Stay Left

I wanted to dedicate a post to driving in Ireland. Our rental car was a Nissan Micro. We chuckled when we were shown the car, and the man told us we would be grateful it was so small soon enough. It was tiny! Only one suitcase fit in the trunk, or boot. Michelle noticed that from the front, it looks like a little Italian man with a mustache. We named him Luigi.This was my first experience driving on the wrong side of the road. As I took off every time the first couple of days, I kept repeating, "stay left, stay left, stay left." It was hard not to glance over my shoulder when turning right... when obviously no one would be coming from that direction.
Our GPS was obviously not so up to date because it didn't know the highway was there and kept taking us down tiny little roads. It was hard to believe that more than one car could fit on them. The roads had banks or walls of green on either side, or were elevated. The speed limits were insanely fast for the road conditions. Padrick joked that the government said they were limits not targets... however, they are painted to look like targets... round signs rimmed in red.
Luckily I only forgot to stay left once. It was on the second day... I'm going to claim that I still had jet lag. It was pulling out of an overlook on the side of the highway. I realized I was on the wrong side when a car suddenly appeared coming at me in my lane. Yikes!
We loved the roadsigns and stopped often to take pictures of them. The people have so much detail, especially the children crossing. Another favorite is the one where it looks like a car is about to mow down a pedestrian.Politics are a big deal in Ireland. There were pictures up everywhere for elections. The funny thing is most of them looked like mugshots or snapshots. Doesn't this guy look just like Kevin James?