Monday morning brought the first rain we saw in Ireland. It started as a slow drizzle and quickly turned to a steady rainfall. In many ways it felt refreshing after a muggy weekend in the middle of a big city.
We made our way to the Queen of Tarts, a cure little coffee and pastry shop near Dublin Castle. After filling our bellies with scones, and in Grady's case lemon meringue tarts, we walked back to our little hotel to check out.
Staunton's on the Green was a nice little place to stay, although it lacked most amenities we have come to expect from a hotel (restaurant, bar, etc.). The people running it were delightful and the location was pretty good (other than when concerts were playing in our back yard). They called us a taxi and we made our way to the airport car rental terminal.
Our cab driver (a highly entertaining man who trained with Connor McGregor) dropped us at the Dollar/Thrifty/Hertz rental company location. We promptly got in line behind dozens of people. yes, dozens. I have rented cars in Hawaii and Los Angeles and thought those lines were long. This was simply ridiculous. There were over 100 people crammed into a small waiting area and the line wasn't moving at all. One guy estimated at least a 3 hour wait to get a car.
That was not going to work for us. I kept noticing these signs that read Hertz Gold club. I had rented through Dollar but my rental paperwork said it was being serviced through Hertz. I hopped on the free wifi and signed up for Hertz gold membership (free). We were then told that the Hertz gold was back at the airport. Now, we knew this was a risk but we honestly could not fathom waiting in that 3 hour line.
So we hopped on a shuttle to the airport and made our way to the Hertz counter, where a very kind gentleman told me that because I did not make the original reservation through Hertz Gold, they did not have a car waiting for us. I smiled and asked him what he could do for us. Well, as it turns out, he had one car (a red Audi A4) that he could rent to me for a "little" more. OK, so that little turned out to be more like double but I think we would have wanted the bigger car anyway and it saved us hours in line.
Within 30 minutes we were in the red Audi and trying to navigate our way out of the garage.
I have to hand it to Steve, he took to driving left handed fairly well. I was a nervous wreck as we navigated out from the airport and down the M6 south towards Kilkenny. The freeways aren't bad at all once you get the hang of shifting left handed. But everything about the experience is weird, from how the mirrors work to depth perception on the left side. Steve did great though and we made it to the Pembroke Hotel by early afternoon.
There are only a few odd things about our red hot rental: the left doors won't open from the inside. Instead, someone has to get out and open the door from the outside. This is the case for both doors on the left and is HIGHLY unnerving for me as I sit in the front left. My fear of not being able to get out the car is not exactly comforting.
Any Audi owners out there think this is some feature we can turn off?
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