After a long day experiencing Halifax sites, we went back to the hotel to pick up our bags and to catch the shuttle to the airport. So far so good, no fatigue – until sleep eludes you. So our brains were confused after all, especially when we touched down at 7:30am Irish time, 3:30am Halifax time and 11:30 Pacific time. Not a good space to be in when we picked up our rental car- prepaid with credit car points. What we didn’t know was the exorbitant insurance rates that Irish car rental agencies charge- apparently because of their narrow country roads, potholes and uneven payment and 100 km speed limits. $60 additional per day with a $100 deductible for each item of damage. We almost walked away and bought a train ticket! But we paid it and wrote it off as the cost of experiencing the small towns, country roads and beautiful vistas of Ireland.

Driving the standard transmission car on the Irish highway system was another challenge entirely. Over an hour later and many missed turns and repeated turn-about s, our GPS managed to finally get us to our accommodation after many patient redirects.

However, there were a few glitches we still needed to be overcome. The place we booked on line was an apartment in a gated community but we assumed that there would be an office where we could check in. No. We found the gate locked and only when another resident drove in were we able to slip in behind him when the gate was open. As optimists, we assumed that once inside the gate, things would work or. Not. We found a man who was checking out of the suite we were renting and he explained how the rentals worked and offered us his parking space in a secure, locked underground parking lot. Somehow, all logic had escaped and we followed him into the parking lot only to realize that we didn’t have a code to get out! So crazy- until another tenant happened to come down to leave with her car. She agreed to let us out of our imprisonment so that we could try to locate our landlady with no phone etc.

Long story short, the cleaner helped us sort it out, called the owner who gave us the codes and a key. Lots of laughs and incidents not mentionable.

Not much time to sight see after these unfortunate incidents so we decided to walk to the neighbourhood pub and drink away our sorrows. Finally slept through the night- either the beer or the end of jet lag.