student savings

Tags

Bus, Dublin, leap card, luas, money, saving, student, student savings

Being a student again means lots of extra work but it also has it’s benefits: student savings! So make the most of the next year I decided it was time to get myself a student Leap Card.

Like the Oyster Card in London, the Leap Card is the perfect way to use public transport within and around Dublin. One of the main benefits of using a Leap Card is you pay less per trip. An additional bonus is you don’t need to carry around loose change when you want to use the bus (you don’t get back change on Dublin buses, all you get is a paper slip that you can exchange for money at headquarters – Dublin Bus makes more than a million euros every year on unclaimed refunds – so most people try an pay exact fares).

And since I am now the owner of a student leap card I get even more savings. I may still have to pay the same amount per fare however the daily and weekly cap on the card has gone way down. No matter how many buses I use in a day I’ll never pay more than 5€ (normally 6.90€), and in a week never more than 20€ (normally 27.50€). If I combine Luas (the Dublin tram system) and bus that goes slightly up but I still pay 25% less than with a regular Leap Card.

Wonderfully it doesn’t end there, by waving the Student Leap Card in certain high-street shops you get reductions and special offers. Saving 20% here and 15% there will definitely make a difference in the long run. Student savings – a perk for all the hard work.

a few euros saved with these two cards

dining out

Tags

changing trains, Dublin, friends, friendship, lots of laughs, love, luas, miscellaneous, random, switch platforms, thoughts, tram line, travel

Yesterday evening I took the Luas, the Dublin tram line, out to Tallaght, a Suburb on the outskirts of Dublin. I was on my way to have a home-cooked dinner with friends, a  girly night filled with food, talk and lots of laughs.

I have been able to read since the age of about five or six, so for most of my life being able to understand what letters mean when they are put into a certain order has been part of my daily routine. But for what ever reason I neglected to read the few letters telling everyone that the Luas I was on wasn’t going to Tallaght but was heading to Saggart, a little to the west of Tallaght and definitely not where I wanted to go.

The ride took much longer than I anticipated anyway, but when we reached the Belgard Luas stop a crackling voice muttered something about changing trains to Tallaght but between the chatter on the tram, the weird speaker noise and the not paying much attention I didn’t quite catch the gist and as the Luas moved out off the station we went right instead of left.

It didn’t take that long for me to realize that I was heading in the wrong direction, but as I wasn’t quite sure I waited for a few stops before I got out, switch platforms and return to then junction. Not a watch wearer makes me often unaware of time but I had the niggling feeling I was very late.

Lucky for me it didn’t take that long to return onto the right track and when I finally reached my destination I was rewarded with hugs, big smiles and only a hint of ridiculement. But who doesn’t like an anecdote, even if you are at the butt-end of the joke?

But the whole incident did make me wonder about how sometime in life we have to backtrack, return to a point before we get off the path we wanted to be on all along. Sometimes we are just that little bit to preoccupied with other things to really look where we are going, sometimes we don’t understand or can’t identify the hints given that we are heading in the wrong direction, and more often than not we need a few stops to admit we made a mistake.

But if we take a step out of the situation and take a few steps back we can return to what the route we wanted to take and if we are really lucky the reward makes us feel good about ourselves, hugs and smiles greeting us and making us feel welcome.