Many people have asked how our trip to Ireland was. I feel that it would be best presented in a the format of an instruction manual. I think you will get the gist of the trip in this manner.
RENTAL CAR
When traveling to Ireland, you will likely need to rent a car. This is a country where you will drive on the left side of the road, and have your steering wheel on the right side of the car so this is something that you will need to adjust to. If you are frugal, you will also be checking out the cheapest rental car there is, which means it has no air conditioning and it is a manual, or stick shift car. It is also called a Ford Fiesta, which will make you wonder what kind of fiesta you might have in it. An intimate one, to be sure, as it is a tiny car. You will also need a GPS or SAT/NAV system because you will be lost and could potentially not be found. This is worth the extra expense. The phones you have from the United States will work in Ireland but you will be "roaming" so it is best to just get the GPS. You will name her "mappy." Your car insurance does not transfer overseas so you will need to have some kind of insurance on the car. You will also try to "frugal" your way to paying for the least expensive insurance. The rental car agent will try to convince you to get the full insurance. You will insist on getting the lesser insurance but when he tries to put a $1600 deposit on your credit card and it gets rejected, you realize that you will need to cut your losses and just take the full insurance even if it doubles the price of the car rental.
Once inside, you will start to wonder about the last time your husband drove a stick shift with his left hand. You will be certain that it wasn't this decade.
You realize that the GPS cannot find the place that you need to go. You don't want to use your US phone because it will cost extra money each day to use it. You decide to do the best you can with the information you have and start your trip.
You begin the three hour drive to your friend's house. You aren't on the road long before you realize that you will likely die in the Ford Fiesta. You realize that this road trip will cause more gray hairs to escape your tense brain. You comprehend that this road trip will be the culprit of much contention and fighting as you and your spouse equally hate each other's driving habits, compounded with new roads, new types of traffic, and a new cockpit in the car. Driving on the left hand side of the road is not that hard to adjust to, it is the things that you naturally do when you come to a stop light that make it confusing. You will want to make a right handed turn but suddenly it isn't protected. You will have to sit at the stop light and really think through what is about to happen. "I am making a right hand turn; I am in the left lane; I will have to watch for cars on both sides of the street because I have to cross all lanes to get to the left lane; I will also have to remember to change the clutch back to first gear so that I don't kill the car." You will feel those gray hairs start to poke through your skull because you are stuck in the passenger seat and can't control every step in the process. You will try to suppress the words that you are thinking but you just aren't that good of a wife. You will both exhaust each other with tension by the end of the day in this tiny party car.
You will also be grateful for the full insurance that you forked out. You will consider calling the Irish Hertz car rental guy to tell him thank you for insisting that you get it, but then you remember that you can't understand him very well and that you can't use your phone anyway.ARRIVAL
You will make it to your friend's house 5 hours later with a few miracles tacked on to the trip. You start to realize that Ireland is beautiful and green and pastoral, but it is not America. You will want to stop for lunch but you only find one McDonald's on the side of the road next to a horse that is tied to the guardrail. It will be made known to you later that you cannot just stop anywhere and grab a bite to eat. There are many areas of the country that have no services and you will want to ensure that you have enough gas and food in case you end up in one of these areas for a bit of time. In fact, if you don't realize that you are almost out of gas and it is after 10:00 pm, you could be in a pickle, as many gas stations shut down at 10:00 pm. There may have been one night where you were certain that you were going to have to sleep in your Ford Fiesta until the gas station opened at 7:00 am the next morning. This is where your prayers become more fervent and answered in the eleventh hour - literally.
THINGS TO DO
You will see many things in Ireland... sheep, green fields, more sheep. You also will see some castles, kiss the Blarney Stone (maybe), and take your kids to a pub. There will be few places to park so most of your pictures are from your car as you whiz by.
Irish Pub. My kids were not a fan of the food.
You will go eat dinner in a castle and visit with a "cheeky" Irish woman named Helen. She and your husband will be very chatty while you sit across the table trying to understand the English that she is speaking. This is confusing to you because you don't usually have a problem understanding accents and yet you can't comprehend when she uses words like "cutlery" instead of "silverware" in her heavy dialect. Also, everyone will want to ask you about Trump. But then they will stop you before you can say anything and give an excuse for why you don't need to answer them.
Bunratty Castle
Jeremy's cheeky friend Helen, with her friend.
You will want to try yule log. You will like yule log and eat more of it than you need because you are on vacation in a foreign country.
You will want to try Christmas pudding, black pudding, and white pudding. None of these are particularly good nor are they an actual pudding.
You will get to the Blarney Castle in hopes of kissing the Blarney Stone, which up until this point you thought was something like a green emerald or some type of gem. Instead you will learn that it is a piece of rock that looks like every other piece of rock used to build this castle. You will make it to the top of the castle and kiss the Blarney Stone hoping for more eloquence in your speaking but then think about the ridiculousness of this superstitious act, especially when you have to risk your life to do it. You notice that since you have done this act, your ability to speak has actually diminished and you hope and pray that it is the jet lag from too much traveling.
In order to kiss the stone, you have to bend backwards over the wall, hold on to the metal braces and reach as far as you can upside down to kiss a rock. There are actually 2 guys who sit up there all day to assist people coming to kiss the rock. In America, this would probably be a government job.
Blarney Castle
Blarney Castle
Downtown Cork, Ireland has cool architecture.
Intermission from this lengthy instruction manual. I have never been into a unisex bathroom before, as far as I can recall. I have been in a unisex bathroom where there is only one stall and you lock the door, but never one where you walk into the same bathroom followed by your husband, or any other man needing to use it. This was a weird experience. We don't even follow each other into the bathroom at home. When I came out of the stall and saw my husband, I thought, "What are you doing in here?"... Oh, right.
These are the Cliffs of Insanity, from the Princess Bride. They are locally known as the Cliffs Of Moher. (Pronounced like the American word 'more')
See, I was there.
While in Ireland you will attend a child's Christmas Program. This will be the first of its kind for you because although the kids are dressed in their Christmas sweaters, they are preforming a gymnastics routine to 80's music. There is nothing that says "Christmas" more than songs by Queen or Michael Jackson's "Beat it."
(They did sing some Christmas songs at the end.)
You will want to go to the Guinness factory so that you can refuse any alcohol that they offer you and everyone wonders why you are there, but it is closed for the day.
There are many Irish Crosses around. We went on a walk around the back country roads sporting our "mandatory" neon safety vests. (That is a joke. My friend insisted that we wear them in order to go on the walk. One neighbor commented on how we couldn't be missed.)
You should look for Fairy Doors while on walks. They are hidden in the trees. You can also order them online. http://www.theirishfairydoorcompany.com/
They are super cute.
And lastly, you will return your party car, thank it for the memories, and head to the airport. You will get a double screening at the airport when you leave a Snack Pack of butterscotch pudding in your backpack and the over-tired security agent will be thrilled that you have ventured out today.
You will board your plane where you will have individual TV time where you can watch movies or play games for the entire 8 hours on the flight. And you will, because you paid for this. Besides, if you sleep then you might miss the food they bring you every 2 hours, which you have also paid for. This might be the only time you wish for delay in traveling. When you arrive back in America, your brain will hurt but you can head to a fast food restaurant where you can drown yourself in a large soda and hamburger the size of your face. Unfortunately, they don't take the Euro's that you forgot to spend so now you are stuck with money you can't use - at least not until you head to Rome in March.
Ireland was peaceful, beautifully green, and surprisingly warm, but I love America.
Happy Christmas!
1 comment:
So amazing! Thank you for sharing!!!
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