Roadtrip Through the Old Country

After the manic festivities of Porto, we sought the quiet solace of Megan's ancestral home land, Ireland. Yet another in a long line of oneway plane trips brought us to Dublin, where we picked up a car, if you can call it that.

After numerous unsuccessful rebellions staged by its people over hundreds of years, Ireland finally won its independence from the Brits in 1921. Too busy fighting the ugly civil wars that followed, they never got around to learning to drive on the right, and correct, side of the road.

On most normal vacations, fighting your way on and off the plane, retrieving your luggage, locating the rental shuttle, standing in line, signing a rental contract and getting the keys to your rental car ends the most frustrating part of the journey. When you sit down in the car and the steering wheel is missing, this is not the case.
Armed with a road atlas that subsequently proved to be inadequate, we set off into the countryside, Brandon cursing madly and succeeding in not killing us, though barely. The sensation of everything you know about driving being not only wrong, but dangerous, is an unsettling one. The driver did the best he could, with the copilot occassionally chiming in with a well-timed, "Other side of the road, honey." Tempers were short, but no one threatened divorce, and after a few hairraising days, things improved dramatically.