There is a large sticker on the passenger side of our rental car that reads “Drive on the Left”. Luckily we haven’t needed that reminder, but it’s nevertheless been a bit of an adventure as we’ve started our road trip across Ireland. In addition to constantly having to remember to stay on the left, the roads have gotten progressively more narrow throughout the day; we started in Dublin with tight lanes, but they were clearly lanes. We then headed across the old Military Road through the Wicklow Mountains National Park, where lane markers were no more but there was room for two cars heading in opposite directions to pass one another. From there it was off to Glendalough, an old monastic city and nature area, where most of the roads had room for two cars if one pulled over a bit. Finally we finished our day just outside of Kilkenny, where weeds brushed the doors on some roads and I had to constantly keep an eye out for places to get off of the road should another car be spotted anywhere on the horizon.
The Irish countryside is as pretty as everyone said it would be. The mountains were filled with wildflowers, rugged scenery, and sheep that were very willing to engage in long conversations with Audrey when she called out to them. The valleys and flat lands are an impossible shade of green that doesn’t seem like it should be real, with crumbling stone walls dividing one perfectly green field from the next. We’ve seen our share of ancient religious ruins today, gone hiking in weather that was sunny one second and rainy the next, and are spending the night at an estate next to a river where baby horses are racing one another by the water as we watch from the room. I’ve said this before, but I did something right in a past life to end up here today.