Outbound, Limerick, Kinsale

We had a late, but uneventful flight to Shannon. Eastbound flights are singular Connor lost his earbuds, but we had backups. Nick & Rachel have a beautiful house out in the country outside of Limerick, along a country road that scared the hell out of us. It's just barely finished - they're still waiting for glass for the living room doors - but it's a true electronic cottage. In the odd corners of the house, like the laundry room and the garage (which serves as an office) there are fans and blinking lights everywhere.

Left-hand driving has been an experience: unsettling in unexpected ways. Adjusting a mirror on the left, to look in the opposite direction, a left hand shift, look to the right instead of the left at each intersection. What trips me up the most is the fact my instinct wants to position my body towards the far left of the lane (not just into the right lane as you'd expect) so I tend to run the mirror into the bushes. And Irish country lanes have bushes RIGHT up to the road, trimmed back only by the cars themselves. I'm okay in general, but my brain overloads when when it gets too much data, like approaching a five-way intersection, we need to hit the second lane to the left...which way do I look for traffic??? And Nick being a lousy, unsympathetic passenger :).

Saturday, we got up late due to the jet lag, and finally got out the door shortly before noon. We drove down to Kinsale, a resort town on the water a couple of hours south of Limerick via Cork. Since I'd gotten my left-hand driving feet wet on the way from the airport, we let Sharon get used to driving on the motorways to Cork. Unfortunately, in Mallow she ran over a curb at speed that leaped in front of her, and killed the left front tire. We put on the spare, and limped to Kinsale (<80>When we got home, Nick discovered problems with his high-tech wireless wall control lighting system - it was driving him mad. There are some times when a light switch should just be a light switch...

(Apologies in advance for typos caused by the various unfamiliar european keyboards)

In the evenings, we went for a coupla pints at the local pub in Murroe. Finally had some fresh Guiness from the tap, attracting some curious looks (it's not a big tourist spot so they rarely get Americans), and half-watched a bad Burt Reynolds cowboy movie playing overhead. He was the Indian, so it was distracting :). I did an informal Guiness taste test back at the house - the "tin Guiness" at home, at least from here in Ireland, tastes pretty damn close to the draft version.

Sunday morning - In a fit of brilliance this morning I managed to delete yesterday's Kinsale photos. Damn. Mostly of John's fort; it could have been worse. Oh, and Nick in a fit of (more) generousity loaned me his Canon EOS 350D digital SLR; I think I'm going to spend half the trip to Dingle figuring out how to use the durn thing :).

Off to Dingle!