Beauty and the Beast

Rita and I are both sitting on our beds at The Old Grounde Hotel in Ennis, Ireland.  The last 24 hours preceding this wonderful ability to lay down on a bed was one wild ride.   Before I start I will say that Ireland is as beautiful as everyone says and the people cannot be more friendly or helpful.  The people go out of there way to make you feel welcome.  The young man that took our bags to our room refused a tip and just visited and shared some of the history of Ennis and showed us some places to visit.  The weather is just like Oregon and some of the countryside reminds us of the valley except these rolling hills have castles, stone walls and sheep.

I don't know what it is about airlines that they feel the need to overbook and then beg people to give up their seats.  Then when you do finally get onboard they run out of food, beverages and patience.  Ever try sleeping with a seat in front of you reclined in your lap while your knees hit the back of the seat and your seat won't recline?  Let's just say there is no way you can sleep.  At the present Rita and I are going on about 4 hours total sleep since Thursday.  BUT that did not stop us from keeping to our planned schedule of the day.  You could tell when you went through Immigration that there was a whole different attitude as the officer welcomed us with a big smile and didn't care if we didn't have the required visa forms.  Then as we went through Customs....there was no one who even cared to look at your bags... in fact there was No One!

Now you need to meet the "Beast" part of this trip.  I would like to call it "The Evil One", but I guess its not it's fault that I don't know how to operate a 6 gear shift or that there are NO street signs and almost every intersection is a turnabout with 20 signs you don't have time to read as you are trying to figure out the gears and read stupid signs at the same time...Ahhhh!

Me with the "Beast"... I keep trying to climb into the wrong side.  I should have paid the extra $265 for an automatic.  A GPS would help too.  Remember those turnabouts I just mentioned, well we're not saving any gas as I keep going off the wrong road and ending up in little bergs till I find another turnabout so I can go back and do it again and again and again.  But we have found some cool places.  We didn't know where Dromoland Castle was and "by golly" we found it thinking we were going to Shannon which we never did find.  My nightmare has come true and I'm lost in Ireland.  But Rita is having a great time enjoying the scenery and saying "hey,look at the cute little house" while I'm doing my best to stay out of the bushes while on the left side of the road.  BTW, I did go down one road on the right and wondered why that guy swerved off to the left in coming at me.

It was totally by accident that we found Ennis or our hotel.  I drove around this car in whatever gear I could get the Beast into for an hour and a half trying to find the parking lot on one lane roads that turn into dead ends.  Add a Bicycle Race and traffic cops and you have a "Suzan Breakdown" in the making.  Finally, Rita made me stop as she pointed her finger at the policeman who came over to the car the middle of the intersection.  I knew we were never getting out of Ennis.  He came over and just smiled at Rita and told her not to point her finger at him.  She quickly told him "we're going down this street because it's the ONLY way we get to the parking lot".  So he let us as we almost ran over all the cyclists, but I was only in 1st or 2nd gear so they wouldn't have not been hurt too badly.  We ended our day with a wonderful plate of Fish and Chips at Brogan's Pub.  Finally,we are going to get a good night's sleep and be able to start out tomorrow making our way to Galway and the Cliffs of Moher.  Stay tuned.