Day fourteen (saturday June - 9)
Saturday:
Today we are going home. Right now I am sitting in the Shannon airport thinking about what we have seen and experienced in the last 14 days. It has been a great trip! We were able to see all the sites we wanted to and ones that we did not even know about.
Most of the people in Ireland are very hospitable and kind. They have wonderful accents and contagious laughter. There are also a lot of people from different countries. We had long converstations with 2 couples from Australia (at different times) and met a lovely couple from Poland. The best city for ease of use and kind people was Cork. The worst was Limerick. You would assume it would be Dublin but Dublin has a lot of street signs and so there is less confusion. Limerick was just a messed up city. Too many one-way streets and rude people. One HAD to drive like a jerk just to get around! No one would stop and let you into the lane you needed so you just had to keep moving until people were forced to stop. It was crazy. Of course, as soon as I got used to the driving, we are leaving! LOL!
I really enjoyed driving too. It was not as "weird" as I was envisioning it to be. We never say any police or Guarda on the roads so most drivers just went the speed they wanted. We stayed inside the limits - most of the time - which was 100 kilometers per hour. Which translates to about 65 miles per hour. It felt a lot faster on the windy and bumpy roads! We would try to find a coach or sometimes a large truck to stay behind since they would take up most of the road and force the on-coming cars to MOVE OVER. However, more than once, we would almost come to a standstill while two coaches tried to navigate around each other! LOL! Those buses are too big for these roads.
It has been a great journey and we are happy to be going home now. We need the next two days to rest! :-)