In Irlande (Ireland)

Made it to beautiful Ireland with only minor discomfort.  Of course that’s to be expected if you are on an airplane, so not much you can say. We can complain a little. We booked our flight in September and reserved our seats at that time. Not wanting to climb over people to go to the potty, we reserved 2 seats in row 14 (a&b) located on the side, not the middle. American Airlines decided we would be much more comfortable if we sat in row 32 seats e & f located in the middle of the plane. I didn’t check the seats when the boarding pass was printed so no sense in trying to change once we were boarding.  Let that be a lesson to us all, double check the seat assignment to make sure the airline didn’t just move you. I’m sure there was a good reason other than Mr & Mrs Dork wanted our seats.

Landed in Dublin right on time and breezed through customs as if it wasn’t there. No bag check, just presented the landing card and walked out. We headed off to Eurocar for our rental which was a little surprising. We rented a Ford Focus that I prepaid $247.00 for the month,  that of course is without CDW insurance. Yes my friends, Ireland is well aware of the extra cash to be made by issuing insurance. Short story,  $1300.00 later and we’re off! Amazing  that after not sleeping for 20+hours, it didn’t hurt, kinda numb at that point. If you’re wondering why I didn’t buy the insurance earlier that’s because I didn’t find out until later that Visa doesn’t cover car rentals in Ireland, just as they don’t cover car rentals in Jamaica, Israel, and one other questionable country. So just for trivia sake, that’s what those countries have in common!

Pretty easy drive from Dublin to Cleggan, mostly freeway or motorway here in land of the Shamrock. Found the grocery store, bought our days supply of goodies and headed to the house.  We arrived a little early so we went down to the harbor  for lunch where we had a huge meal of fish and chips at Oliver ‘ s which next time we’ll share.

After lunch we waddled back to the house, not many surprises just a little less clean than expected. Pretty obvious that sweeping was around rather than under most of the furniture. Still not bad, plenty of room and the bedding and baths were clean. Spent the rest of the day trying to stay awake by playing cards and drinking wine. We managed to make it until about 8 30 pm then crashed for the night.

UPDATE:Damn! Just bought a trash bag (need to place these at the end of the street for collection) and it cost 7EU or $8.55, for a damn trash bag! Unbelievable!

Tomorrow we journey!