More Ireland...

Whoo, I'm behind on posting. Will get lots up today...and pictures here's the driving from Dublin to Aran Islands story...

We left Dublin about noon, to head back to the airport to rent a car. Given my previous experiences renting (attempting to rent) in Paris, you think I’d know how this was going to go. Anyways, we get to the airport via the bus, find the car rental place, and let Meru go get in line to get our van.

According to Meru, and I don’t doubt him for a second, the devils that run the rental place told him we were getting a 6/7 seater van with manual transmission. (I should really not expect better from car rental places by this point.) He comes out of the little brick shithouse they call an office, keys in hand—but no folks, it’s not that easy. The keys are for a vehicle that seats five… but has two flip down seats in the trunk, meaning we have no space for our fairly significant pile of luggage, and one person would have to sit cramped in the trunk. Right. So after hours of back and forth and Meru standing in line and negotiating, and us sitting in a parking lot, we finally get the keys to a shiny black van, with six proper seats, and a trunk.

This whole process, aside from being frustrating, also sets us back a couple hours. We need to catch a ferry at 7:30 on the otherside of Ireland, and it’s now after 3pm. Four and a half hours to get across that tiny island, you scoff. Sure, it’s not big, but neither are the roads. They’re all skinny single lane highways that twist and turn through the countryside, and slip through a town every five minutes. This meant poor Meru was not only driving on the wrong side of the road, but he was doing it thru traffic, on winding roads, careening around corners and whipping around roundabouts—a driving skill he mastered amazingly quickly. (Too bad Edmonton got rid of all their traffic circles, or he could go show off.)

Even with Meru’s talents, by the time we hit Ireland’s west coast, it was fairly evident we were not gonna make it in time. So Tony calls the ferry people and says, hey, we got a van load of people… will you wait for us? And, they did.

So, we held up an entire ferry by about 15 minutes, but we made it. Thank god, because Meru nearly risked our lives with his speedy driving, and if we’d missed the ferry, we’d have had less time in our next stop, the super cool Aran Islands…to be posted... next.