We went to Ireland! Our adventure started late on Friday night with a redeye flight to Heathrow. We upgraded our seats to World Traveller Plus for this long haul, and the flight was only about half full, so we were the only ones in our row with only one person in the row behind us.
It’s actually pretty difficult to sleep on the redeye flight since they spend a couple of hours serving dinner and then serve breakfast when you’re about 2 hours from landing, leaving only 4 hours in the middle for sleeping.
The 2-hour layover in Heathrow was almost perfectly timed. We had to stand in line for passport control and then take the tram to our gate and only had about 5 minutes of waiting before it was time to board. Then it was a quick hour flight over to Dublin!
In Dublin we got to wait in line for passport control again before taking the shuttle to the car rental facility. We went with Dan Dooley Car Rentals but found out they were bought by Enterprise, so there’s essentially no difference between the two. Then we were off! With Josh driving on the left side of the road. After a wrong lane traffic circle leading to a turnaround in an Ikea parking lot, we really were off to Ennistimon.
It’s roughly a 3-hour drive to Ennistimon, and I got to enjoy the stress free activity of looking out the window. I decided that Ireland has every shade of the color green. There were also far fewer sheep than I expected as most of the pastures have cows instead.
We stopped about halfway through for dinner at the Tipperary Inn and Restaurant after getting off the exit for Moneygall where apparently Obama descends from. There were multiple bars and restaurants and coffee shops named after him.
I had Chicken Kiev which was essentially buttery chicken, and Josh had a burger, both with fries of course. I thought the chicken was some of the best I’d ever had, only slightly influenced by the many hours since I had a full meal.
Then it was on the road again for another hour and a half. Our AirBnb was in a relatively remote area with directions like “go 10 minutes past Inagh and then turn right at the tractors,” so it was a little nerve wracking to navigate there once we got on smaller, more narrow roads (where the speed limit is still 100 km/hr) and it started getting dark.
The directions were perfect, though, and we made it to the house where our host greeted us and got settled in. All I wanted was a shower and to go straight to sleep, so I had my first experience with an electric shower. I didn’t quite get the hang of it, and the water went back and forth between really hot and a little cold.
After the shower, we both crashed and ended up sleeping for 11 hours! It was lovely.
Sara Morrison 