After
living in London for 3 months, the number one thing we've learned is that it
always, ALWAYS takes longer to get somewhere than you plan. Always. Even if you think you're giving
yourself a healthy amount of buffer time, you will still find yourself running
through a train station like a crazy person at some point during the journey
(or find yourself waiting for the train for an hour because you gave
yourself way too much buffer time).
On
Thursday night, we were right on schedule, waiting to catch a bus to the Stansted airport, where we'd catch
our plane to Dublin. According to schedule we were going to have a full two
hours at the airport before boarding began, and were feeling pretty smug. Then,
a bus pulled up and the driver told us that due to traffic, the buses were way
behind, and if you were catching a plane tonight, you should probably ride the
train. Dang! So we ran to the ticket office where we purchased train tickets to
get to the airport, but we wouldn’t arrive until 20 minutes before our gate
closed! After purchasing tickets, we had to catch the Tube to the correct train station, catch a
train to the airport, check-in at the desk with our passports, make it through
security, then find our terminal. When we got to the airport we ran around like
maniacs and made it in time, hallelujah!
Of course, we hadn't had enough
trouble for one night, so we got to the airport, pulled out a map, and began
walking to our hotel. After about 20 minutes, it became apparent that the map
to our hotel didn't do the distance justice and we weren’t quite sure we were
walking the right direction. So, we hauled our stuff back to the airport and
caught a cab. Then the cab driver got lost finding our hotel, which ran our
bill up an extra couple Euros (can I just say I don't know how people afford to
take cabs??). So much for being prepared right?
Don’t
worry, that’s not all. We had rented a
car for the 4-day weekend, but decided to opt out on the GPS because that would
save us money, and we had a map... (Keep in mind, our phones don’t
work without Wi-Fi, so we were doing this the old fashioned way with a big
paper map). We left Dublin after
spending Friday morning at Trinity College, and got on the wrong motorway (freeway). Rather
than turning around to get on the right road, I suggested we take a little
country road that would connect us to the correct motorway. Well, that tacked on about 2 hours of
additional driving, with lots of U-turns and “Are you sure”s from Spencer. On the plus side, the countryside was
beautiful! Finally, we made it to
Limmerick where we’d be spending the night…and we could not find our hotel. Finally, we stopped at a gas
station where an incredibly friendly manager pulled out a more detailed map and
showed us the way. Phew!
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| Look at those gorgeous fall colors! Notice I'm sitting on the left side of the car as the passenger?? |
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| Above right and left: The Long Room library at Trinity College was gorgeous. The books are not organized by topic or author, but by size so that it is more aesthetically pleasing! |
The
good news is we didn’t spend much time lost after that. I got better at reading the map (actually I
was pretty dang good by the time we left), and we learned to stay on the bigger highway roads
rather than blazing off onto the country roads for a “short cut”. The moral of the story is, if you’re going to
a country you don’t know, spend the extra money and get a GPS!
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| Every time we saw sheep on the road, I tried to take pictures, but they would run away! |
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| One of the highlights of our trip was climbing around on these castle ruins. |
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| Sometimes it was so cold, I sat in the car to enjoy the views... |
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| So cold! |
Aside
from the woes of travel, our time in Ireland was fantastic! Yes, it rained for about 36 hours straight,
but something has to keep the place looking so green! We spent Saturday driving around The Ring of
Kerry and Sunday driving The Dingle Peninsulas looking at all the scenery. On
our last day, Monday, we visited the Cliffs of Moher and got to enjoy a little
bit of sunshine before we made the 3 hour trek across Ireland back to
Dublin. (As a side note, if anyone is
ever planning to go to Ireland, we loved the West Coast where we spent most of
our time. Dublin is on the East Coast,
but we found we weren’t that interested in the city because most people go to
Dublin to drink. So, if you aren’t
interested in Dublin, you should just fly into one of the airports on the west
coast and buy yourself some more time!)
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| Everyone in Ireland paints their house or shop in these bright, fun colors! I loved it!!! |
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| Eating like cheapskates! Leftover cold pizza and PB&J made in the car for lunch! Mmmmm |
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| The Cliffs of Moher |
See that cute boy I'm hugging? He's a trooper! Our rental car was a manual and I'm not very proficient at stick shift...on top of that we had to drive on the "wrong" side of the road and the "wrong" side of the car, it cost extra to add me as a second driver, and I forgot my drivers license! So, Spencer drove every foot of our 1391.1 kilometer journey over the 4 days! Gosh I love this kid!
