The Luck of the Irish? (Part 1)

Debatable. We had an interesting travel day to Ireland, which took approximately 16 hours and felt much longer. Here are some highlights:

• Lauren misses/makes the train. Waking up at 5:40 to catch a 5:40 train tends not to work so well. Lauren described to us a range of emotions that she had when she looked at her clock on Friday morning. Rolling out of bed, she ran to the next train station and beat the train by approximately 2 seconds. She says that she had set her alarm for 2:00 am and then got back in bed to “rest” for another hour or so (without a second alarm). The rest of us were unsure of the logic in that plan, but were all so very thankful when we found her. This also provided great entertainment for the rest of the trip, during which we were sure to set multiple alarms.
• Checking in takes forever and the plane is delayed by 1.5 hours. We were disappointed by the delayed flight, but were fortunate in the end. The check-in line was endless and we would’ve missed it otherwise.
• Spanish visas expire before we return to Spain. Well…that wasn’t about to stop us from leaving the country. We decided to deal with those consequences later.
• The car rental website lies. Apparently, you must be 25 to rent a car in Ireland. The site said 21. Our 22-year-old couldn’t rent our car. This threw off our entire plan, since we had to get to our previously-booked hostel (on the other side of the country) that evening. Luckily, we found a bus to take us. Personally, I wasn’t too upset about this inconvenience because I had secretly been nervous about our 19-year-old illegally driving on the wrong side of the road in the dark through countless unfamiliar cities.
• The hostel has no heat. We came from Spain (still hot) to Ireland (very cold) and froze.
• I ruin my Uggs. On our first walk through Galway, the gray skies of Ireland poured end-of-the-world type rain on the five of us. Needless to say, my Uggs were completely flooded by the time we returned to the hostel and have yet to dry. On the upside, singing/screaming Christmas carols, Disney melodies and strange Spanglish versions of contemporary songs in the pouring rain was quite fun.