St Pat's Pics!

We just had a rotten weekend for easter, unfortunately.
Lots and lots and lots of complaints.

And today the emails have started coming in.
Check some of this out:

"A letter of complaint was left at Paddy's Palace in Dublin to be passed on to you.
I have typed this letter and attached it to make sure it is not lost.

I would like some form of response to this by Thursday morning or I will be contacting the Advertising Standards Authority of both Ireland and the UK."

Yeah...we shredded that letter. I mean, we filed it...in the shredder.

"The service provided by your organization was not up to the expectations that you had advertised. In addition, Paddywagon did not fulfill what was promised to us as part of the tour. Your company has left me with the impression that it is disorganized, had little care for customer satisfaction, and quite possibly fraudulent. "

She's right about the disorganised part. I definately picked the wrong time to start working here. Of course the girl who made all this mess in the first place had buggered off for the weekend, leaving us to deal with it all.

The bottom line is, I don't care about these idiots. People who expect the world to be delivered to them on a silver platter will complain about anything they can. We were overbooked in our hostel up in Derry so some people got a free upgrade to a Bed and Breakfast and they even managed to find a way to complain about that!

You get what you pay for, and when you are tight and pay next to nothing for a trip then don't be surprised when it's not that good.

Meanwhile, we've been having phone calls and emails from people who just want to tell us how GREAT their tour was and how much fun they had and how they will be recommending us to everyone. So in the end one bus load of people is nothing to us. I love it when they say they will tell their friends not to go through us. Like 10 people makes a difference when we advertise everywhere and are on the 'top picks' on the Hostelworld Tour site and stuff like that. We're the biggest tour company in Ireland. Our main competitor (won't even speak their names) doesn't even HAVE a website!!! Plus their tours don't include accommodation or entry fees or anything like that. Lame!!! It's us or nothing, baby! Ok now I'm sounding cocky. I'm just so annoyed at all the stupid people and things I've had to deal with lately.
A million and one emails that come through the 'contact me' part of our website, asking information that is on the website right there in front of their faces! It's ridiculous how ignorant and blinkered some people are.

Anyway-enough vitriol.

Have some more pics!

We went into the pub and got a good view for the parade:


It was massive-crowds and performers and everything!


These guys had a good view too:


So did these ones!




Some of my friends from the hostel:


They had crossing points to duck across when the parade wasn't on. I got a cheeky photo looking down towards the advancing parade.


Us in the hostel before we left. I put up decorations, you can see some of them in the pic!


One of the girls here, Lucinda, commented on how I must have been 'a busy child' or something like that because I've been doing a lot of handy work around here lately. Like today I was changing old busted light bulbs, fixing the batteries in the safes, I bought a matt for the bathroom floor so we don't freeze our feet in the mornings (our room has it's own bathroom-score!) and today we cleaned out the staff fridge. The other day I fixed the door downstairs so it doesn't SLAM whenever people shut it-it really annoys the hell out of everyone upstairs when it's constantly slamming.
Next I'm going to buy some little colourful flowers to put in the flowerpots out the front door. They are just pots of dirt and clover at the moment. While shamrock is an Irish symbol it's not as nice as a flower in a hanging flower basket. I'm getting around to laminating and sticking up maps and themed-posters around the bare walls here too. Oh-I also made a 'closed' sign so when we are sitting behind the desk after work (using the computers or just chatting) people know not to bother us. Seriously, if I'm going to be living and working somewhere-I want it to be the best it can be and have character! It doesn't help that one of the girls here keeps throwing stuff out-she's worse than mum!!! I'm constantly 'losing' things because she takes them from where I've left them and moves them somewhere else. EXCUSE ME but it's not her stuff so she shouldn't be touching it!!! It's the spoken/written/well known hostel rule, you know!

I had to drive out to the airport today to pick up the Boss. He and his were coming back from a week long holiday in the Canary Islands. As you do. After waiting for an HOUR his flight finally came out. I knew it was their flight because everyone coming out was ridiculously brown and bronzed looking. Not the Boss. He's beeing checking his emails and calling the office non-stop on his whole holiday. I googled the Canary Islands and I found out that they are named after dogs, not birds and that the location 'Tenerife' that I've seen on posters in the windows of so many travel agents down here is there too. I had to pick him up because a) us girls here are more like personal assistants than receptionists and b) he parked his car in the short term parking for the whole week and didn't want to pay the fees so I had to do the trick of driving the shitbox car in, getting a ticket, giving the ticket to the Boss to drive his car out with, then pretending I lost my ticket to get a new one so I can drive out. They only charged me €7.50 for my lost ticket!!! Bargain!!! You can't even get one hours parking in Sydney Airport for that much-let alone a lost ticket!

Going up to Belfast tomorrow. I haven't been there for a while and Darren was so sweet he sent down an easter egg with one of our bus drivers who was passing through on her way down :-P I'll try and drag him out to Derry or somewhere-just to get away from the hostel. As relaxed and laid-back as Belfast Palace is, it's still his work and I'd hate to be stuck around my work all the time. I've been going a little stir-crazy in here for being stuck here more than a week straight. Usually I go up North once a week just to get away from the madness here. Might think about hiring a car but I don't think I'll be allowed one-need to find out off the other Aussies here how they go about hiring cars (they do it often) and how much it costs them.

Could have gone to Blarney Castle tomorrow and kissed the Blarney stone (the new driver for that tour is really nice) but I'll save that for another day when Darren can come too or when there are more people going. Lucinda has the day off and we would have done that but it can wait.

Oops-just getting a phone call from Darren.

Will write later!!!

xxx lisha
slan go foill!