I'm Back! + A little driving mishap in Ireland

09 Oct I’m Back! + A little driving mishap in Ireland

Posted at 11:38h in Butterlust, Ireland, Travel by KWahlman 1 Comment

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I may have been a little over ambitious when I imagined I would be blogging from Ireland. Obviously, that didn’t happen. I was much too preoccupied with with pints of Guinness and Irish folklore to search out an internet cafe. Forgive me? Here’s a pretty picture to make up for it.

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The good news is, I have lots of good stories to share. My personal favorite has to do with my dad – our designated driver for the trip. I don’t mean sober driver, I mean he got stuck with the task of chauffeuring 3 women around the Irish countryside for a week. This alone is no simple feat. Add on the fact that he had to sit on the wrong side of the car and drive on the left side of the road and you may agree that he deserves a spot at the top ‘o the Pope’s list, right next to St. Patrick.

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Bless his heart, we have made so much fun of him for this. He’s really never going to live it down. Ever.

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It’s Dublin, day 2. We catch a cab to the Hertz office and I know my dad is already dreading the inevitable experience. He chats with the cab driver a bit about the weather and the old sod (Over the next week, he ends up chatting with every cab driver about the old sod. All of them.) then finally begins to vent his nerves about the foreboding duty of driving around the country on the “wrong” side of the road.

When we get to Hertz I take a seat in the waiting area and he and my mom go about checking in. I hear bits and pieces of a conversation about the 2 options for taking out an insurance policy – required for American tourists. Option 1 is a 1,000 euro deductible for around 75 euros (cheaper option), the other is full coverage for something like 30 euro a day. Mom and Dad decide to go with the full coverage, smart choice.

We load the van up and pull out into a questionable Dublin suburb with a little too much barbed wire to seem safe. Our 3 minute ride has already been peppered with comments from dad about how strange it feels to be driving on the left side of the road as well as a few sudden brakes and swerves.

Then, the double-decker Dublin city bus ahead of us pulls over to a stop to pick up passengers. dun dun dun.

Chaos ensues.

The experienced Irish drivers in front of us, calmly make their way around the bus. My father tries to follow suit but at the last minute gets spooked by the oncoming traffic approaching from the right side. This is where everything goes into slow motion. I can see that we are approaching the bus, and we aren’t going to clear it. My mom starts screaming “GREEEEGGG” and since I don’t know what else to do I start screaming “GREEEEEGGG” as well. There may have been some “GET OVER, GET OVER! BUS BUS!”, it’s hard to remember. Next thing I know, we are side swiping the bus.

The worst part is, we don’t stop. We just keep going as if we didn’t just commit a minor (or major?) traffic violation.

All I can do at this point is laugh. Pee my pants I’m laughing so hard, kind of laugh. (not literally)

Anyway, you can see the damage to our rental below. I can’t vouch for the other guy.