Motoring Madness

For the last 3 days we’ve been driving Ireland in a bright red manual transmission Mini Cooper.  Fun little car; however, something to consider if you/we ever “hire” a car again in Europe – GET THE NARROWEST CAR POSSIBLE!!!  The roads are incredibly narrow and  sharing them with trucks and tour buses can get pretty dicey at times.  Advice for the person in the passenger side (which over here is the right side) – keep your elbows inside, otherwise you risk injury from the hedges encroaching your space as you veer into them to avoid the oversized “caravan” (RV) which takes up their lane and a third of yours!!  Another thing about driving in Irreland – directions are very vague.  So far, every hotel or guest house that we’ve stayed at aside from the one the airport transport deposited us at, has been a challenge to find.  There doesn’t seem to be any street signs here (except in Dublin).  Addresses are vague  - just the town name if a small town, or “city centre”.  We have come to expect a “CF” (cluster fuck) everytime we roll into a new town looking for our hotel or guest house.