Irish charm

May 8, 2005 by Rose

We just returned from our mini-holiday to Ireland, and what a beautiful country it is.

Upon arrival at the airport we were met by our taxi driver James. I got my name written on a card being held up which was a major thrill for me LOL. We headed towards Killarney where we were staying, a little sightseeing detour and then got dropped off at the place where I had booked to stay.

Looking forward to putting our feet up we wander inside and announce our arrival only to be told that we were expected Wednesday and we hadn’t shown up. I knew I had given her the correct dates and she wouldn’t admit it though. She said she had 03 on the expiry of my credit card and the last 4 digits were wrong on the number she had for my card so they had not charged me for the no-show. I really wanted to ask why she would take down a credit card expiry that was for the year 03 but I didn’t.

So they were fully booked out and had to get us accommodation elsewhere. Oh well. The shame was we had booked tours and a return taxi to the airport Sunday morning and didn’t know how to get in touch with any of these people to change it.

So we ended up at a B&B a few blocks away which had a seriously ominous smell on/around the bed, and worst of all, an uncomfortable mattress. The hostess was also rather abrupt with us, well it wasn’t our fault they got our booking wrong! DOH.

Oh well we are in Ireland so we are not too concerned (although that smell was rather un-nerving), we wander into town and ate dinner at a superb restaurant which made all our troubles go away. The customer service was excellent and it was such a nice change to the English nonchalant attitude towards customers.

A terrible night sleep for Steve and I (Mum snores like a chainsaw lol) and even the earplugs didn’t help. (Oh and did I mention that elusive smell?)

Saturday we eventually got picked up by taxi and taken the start of a tour we didn’t know much about (The Irish are not big on explaining things we found) and ended up paying way more than we were told for this horse buggy trip through the mountains. You know it didn’t matter because it was an awesome ride and the views were spectacular!

At the end we had lunch and then a boat ride to the end of the journey where there is a castle and then into a taxi and back home. The boat ride was a bit hairy at the end – we were out in the open waters of the lake, the sun was beating down and I got sun/wind burnt (doh), it was pretty choppy and some of us got a little wet.

We went back to the room, pondered about the source of the smell for a while, chilled and then got ready to go out for dinner.

Ended up at a lovely Irish diner and had an excellent meal and once again the service was superb. We had an early night as our taxi was arriving at 6:45am to take us to the airport for our early flight home.

When the taxi arrived in the morning it was apparent to me we had gotten in touch with the wrong James (doh) and we hoped somewhere out there the real James who was meant to pick us up was not mad at us (we did try everything to contact him and ended up rang the wrong company which also had a James working for them lol)

I have to say, it was a great holiday, but gee its sooooo nice to be home in our own place and back in our own comfy bed (no strange smells! yay!) LOL.

I’ve uploaded the photos to the gallery, just need to label them and then I will make them public.

Hope you are all great!

:)

PS: Got home and checked my emails I had sent to the woman at the original place we were to stay – turns out she was the one who got it all wrong. My flesh was burning to forward it back to her but luckily my soul knows better.