Mishaps In Ireland: 4 Travel Tips



Giants Causeway

 In 2006, my brother and I did our first international trip to Ireland.  I remember the nervous feeling I had when purchasing the tickets.  I double checked the time and date of the flights numerous times, and then before I could think too much about it, clicked the button.  Over and done with…we were now headed to Ireland! 

Throughout our 10 day stay I did in fact learn a few valuable lessons.  Over the next couple days I will be sharing my top 4 tips that I learned during my trip.  If you have never traveled internationally, maybe you can learn something from my mistakes before you do take your first flight; or perhaps, at the very least, find some humor over the struggles we had.  J

Tip #1:  Beware of international luggage regulations. 

The trip began smoothly as we left from the Chicago O’Hare airport.  We checked in our luggage and had a nice long flight to London where we had a layover.  When we were about to board our second flight from London to Dublin, however, the security man insisted I couldn’t bring my carry-on onto the flight.  Supposedly, European regulations for carry-on sizes are different from when we left the international Chicago airport.  This meant that we had to rush out of terminal, go back to check in where I had to give them my carry on, and go back through security once again very quickly in order to not miss our flight.  Needless to say, this did not start the trip off relaxed.

 

Our automatic car-
2nd vehicle of the trip

Tip #2: Purchase an automatic vehicle. 

J thought it would be a good idea to save money and rent a manual car for the week.  I tried to persuade him otherwise considering he didn’t have a lot of experience with manual cars.  But he insisted it couldn’t be that hard.  We discovered it wasn’t that easy, however, when the steering wheel and clutch is on the opposite side of the car while also driving on the opposite side of the road.  We hadn’t even left the airport when we blew a tire from hitting a curb on one of the round-a-bouts.  The first 5 minutes in Ireland were spent with angry natives honking and yelling at us as we pulled over on the wrong side of the road, unloaded all our baggage to get the spare tire out, and drove back to the airport to exchange for an automatic vehicle.  So much for saving money.