Day 2: Slow - Loose Chippings
This is one of a series of entries from my travel journal during my recent trip to Europe. You can click here for the archived entries.
Day 1 | Day 3
Shannon Airport - The Republic of Ireland 07/06/08
The flight passed fairly quickly. Some mild turbulence on the crossing. As we descended onto the Emerald Isle, I found this particular moniker to be well-earned. It's a cliché but I can't help but repeat it - verdant, gently rolling hills; fields as far as vision allows divided into innumerable plots of varying size by hedgerows. At the early hour, with dawn just having broken, the sun glinting off the wing as we banked steeply into our final approach, the entirety of the ground was covered in a thick white fog, such that where it lay thickest it gave the appearance of snow. As we neared the ground, it seemed as if we were descending into a cloud layer. Thankfully our pilot had the skill necessary to land us in the near ground-level fog.
Took some time for us to collect our bags from the baggage claim. It struck me, as I saw the same hideous floral print suitcase pass by me for the umpteenth time that there are a couple advantages to ugly luggage - very easy to recognize and no chance of anyone else taking it by mistake.
We headed over to Hertz and grabbed our rental, a Ford Focus (upgraded from the economy class toy car). I took the role of navigator as Mom got behind the wheel - a decision I would soon regret (although I imagine the scenario in which our roles were reversed would have provided me with equal amounts of stress.) There was much hullabaloo as my Mom attempted to get used to the curious Irish rules of the road ("Yes, for the tenth time you have to drive on the LEFT!") and complained about the "stupid" and numerous roundabouts - confusing, sure, coming at it from the opposite side, but the whole rotary concept should be fairly familiar to a woman who has lived all her life in Massachusetts, no?
We made our way down to Baltimore in West Cork, on the tip of one of several peninsulas in the southwest. Despite having talked about stopping for a rest and refreshment for the entire 4-hour drive, we kept plugging along, near-delirious with hunger and exhaustion (felt like we were driving at 3AM according to our GMT-5 internal clocks), finally stopping in Skibbereen for a bite (tuna fish with sweet corn sandwich - works very well actually) at Field's Coffee Shop. We then stopped in at the attached supermarket for a few minor provisions to bring to the house. Soon after we would finally reach our lovely spot at One Harbor Drive, Baltimore.
Baltimore, West Cork, The Republic of Ireland 07/06/08
There is a preponderance of hatchbacks in Ireland. Or at least traveling from Shannon Airport down through Limerick, Cork, Clonakilty, etc. We surmised that many of them had to be tourists with rentals just like us because of a few reasons:My Mom liked these "L"-marked cars because they traveled at a relaxed pace and could help shield us a bit from blatant traffic gaffes. After various incidents of the sort described above, Mom said that we should try to find an "L" sticker for our car. I remarked that yes, we should slap a few on: one on every window perhaps?
- Always iffy about where they were headed.
- Generally traveling in the slow lane at "molasses in January" speed.
- Often sported the arcane "L" sticker on the rear windshield. I still do not understand what this stands for ("foreigner" in Irish perhaps? "rube"?) or how one acquires (or is forced to display) it, but it evidently marks tourists as such, warning native Irish drivers, "Ah let's have a look here...aye this one's another feckin' tourist. Doesn't know the left side of the road from a bleddy peat bog so please refrain from giving him a hard time when he weaves about, comes to a dead stop in the middle of the roundabout, or comes flying straight at you at 100km/h down the wrong side on one of our quaint country roads without any directional signage or traffic markings that's tighter than a fish's arsehole."
She actually got a kick out of that one. Could've gone either
way there.
Made it to Baltimore without further ado and after some wine, cheese, and crackers, called it an early first evening, happy to have made it alive.
3 comments:
First, a quick nitpick -- you were actually on GMT-6 time when you arrived because of daylight savings. What you meant to say was that you were five hours behind Western Europe Summer Time.
The comments about the "L" plates gave me a real kick: you need to display an L plate when you're a Learner driver (i.e. when you have the equivalent of a learner's permit, not a full license). This also explained why they were going so slow: they don't know how to drive yet!
Hatchbacks, on the other hand, are just common because petrol costs roughly $10 per gallon in the UK and Ireland, so nearly everyone drives compact cars (which are often hatchback).
Oops, I meant GMT-4, of course...
Ah, this explains it all!
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