Ireland: Day 1 (or is it 2?)

I'm in the sitting room of an old Irish house-turned-hostel. It's finally warm in here, with the little stove going. I think I have been cold since I landed in Europe earlier today. The movie I am Legend is going. I hate that movie. This is the only place where I can get wireless, though, and it is warm. So I'll write quickly and head off to bed.

My friend Natalie and I are in Cashel, Ireland, staying in site of The Rock of Cashel, which we were supposed to visit this afternoon. Our day started at about 9:00 Sunday morning when her parents drove the two of us to the airport.

We flew to Dulles, which went fine, but then found our flight to London was delayed about an hour. The flight was long, but good...then we got to London (where, I swear, our passports were checked at least five times). There we found out we could make our connecting flight to Shannon, Ireland, but our bags would not. So we got on the next flight there--six hours later. It made for a long travel day.

This is me after a two-hour flight, a layover, a 8-hour flight, and four hours of layover. I stole a blanket from the British Airways flight, and boy was I glad I did when I had something to wrap myself up in in the cold Ireland-bound section of Heathrow.

Once we finally got to Shannon and through another round with the passports, we got our rented car! This all made me feel very grown up, and then it made me sad to find out it wouldn't be the 200-ish Euros we thought we booked, but rather towards 700-ish Euros. Plus E100 deposit for the gas. Sad.

I kept trying to psych myself up for driving on the left--visualized it and such. Even so, we put our bags in the trunk and I opened up the driver's side door and my first thought (honestly) was, "Where's the steering wheel??"

Later today, I saw a really nice car take a fast corner and I said to Natalie, "Woah, that driver was like, 12!" And she looked at me and said, "He wasn't driving."

Anyway, we got here, and we're ready for adventures!