause the the fat parts of the steak tasted like cow milk! I had never had anything like that before 🧐

We went to this cute café near my office for lunch. This was one of the best meals I had. It was also the first time I've ever had sour cream with an omelette and it was surprisingly tasty!

For dinner one night I picked out a restaurant called Bloom Brasserie for all of us to go to. We were a bit early so we hit a bar nearby. I ordered a ginger ale but they didn't have that so I got this ginger beer instead and it was really good!

This was my #1 favorite meal of the trip. Every course was absolutely perfect and there wasn't a single thing I didn't like. My Irish coworkers said the atmosphere was very "old money" but it in a tasteful way so take that as you will 😂 I just thought it was rather cozy.

I got to try sushi in Ireland and I have to say I really feel so blessed to have the Japanese food scene that we have in Vancouver because this was awful.

This meal was so dissatisfying AND it cost like $30(?)CAD I felt so disrespected LMAO 💀

The final meal we had as a group was at this Michelin guide recommended spot called Delahunt. This was a rather confusing meal for me because I felt a lot of the flavors were not for me. It was an interesting experience and I really enjoyed dining with the people who came but the food was a little too big brained for me to enjoy 😓

I don't know what it is about bread in Ireland but all of it fucking slaps.

This fish had some weird funky flavor to it but otherwise it was nice.

This was awful and tasted like foot.

This was my favorite course, the ice cream part was like cereal milk
and the cake itself was so delicate and not too sweet.

For my last lunch I went to a café called Queen of Tarts. It was a cute little place tucked away on a small side street which was still covered in cobblestone! It was so hard to walk to because the stones were super slippery from the cold but I liked how much character it added to the area.

The view as I crossed the bridge

This was so good!

This was my first time trying a "proper" breakfast and it was so good! I absolutely loved the bread and it was super filling.

Leaving Dublin

On the last night I decided to head back to the hotel and stay up because my flight home was very early. I ordered room service for dinner and chatted on discord with my gal pals. I got the Guinness stew and hot wings.

I was really taken aback by how large the chicken wings were. These were also not "hot" wings they were kind of a weird sweet barbecue kind of taste which really threw me off.

I know room service is a luxury but I was so shocked to see that this meal costed almost $65(CAD). Definitely thankful my trip was covered by company 😱

The flight back home was much less stressful. We had one layover in Toronto before getting back to Vancouver but it was much easier to deal with than all the canceled flights in London.

The view leaving Ireland was gorgeous!

I forgot to take a photo of the menu so I downloaded it from my plane app. I felt a lot better on this flight but I still didn't really like any of the food besides the fruit and dessert.

Toronto was snowy when we arrived but I was surprised to see how dense the city was. I've never been to Toronto before so this was my first time seeing it.

We spent most of our layover in the lounge. I was kind of hungry so I went to try some of the food and it was so gross! I felt like none of it was seasoned which was confusing to me cause how can you fuck up salsa?

The flight from Toronto to Vancouver was difficult because I wanted to be home so badly and we just kept suffering delays both before and during the flight. The food on this flight was really gross I barely ate any of it.

I couldn't tell you what this was even if I tried but it was vile.

This tart saved the flight for me once more.

And with that I was finally home! I was so glad to see my boyfriend and cuddle with my dog in my bed again. I didn't think I would be so homesick after just a week but the airport scrambles really took a lot out of me mentally so I spent the next week recharging in bed.

If you got this far thank you so much for reading! I apologize for sitting on this content for so long. I really missed writing here and hope that I can finally get through this massive backlog and bring this blog back to life!

See you next time~