Day 9, Getting PPS and Bank Account

Getting the PPS Card 

One of the key things to start living in Ireland is to get the PPS (Personal Public Service) number. This number will be required in every official form you fill. Without getting a PPS you are almost a tourist in the country.

Here is a link to the website which explains what you required and how to follow the process.

Key points to remember are

• Book an appointment before showing up at the PPS office
• Bring all the documents requested as in the website. Missing documents will require you to book another appointment for another day. 
• In my case all documents required to be printed documents. Documents which are handwritten and signed or verified might not get accepted. If there is a possible way to get them printed, take printed version as well. 

But the appointment is a short appointment. If everything is okay you will receive the PPS card within 1 week.

Setting up the Bank Account

Banks in Ireland charge for everything. Does not matter which bank you pick they charge money for all kinds of transactions. They are not like usual banks who want to make customers. Even though the banks are private banks they operate more towards like a government office. You will require all sorts of documents before you getting a bank account. The process will take less time once you provide all documents.

Pick any bank, and just show up there. That's more than enough to get an account. But since they ask for 101 documents, it's good to call them before hand. 

Day 6, St Patrick's Day & Festival

St. Patricks's Festival Parade
St Patrick's parade is a "must attend event", in Ireland. I was lucky to witness the parade on my 1st week. The organizers have done a lot of preparation to support the 0.5 million people from all around the world. The Proper organization has made it into a smooth experience. As I said there are over half a million people watching the parade from the street side. It's best to be there 1 hour early so you can find a spot in the front row.

(Photo Credits stpatricksfestival.ie)

I stayed at the middle point of the parade route. It took around 45 mins for parade's front to reach that point. The waiting till will allow you to enjoy people watching. There are many tourists and locals who are dressed in green with happy faces to see. Here are some highlights from the parade. 

Day 5, Swimming & Roadside walking

Swimming
Swimming was part of my weekly life in Finland. The Finnish cities maintain public swimming pools in very high quality. They clean them to the best level and renovate them quite often. Hence my expectation for swimming pools was quite high. Even tough I'm going to complain a bit about swimming pool quality, I have just been to one place. Maybe it's not the best.

Guinness Swimming pool in Dublin (Photo credits espose.net)

I went to the Guinness Bicentenary Centre - Swimming Pool, which was the closest option I found from where I currently live. I'll start with the good. The pool is clean. But the whole property is quite old. It seems like it has not been renovated for last 25 years. Still, the pool had a sauna (which is not as hot as a Finnish sauna), which was also maintained well. Steam room smelled old. All in all, I would prefer a swim in any Finnish pool over this one.

But after a quick google search, I found more nice looking pools in Dublin. Following is one of those options I found. I'll write an update in future, once I visit this one. 

The Spencer Health Club pool in Dublin (Photo credits thespencerhealthclub.com)

Roadside Walking

Dublin is a small but very busy city. It's the same amount of people as Helsinki lives there. But still, somehow it feels quite busier than Helsinki. The number of crossings available is less, or I feel it as less. The crowd and less number of crossings make people cross roads from everywhere. The roads are busy (on office times) with buses, cars, cyclists and people who are crossing roads. Somehow all work together and it works. Drivers give space for cyclists (i think) and for people who are crossing roads. People also knows when to cross.

One of the very good things I saw in Dublin was that painted information about which way to look. As they are driving from the other side of the road, this helps quite a lot for tourists and busy people who are running to work.

(Photo credits Eve Andersson @ eveandersson.com)

Day 2, Wonder Around

Breakfast & Lunch
After a good amount of sleeping, I made some breakfast for myself using this stuff I bought from Tesco yesterday. The day was sunny and warm. I took a walk from where I live to the center.

I had few items on my list as to do. It was to get some phone connection with Internet and to get a bus card. While I was walking towards the center, I got into small by the road just to see some open space. Which finally lead me to a nice small restaurant called Third Space, Smithfield Cafe & Social Space. Where I found a very cozy environment with quite nice food.

Phone Connection

The advice I got from a person who knows around was to go to Grafton Street and look for phone shops. Everyone in Dublin knows this place. So it's very easy to find. If you have already been shopping that's exactly the same street I'm talking about here. Then the first phone shop I saw was a Vodafone shop. I just wanted to buy a temporary connection until I get my bank account and PSS numbers sorted out. Vodafone shop was good enough to get me connected within 10 mins. As for the prepaid package, it was €20 for 5GB data and whatever number of calls within the network. I had to pay €30 as extra 10 for the sim card, which you get as balance later. 

Bus Card

Buying this card will save 20% of your bus fair and more importantly you don't need to carry money in cash with you to the bus. You can also rent out city bikes, which I haven't tried yet. The bus cards were sold in grocery shops called Spar. You just need to ask the cashier to give you a new card and top up with some money. I think there is a possibility of the seasonal card, which I don't have much idea of yet. The card is called leap card.

Temple Bar

This is not a single bar. It's an area in Dublin. In that area, you can find a lot of pubs with music and jammed packed people (not at day time). Here are some photos of The Temple Bar, and some fake one. 

Day 1, The Arrival

Before I write more about arriving in Dublin, I'll write few lines about what this blog is about. I just (yesterday) moved from Helsinki, Finland to Dublin, Ireland. I hope to write this blog daily or weekly with my updates. This will not be a travel wiki, this is just what I did and what happened to me.

Arrival at Dublin Airport & Getting to the Center 

It's same as other airports. Not big as Heathrow airport, but organized and easy enough to get you from airplane to the taxi/bus outside. In my case, I came with 6 pieces of luggage. I did not want to carry them by bus. So I took a taxi from airport to the city center (actually to Dublin 8) where my accommodation was booked. The taxi price was €21 which is reasonable compared to Finnish taxi prices. 

Eating out and Buying Groceries 
My flight to Dublin took more than 8 hours, including the transits. When I arrived around 6 pm at my house I was tired. I just walked to the street and found a traditional fish and chips place called The Fryery. The food was cooked after ordering, and everything was freshly made. According to the Finnish heath standards, food is really oily, which means they taste good!

Then I walked around and found a Tesco. It's small/average size grocery shop with things you mostly need (For Finns it's like Alepa, and for Sri Lankans, it's like Cargills) . Pricing was not the cheapest. I did not see any brown/black bread in the market. For Finns and for a person who lived there long enough rye bread and dark bread is a big part of life. Even Finland picked rye bread as their national food.