Sarah Rose and Jay: Jet lag, roundabouts, and driving on the other side of the road

We made it to Dublin, we managed to recover my lost tripod and we got ourselves to the rental car.

Of the two of us, I'm the only one who knows how to drive a manual transmission (which makes for a much cheaper rental car), and (Jay's opinion) I'm the better driver, especially in stressful situations. The lovely (not being sarcastic) man at the Hertz rental desk kindly (no really, this guy was great) corrected our pronunciation of Drogheda (Draw-ada, sort of. If you think about the difference between "New Orleans" and "N'awlins" you're about 75% of the way there to pronouncing Drogheda correctly) but he also applauded me for at least getting the soft G right (I said Draw-heeda when he asked where we were going). He made sure I understood how to use the car, got us cleared away with insurance and sent us on the way to our little red VW.

Jay for size comparison

After stashing our bags in the back seat (because there is NO point to the trunk), Jay opened the door to get in only to be promptly reminded by me that he was getting into the driver's seat. I've made that mistake an additional two times so far, where I went to sit in the passenger seat and belatedly realized that the steering wheel is on the other side.

Me, white-knuckling it on the M1

Side note: I'm realizing I like to write with lots of parentheticals. Perhaps I should take up a footnote approach to blogging?

So, I got in the drivers side and evaluated the situation. It's a nice little car, with convenient stickers that remind me to drive on the left side of the road. The clutch is about a mile long, and I have to shift on my left, but other than that, I'm doing okay with the manual transmission, especially considering that I haven't driven manual since my sophomore year of college. However, at this point, the adrenaline of successfully landing in Dublin and beginning the real part of our trip was LONG gone, thanks to the aforementioned wait for the tripod, so I was dead-on-my-feet tired. Jay's wasn't doing so hot either. We both got (maybe) 3 hours of not-good sleep on the plane, and we'd spent the previous day in a panicked moving frenzy (no joke, I took >17,000 steps yesterday, according to my Fitbit. Normally I'm doing pretty good if I break 7500) so tired doesn't begin to explain it.

Remarkably we got out of the airport area and onto the M1 without any major setbacks. There was one memorable occasion where I missed my turnoff on the roundabout (which is CLOCKWISE here) so instead of going 270 degrees we got to go 630 degrees, but it all worked out. The ride on the M1 was easy, since it's a divided highway so everyone was going the same direction as me. We had to frantically dig out some euros (Thanks Aunt Betsey and Uncle Craig!) in order to pay a toll but we got to our exit without trouble.

So now we were trying to find our AirBnb. The place we're staying for these first couple of days is the residence on a large pig farm, so all we had for instructions on how to get here were "Go to Littlegrange (the name of the town) and when you see the big rock that says "Marry's High Health Pigs" that's us." So we drove at a speed that probably had the local drivers cursing at us in inventive and colorful ways and eventually found the big rock.

The big rock

We pulled onto a long tree lined driveway and I started grinning like a fiend. We pulled up to the house (also gorgeous), knocked on the door, and met our kind host Colin, who gave us a tour, showed us our room, and then left us to our own devises. Jay got his computer set up and got back to work, and I took the worlds best shower. Not that the shower is particulary amazing, it's just that I didn't have time to shower after all that moving yesterday before getting on the plane, so this was overdue.

The road in to the farm. Cue happy dance.

One thing that I've learned from my more travel experienced friends is that the best way to get over jet lag and quickly shift to your new time zone is to NOT SLEEP until it's bed time in your new locale. So I had to find a way to stay awake for the next ~6 hours. One thing that I needed to do was go to the grocery store and get food for Jay and I for dinner. I was not looking forward to this. Driving was just a little too scary for me and I didn't really want to do it alone. But I finally got myself to go. Colin told me there was a retail park just past the entrance to the M1 where there was a grocery store. He told me the name of the grocery store, I remembered that it started with an L, but that was about it. So I got on the road back toward the M1, everything was going smoothly, I found the roundabout, got off at the right spot and:

Behold! A retail park!

But how the hell do I get in to it.

Oh crap, another roundabout! Um, I'll try going this way.

Still don't see how to get in to the retail park.

Crap. ANOTHER ROUNDABOUT. I'll go this way.

Why is that taxi honking at me?

Whoops that was a curb.

Look! A place to pull over.

Deep breaths.

I went back the way I came and discovered that the way into the retail park is, SURPRISE, a roundabout. So I got into the parking lot, down shifted, and rumbled my way around looking for something that resembles a grocery store or starts with an L. No dice. I go almost the full circle around the park before I just decided to pull into a parking spot and set out on foot. I back tracked, peering in the doors of each of these massive shops, but I wasn't finding a place that would sell me eggs. I was mentally cursing Jay for "making" me go do this alone, and I was seconds away from going back to that cell phone store and buying a prepaid plan so that I could get access to Google. I'd reached the entrance of the park (with the cursed roundabout) and I was going to the cross walk when I saw it. It was there all along, at the entrance to the park. So I finished my marketing. It wasn't too crowded, so I don't think my wandering and staring was too annoying to the regular shoppers, and I managed to get through the check out without any difficulty. I hiked back to my car and made it home without event. We had gluten free pasta, smoked salmon and tomatoes for dinner. It was actually pretty good considering how completely out of it I was feeling. Then Colin took us around the farm, showed us how the farm works and some of the pigs, gave us a quick history of the area, and patiently talked with Jay while I played with my camera.