5 Things I Wish I Knew Before Visiting Ireland

When I originally started planning my Ireland trip, I was no rookie in the international travel department. I’d already been on a handful of big adventures, solo of course, so I felt wildly comfortable planning for Ireland. For starters, we already spoke the same language so without the challenges of a foreign language I thought, “What could possibly go wrong?” And that’s where I fucked up.

While Ireland is an English speaking country, their currency is in pounds or euros, and they are just a small island off the coast of larger Great Britain, I was surprised to find that with all the similarities, it is still a very foreign country in some ways, especially for a city girl from Las Vegas. Here are some of the glaring differences that I just wasn’t prepared for.

Driving in Ireland is hazardous

Let me start off by saying I’m an excellent fucking driver. Not for a woman. For a driver. I’ve grown up in this transient city full of drivers from every county, state and country, and have learned the art of defensive driving. So when I began to research renting a car in Ireland, I was surprised by all the hullabaloo.

First, Ireland is one of the only places in the world that your regular insurance won’t extend coverage. You have to buy it through the rental company, making the price per day almost double, or you have to use a special travel credit card with a virtually non-existent limit, like American Express or Chase Sapphire. That’s because driving in Ireland is fucking nuts! I’m not going to give you a whole tutorial, but here are the high points:

• The traffic lights work totally differently than in America as well as the lane lines. I had a hard time adjusting to crossing a double solid line.

• Most roads are unpaved, unkempt, and treacherously narrow. If you don’t have amazing spacial awareness, passing a bus full of tourists on a rural Irish road may not be for you.

• No matter how much you practice driving on the left side, at some point muscle memory and habit will kick in when you least expect it. It’s inevitable you’re going to make a mistake, just hope it’s not around other drivers.

And that’s just the tip of the iceberg. If you are not entirely sure of your driving abilities, maybe sit this one out.

Everything is farther than it seems

I know what you’re thinking. It’s an island. It’s a tiny island. It only takes a couple hours to drive all the way across.

Insert laughing emoji here.

Yeah, that’s all true. It’s also the most topographically variegated coastline in the world. The coast looks like someone gave Helen Keller a marker and told her to go nuts. The Wild Atlantic Way, which spans from Co. Donegal in the northwest to Co. Cork in the south, spans 1600 miles! That’s only 400 miles short of driving the full length of the US from one coast to the other. And that’s only one side of the island!!

No matter how close things are on the map, and no matter how long Google Maps tells you it’s going to take, they’re all lying. Double it. Maps says 30 minutes? It’s an hour. This goes for stops too. If you read somewhere that you need an hour at the Cliffs of Moher, bullshit. You need at least two hours. If you don’t plan accordingly, you’re going to have real problems when you get it the next tip.

The entire island is on banker’s hours

So you spend the whole day driving in what seems to be the middle of nowhere. You stopped at a few inns that said “restaurant” on the marquee but they weren’t serving food; apparently they close in between lunch and dinner time. So you grab a bag of chips from the gas station and brush it off because you’ll have a big meal and a good laugh later. When you finally arrive at your “hotel”, which is really an inn with four bedrooms, four hours later than you expected, there’s no one at the front desk to check you in. Because everyone goes home at 6. You have to call and have the innkeeper come down. It’s a tiny village and their residence is probably nearby, but you still look like a dick. Finally settled in your room and now literally starving, you’re beyond distressed to find out that dinner service at the pub has already ended. There’s no McDonald’s or 7-11 nearby. The grocery store, because there’s only one, closed hours ago. Now you’re frantically searching for that Pringle you dropped under your ar seat earlier.

How do I know? This is an almost exact portrayal of my first day in Ireland. The drive took way longer than I anticipated. Every place I stopped for food was “in between” service and looked like a ghost town. When I finally arrived in Dingle, the whole damn town was closed, packed inside the local tavern. I resigned to my fate of drinking beer for dinner, along with the few tears I’d shed, when the bartender took pity on me. He directed me to a food truck a few blocks away, the only place to get food for miles. It was hidden off the road in a sketchy alley. I never would have found it by myself. I grabbed a plate of fish and chips, fresh caught that morning and ate it at the bar.

