perspective.

As you know, I’ve been on the hunt for a documentation strategy that allows me to stay in the moment while also remembering the moment later. I think so far I’ve landed on photo books, at least for trips, but maybe also for entire years. I’ve also been tossing around the idea of documenting trips on the ‘ole bloggy blog, but I don’t want to just throw up a few photos with captions and call it a day. I want to write. There’s so many little things, delicious little adventure nuggets I swore to never forget, yet somehow they end up mixed in with all the other gobbldey gook anyways. Part of the problem is that when you come back from a big trip, everyone and their mom (and especially my mom) wants to know how it was. And despite my best efforts to give an accurate snapshot, there’s just no way to fit all of it in before eyes start to glaze over. And Jesse and I can only be like “Hey remember that time I hit my head on Blarney Castle?” so many times. SO. That leaves those memories to collect dust and then slowly fade away. Sad huh? But don’t worry, I’ve decided to unpack as many of those nugs as I can, starting with our first 24 hours in the Land of Ire.

When it comes to world traveling, I’m still a green little thing. Ireland was my first voyage overseas, and before that it had been TEN YEARS since I’d even been out of the US. Jesse and I had been adventuring around the PNW for years, but this was BIG. Like, unbenownst-to-me-when-we-booked-the trip-he-bought-me-an-engagement-ring, big. I called my family one-by-one and told them we just bought plane tickets to Ireland (but like…that’s not normal, right?) I high-key told everyone I ran into that I was going to Ireland. I literally googled “Ireland” every day and just gazed longingly at our route and all the places we’d be going. In Ireland. Yo girl was EXCITED, to say the least. We always had enough growing up, but rarely extra, which meant traveling wasn’t really in the budget. Now that I’m a real live adult and have to pay bills and stuff I totally get it (I’m still not sure how we’re going to make our dreams of being a world-traveling family come true) but it meant my travel bug had been hibernating for a good long while. And let me tell you, it came out of the den the second I looked out that tiny window and saw those rolling green hills as we pummeled towards them at 150 miles an hour in a giant metal tube.

We had arrived in mother trucking IRELAND. I looked out the window at our cute little plane with a giant shamrock on it and took a deep breath. We’re here. This was IT. This little American girl and her soon-to-be fiancé were in a brand new country on a brand new continent, about to do so many brand new things it’s a wonder my head didn’t explode from the gravity of it all. I wanted to run out of the airport and find some green hills to frolic on with fluffy white sheep while drinking Guinness and saying things like “bonney lass” and “He’s a fine lad.”

But first, we had to pick up our rental car.

We waltzed up to the rental counter, shamrocks in our eyes and huge, jet-lagged smiles plastered across our faces. And then our Buddy Adam behind the counter says,

“Great news, you’ve been upgraded!”

Mmmmk. Upgraded from the automatic mid-sized hatchback we requested to what, Adam?

“Well, our finest 7-seater.”

You mean a van.

“You’ll be able to carry whatever you want!”

Oh, you mean like ourselves, our two suitcases and an entire Irish family and their dog. Perfect.

“It’s the loveliest shade of blue.”

That’s when I knew we were in trouble.

After confirming that there were literally no other options available, we walked out to the parking lot past cute little Subarus and sensible sedans. Past shiny pick-ups and sporty 2-doors. And when we finally found our chariot for the next 8 days, in all her electric blue glory, both of us let out the kind of groans reserved for the chore you hate the most. Old Bessie, as I later dubbed her, was a fat blue cow.

Once we got over the initial disappointment of yet another car rental that failed to give us what we requested (Jesse tells me that’s a normal thing) we realized just how tired we were from our 14 hours of travel and weird time warp side-effect known as jet lag. Next thing on the list was to check into our hotel, grab a drink and sit somewhere for awhile. Thank goodness we paid the extra for GPS so we could navigate this brand new city while driving on the left side of the car, on the left side of the road, after having “slept” on the plane for a handful of hours.

SIKE. Our GPS was from 2001 and had clearly been created by someone who had never needed to find anything before. Jesse, bless his persistent little heart, doesn’t give up anything without a fight. Even with the world’s worst navigator at his side (me, not the GPS), a vehicle twice as wide as the sidewalks-passing-as-roads and a useless GPS, he drove us around Cork in circles like a champ. After about an hour of that, we decided to bite the bullet and pay the extra money to have his phone work while we were there. I’m pretty sure we let out a little “Hallelujah!” when we were finally able to pull up a map that wasn’t completely worthless. Aaah, thank you modern technology for rescuing us.

Speaking of modern, our hotel was so new that it wasn’t on the map yet. And to make things even better? There were two hotels by the same name within the same few blocks, so when we finally drove by the-one-that-wasn’t-ours-but-looked-like-ours, sweet relief was quickly followed by swearing a sailor would be ashamed of. At this point I couldn’t even look at Jesse, we had been driving around for nearly 3 hours and I was so exhausted and hungry and embarrassed by my complete lack of navigation skills that all I could do was silently cry and curse the man who decided to make the streets in Cork so tiny and weird. As we sat at the red light and tried to figure out how Old Bessie was going to fit through the itty bitty alley we were pointed towards, a friendly-looking gentleman in his fifties walked over and gave us the signal to roll down our window. “Light’s broken, ye can go.” he says. And then my sweet, exasperated boyfriend swallowed whatever manly pride he had left and asked the guy for directions. He knew where our hotel was (the real one, not the imposter that had shattered all of our hopes and dreams earlier) and he even had some recommendations on where we could find parking. Now that guy, that guy was a good lad.

Then Jesse pulled off probably the most impressive parking job I’ve ever seen — wooly mammoth in a parking garage meant for automatic mid-sized hatchbacks. I think at that point we maybe even let ourselves smile a little, our suitcases rolling on authentic Irish sidewalk and our blue bovine tucked away and out of our sight for the night. Our hotel was lovely, shiny and new just like the pictures. The woman at the front desk was friendly and smiled brightly at us despite our hangry eyes and airplane hair. Here’s your room key, welcome to Ireland.

You think it’s over now huh?

Nope. To this day I wish I had taken a video of the route to our room, because I’m not sure I’ll ever be able to do it’s ridiculousness justice. We went through two sets of doors, into the elevator and up a few floors, took more lefts in the hallway than I think are even possible, and after about 15 minutes we finally started to see room numbers that were close to ours. 200…201…202…204…205. Um wait, where did 203 go?? We walked up and down the hall, up and down the neighboring hall just in case someone had a bad counting day (we all have those right? Just me?) and almost went to ask for help when Jesse’s disregard for the social rules that keep the rest of us in line led him through the unmarked door that would have passed anywhere else for a utility room. It was through this unmarked door AND up a couple steps and to the left that we found 203, tucked away in a weird little corner, just for us. We were so hungry and exhausted at that point that we decided to order room service so we could eat while we unpacked and decided where to go for that beloved drink.

You’re going to think this next bit is made up, but I swear on my fur babies’ life that it’s true. The room service guy showed up after nearly an hour, apologizing profusely and explaining that HE COULDN’T FIND OUR ROOM.

Fast forward another hour or so and we’re in a pub listening to live Irish music and drinking the most delicious beer of my life. I think I probably sighed about 23 times and thanked my lucky charms that the day was over. I’ll never know if the rest of the trip would have been quite as dreamy without that first awful day... but, I suppose that’s the beauty of perspective.