Driving on the Wrong side of the road

The Britts and Irish get after me when I say driving on the "wrong side" of the road... "Lovey it would be brilliant if you remember it's the 'left' side you be driving on now." Whether you call it the "left side" or "other side"...bottom line it just feels wrong. And that's why Steve took over the driving in Ireland. He had practice driving the opposite side in Australia when we visited in 2001, so it all came back to him. For me it was so weird sitting where the steering wheel should be and having no controls. We had to laugh at the "gentle reminder" in our rental car written in 5 languages.
Thank goodness this was an automatic. Shifting with the left hand would have been too much at once. We wondered why the left side of every rental car was scrapped up and we soon found out...

driving the Midlands is not for the faint of heart.

The streets are barely wide enough for two very tiny cars. And there is no shoulder--only rock walls and very sharp shrubbery. So when a bus or SUV comes at you, the only place to go is left into the unforgiving bramble...

Steve drove like a champ the three and a half hours from Dublin on the East coast to County Clare on the West coast.

I think he only tapped one side view mirror in one of the busy small towns we passed through. Everyone had parked on both sides of the road to attend 6 pm Sunday Mass on Easter Sunday and there was no room to drive. (Driving the narrow streets of Rome was good practice for these obstacle courses.)

We had been a bit put out when Hertz didn't have the mid size Mazada 6 ready for us when we picked up our rental, but the dodgey little Nissan Tiida ended up being just right to navigate these cramped roads. I am super proud of Steve for mastering the roundabouts, his lightening responses when Lorries came out of nowhere on single lane hilly roads and for not adding any additional "racing strips" a.k.a. scrapes on the LEFT side of the car while driving LEFT side of the road. (Now those nightmares I used to have of heading the wrong way down a one way street are wrong-gone)