Driving on the Left. Piece of Cake...riight.

Have a seat my dear reader and fasten your seat belt. What I'm about to tell you has happened last year in September, but a few days ago I just relived the whole scenario in my mind, cause my mom asked me;

"Soo Ireland *pause* that was pretty interesting wasn't it?

Yeah, my mom has those moments quite a few times...a day. Just asking or telling random things. She was ironing some clothes, so I think she just had too much time to think or something hehehe. But I thought it would be fun to share it with you ^_^!

But let me start at the beginning, It was a trip to Waterford, Ireland last September. A lovely place, only I couldn’t get used to the traffic there ^_^”. It was a road trip, starting in Waterford and ending in Galway. In between there would have been two more stops, but I can't remember the places now...oh wait! one was Kinsale. My friend won the trip and I was the only one with a drivers license so she asked if I was up for a trip. Well I was of course :D. I asked her how the general experiences were of driving on the left, because they do drive on the left there (for me the wrong side of the road, for many others the correct one...)

Well she said it had to be okay, and she also had some driving experience so she could drive a while, but in the end we weren't up for that, because she wasn't officially licensed. Anyway we went and I did some research before about driving on the left, most experiences were positive, but these were from a few years ago, so I wondered if it still was the same.

When we got there, we had some trouble with the rental company, because we were both underage. You have to be at least 23 to rent a car and 25 to rent a car with an automatic transmission. The lady who helped us was kind of surprised that we were able to get a car, because I was underage. We still could get a car, but the deposit was high! We had to pay 1200 EUR if we didn’t take insurance and if we did take it we had to pay 700 EUR *sigh* -_-'. We took the insurance...

We were looking like ‘Oohkay…’, but when we got the keys we were happy. Okay now up the road! At first this went good. It wasn’t too crowded, only driving on the other side was quite strange. We were driving and driving and we were near the city of Waterford and it got a bit more crowded, but it went okay, a roundabout or two….fine, no biggie. Then…we were in the city and that’s where it got crazy, the streets were so small and traffic went both ways so the whole time it was speed up, slow down, to the side, being sure not to hit a side mirror….and somewhere while driving in the city we took a wrong turn and well...it never got okay again hehehe.

We kept driving and driving and there was one roundabout after another. Really, really annoying! So we decided to bring the car back, because my friend really didn’t like to sit on the other side, she thought that every car was coming at her! Well, I thought that every car was coming for me too! And I have to say, that it was quite tiring to stay so focused while driving. We couldn’t switch places, so I had to do all the driving and with all those small roads and unreadable traffic signs; I wasn’t too comfortable to drive all these days. It was quite stressful! So I can’t tell you how relieved I was when I handed in the keys. So besides the adventurous car trip, I had a fun time just staying in Waterford for a few days and sightseeing. The people were very friendly and the hotel was very nice! But in the end I was glad that I was home a few days early!

Just to give you a small visualization...

Did any of you experienced this before? Driving left while you are used to driving on the right? Or the other way around?

Till next time!

*WAVES*

PS.: @ Mr. Many Names and Lord Hats and a few other friends. If you read this...yes I copied paste some bits and pieces hehe ^_^. Ciao XOXO!