Two lessons learned. 1. In the country, they eat early. There’s no fast food unless you’re in the city. If you miss food service, well, fuck you. 2. It’s almost impossible to find food unless you get friendly and ask. Most places rely on weathered hand painted signs as advertisement, and I found it virtually impossible to determine where places were and when they were open unless there were cars out front. And unlike every other place I’d ever vacationed, there weren’t tourists littered everywhere so I couldn’t just blindly follow the crowds.

English is their second language

Surprise! And you thought this was going to be a breeze because everyone speaks English. And they do, kinda. But I was surprised to find that English is a second language in Ireland, and this becomes a problem not when speaking but when feverishly trying to read signage at 80 kilometers an hour. I can’t tell you how many times I encountered a sign that was in Gaelic ONLY and had literally no fucking idea what it said. Just a white sign, in a foreign shape, with weird words, and no picture to help with translation. I was very concerned the first half dozen times, but eventually I got in the habit of just ignoring signage all together. Don’t misunderstand what I’m saying here. It is absolutely not acceptable to ignore important signs when you’re traveling in an unknown country. I 100% did, but you shouldn’t. Got it?

Cash is king

In my travels I’d heard that a lot of places overseas preferred cash and some didn’t even accept credit cards. But as an American, I just couldn’t wrap my head around that, especially since the world is locked into this whole “cashless” craze. There was a mix-up with my miserable, good for nothing bank (BofA if you were wondering) and my $2k worth of foreign currency was sitting in a vault somewhere the day before I left so, unlike usual, I just rolled with it.

When I jumped off the plane in Shannon, I hit the ATM. I didn’t know what the week held for me and historically I always end a trip with too much cash left over, buying dumb shit, trying to burn my reserve because it’s too much trouble converting your cash back to US dollars. So I took out $200. That seemed fine at the time.

Insert rolling on the floor laughing emojis.

It was not fine. Not at all. I was almost out of money by that night, and I was getting concerned. As it turns out, Ireland is one of those places people were talking about when they warned me to bring paper money. Now that I’ve been there, it makes sense. Driving along a deserted road, no one for miles, in an Avalon-like mist, searching for a gas station or pub to stop. Of course the old lady on the side of the road selling raw yarn bundles isn’t going to take American Express. But the gas station?! Come on!

My encounter at the gas station was the sobering moment for me that I was no longer in Kansas, proverbially anyway. I’d been driving around the country for hours, going from one deserted monastery to another. The sun was still high in the sky (because Ireland is farther from the Equator, thus the sun is up longer, which I didn't figure out right away), and I was getting low on gas. I drove for awhile looking for a station. Nothing. I drove farther. Still nothing. This went on for about 1/4 of a tank before I realized I might run out of gas for real. Then, just when I’d almost lost hope, I saw a teeny tiny shack with two pumps out front. Thank God.

It was 6:08pm. Immediately I realized something was amiss. The style of pump looked funny. I didn’t see a card reader anywhere. Then I noticed the shack had a rolling window that was closed. I was trying to wrap my head around it when a woman came out and announced the gas station was closed. Closed? Gas stations close?? Yes, because in Ireland you hand the woman in the window CASH and then you dispense your gas. Seems simple enough but I still couldn't understand. How. The fuck.

Long story short, I didn’t die out on that desolate road. I eventually found a gas station that was open and lived to see another day. But let me tell you the American in me literally cried, real fucking tears, at the end of my trip when I happened upon a Texaco outside of Dublin. Trucker style with a million pumps, connected to a Burger King. I almost dropped to my knees and kissed the ground I was so happy. I eagerly stuck my platinum card in, smiling as I pumped my $6 a liter petrol, munching on a hamburger with a 44oz fountain coke in the drink holder. Now that’s real luxury.

XOXO, The Bitter Bitch