I have heard it said that going on an eight-day road trip with someone you met for the first time upon arrival could be classified as nutty.  But it’s not really as bad as you think.  You immediately have something in common with your new traveling companion, hopefully soon-to-become friend.  You are both nuts.

So it was with Joanna and me.  We met for the first time at the airport in Dublin, Ireland.  We found each other easily (thank you Facebook for pictures) and didn’t even need to use the smoke signals we worked out in case of an emergency.  The next hurdle was the rental car.

When you rent a car in the States, you get an estimate that includes their insurance bullying, I mean, quotes.  So, when you get the final price, it includes whichever insurance package you got threatened into buying.  Well, apparently that isn’t true for European rentals.  When I arrived at the desk, all smug and happy about my super good rental deal, I discovered that they were going to add another 300 EURO and there was NOTHING I could do about it, unless I provided proof of insurance coverage in Ireland.  Right.  Car insurance in Ireland.  I knew there was something I forgot when I left for the airport.  Sigh.

Well, we got the keys to our little car and headed out to find it, hoping not to accidentally step on it and squish it.  It’s a good thing that I decided only to bring my backpack and not my purse too.  However, in defense of micro cars, they are great when you need to use a pedestrian crosswalk to get back on the right side of a divided bridge.

We got all of our stuff loaded in the car and I broke out my pre-programmed GPS.  European addresses are a thing unto themselves.  When I bought the GPS, they told me that it would work for North America, Europe and the UK.  What they neglected to tell me is that half of the addresses in Europe and the UK don’t actually exist.  You have to resort to satellite coordinates and that requires dancing a jig while doing three somersaults and patting your head in a perfect circle to find the exact right format the GPS will accept.  But with great perseverance, a pound of chocolate, and a stiff drink, I got them all in.

Now we were at the moment of truth.   I was the designated driver for the trip.  This, by the way, was another point of immediate connection between Joanna and me.  I was nutty enough to attempt driving a manual car on the wrong side of the road, and she was nutty enough to get in the car with me.  We were off to a smashing start of camaraderie.  I handed the GPS directly to Joanna and asked if she would give me the directions so that I could concentrate solely on not killing us on the first day of our trip.  Eventually I did put the GPS on the windshield, but she always kept the Frommer’s map nearby.  Not sure if she actually liked using it, or if there was a sense of security in knowing exactly how lost we were.

We were off.

“Brakes are a little touchy, aren’t they?”  I observed.  “Yes, just a little,” came Joanna’s voice from somewhere under the dashboard.  I think they put semi-truck brakes in that little speck of a car.  My guess is that the manufacturer knew that American tourists would be driving it.  They were protecting us from ourselves.

Other than the incident at the bridge where I saved us through my lightning fast reflexes (leaving aside the fact that I got us on the wrong side of the bridge in the first place), we navigated Dublin with relatively little drama.  The look of panic faded from Joanna’s face after an hour or two and I have seen it last for three days in some cases.  So, I felt pretty good about that.

Our first place to stay was with some soon-to-be-new-friends who responded to a Facebook post where I asked if there was anyone in my network who would like to host a couple of wanderers for a day or two.  More nuttiness, I suppose, but now our circle of nuts had expanded and there was all kinds of camaraderie to go around.

Our new friends rented a house that had another row of houses between it and the road.  So, we had to drive down this little ally between the front houses – once we actually FOUND the ally – and then take a sharp 90% turn to the left.  It looked a little dicey, so I asked Joanna if she would kindly step to the back of the car and lift us around the corner.  She did it without breaking a sweat.   Once she had squeezed herself back into the passenger’s seat, I drove the remaining few meters and parked on the lawn next to someone else’s micro car.  Our new friend waved and smiled from the front window.

We had arrived.

(To be continued)